ABSTRACT
Many significant differences between traditional katabatic narratives and those targeted wholly or in part at young readers have emerged in the preceding chapters. Important departures are discernible in all aspects of the narrative, including setting, character, action, and overall tone and purpose. Rarely, however, are these distinctions in line with Genette’s pronouncements about children’s literature which together depict it as a conservative, inferior form characterized by sanitization and heavy-handed moralization. Although the narratives are in various ways brought closer to their targeted audience, this process of proximization does not entail the eradication of key elements of traditional katabasis and their replacement with mere fluff or overbearing didacticism. Many of the essential ingredients of classical and medieval katabasis remain very firmly in place. The narratives for young readers continue to incorporate (but do not significantly extend) the already significant moral and didactic dimension of the pre-texts. Moreover, other key elements are not only retained but actually taken further. Thus, death is threatened constantly and occurs repeatedly in the underground locales of these texts. Certain characters like Alphonse, who himself inflicts several deaths in the course of his first descent, are even more combative and active than their predecessors. In some cases, the continuities are largely conservative, serving to bolster the status quo; the continued domination of the narrative by male protagonists and accompanying derogatory portrayal of female figures in the adventure stories is a case in point. Yet other narratives reach towards new positions; fantasy and fairytales for young readers featuring female protagonists certainly fall back on standard portrayals of femininity in many ways, yet they provide opportunities to introduce more dynamic female figures and to interrogate and rethink gender relations. The sheer variety of children’s literature (and the difficulty of generalizations about it) is indeed readily apparent in this corpus of eleven texts.
