The family house chronotope in three picture books by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus. Idyll, fantasy and threshold experiences

Abstract

The family house is a distinct and recurrent context for child protagonists in picturebooks by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus. Based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, which denotes the unity of time and space in a literary work, this article explores how concepts of time and space are depicted in three picturebooks by Dahle and Nyhus that are set within the family house context. The books were all published around the year 2000. Following Bakhtin’s understanding that the literary chronotope emerges from real historical time and space, the article illustrates how the family house chronotope in the work of Dahle and Nyhus sheds light on the condition of being a child at the turn of the century. Furthermore, it is suggested that what I will term the Dahle and Nyhus’ family house chronotope frames and enables both a vulnerable and strong child, thus reflecting an understanding of childhood in a Scandinavian postmodern context around the year 2000.