Examining the concept of “dépaysement” in the picture books by Elzbieta (1936–2008)
Eighth session of the 2025-2026 CEFRES Francophone
Interdisciplinary Seminar “Dépaysements”: Clues and Trajectories.
Date: Friday, June 5, 2026, 10 am
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Language: French
Speaker: Madeleine BIEGEL (Charles University)
Discussant: Hélène Martinelli (ENS Lyon / CEFRES)
Abstract
This is an excerpt from Pinocchio, the Italian masterpiece of children’s literature that Carlo Ginzburg chose to feature as the epigraph to his collection of essays, Occhiacci di legno. Nove riflessioni sulla distanza, whose first essay defines the concept of estrangement as a method. The gaze cast upon the adult Geppetto by the child-puppet at the moment it comes to life is disturbing and estranged. Paradoxically, this concept, so fruitful in many fields of the humanities, has been little taken up by theorists of children’s literature.
We will demonstrate its relevance in shedding light on the creative process of the picture book author Elzbieta (1936–2008), which she explores in particular in L’enfance de l’art (1997) and Le Langage des contes (2014). A highly singular, purposeful creation that requires a dual process of defamiliarization: a return to the experience of the world of the little girl she once was, a world now definitively lost, and an open dialogue with the child to whom she speaks, whose mode of perception is radically different (we will draw in particular on the work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Daniel Stern). In Elzbieta’s picture books, numerous recurring motifs, often generic, present themselves as “mental landscapes,” in a deep, underlying, implicit, and veiled sense, much like the settings of fairy tales (see Nicole Belmond’s analyses of traditional oral fairy tales, which are very close to Elzbieta’s). The artist often defines creation in geographical and spatial terms: an adventurous exploration of foreign lands that necessitates a shift in perspective and a distancing from adult perceptual and cognitive habits.
See the complete program of the 2025-2026 seminar here.