Strenae (May 2023)
Les aventures de Sylvain et Sylvette de Cuvillier (1941-1956) : entre mythe et histoire, un art de la simplicité
Abstract
Les aventures de Sylvain et Sylvette, a series created by Maurice Cuvillier (1897-1957) in 1941, has now been running for more than eighty years. This comic strip series first appeared in the press and was later published in a long series of picturebooks, for a total of 295 titles and more than twenty million copies sold. It deserves to be considered in the history of children’s literature for these reasons. But there is an additional reason: the series is less simple than it appears. It depicts two children lost in the woods, a brother and sister. They would have a happy life in their thatched cottage, together with some tame animals, if they were not being harassed by a group of wild animals, the “old pals”. The group’s members (a wolf, a fox, etc.) link the series to the fairy tale and the fable, while the heroes’ isolation draws it close to the robinsonade. The timelessness associated with fairy tales is blurred by references to modern life. There is a strong educational intent, both in the presentation of the children’s behaviour among themselves, the animals’ behaviour among themselves and that of the children towards the animals, who are treated as if they were children. The question of language being shared or not between children and animals is highly interesting, showing that the hostile animals could be a metaphor for the adult world and its dangers. The series is traversed by many examples of intertextuality and of changing timeframes, yet exploits an art of simplicity, teaching its public to read in a stable and reassuring framework.
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