Typology of Children's Images in Modern Kazakh and English Children's Literature

Abstract

This study examines the typology of child characters in modern Kazakh and English literature, focusing on urban children and psychological portrayals of childhood. We employ a comparative literary analysis alongside the psychoanalytic theory to uncover how cultural context and unconscious archetypes shape children’s literary images. Archetypal child character types are identified across both literatures – orphans, child caregivers, misunderstood youths, brave child heroes, and mischievous tricksters – with universal features and culture-specific inflections. Kazakh narratives tend to situate children within communal, intergenerational frameworks reflecting national values, whereas English narratives often emphasize individualism and imaginative escape. Drawing on concepts from C.G. Jung, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Jacques Lacan, and Emmanuel Levinas, we deepen the analysis of these typologies, revealing underlying psychological tensions (e.g., abandonment anxieties, precocious maturity, the child as moral Other), and the ethical implications of representing children in literature. The results include a proposed classification of urban child character types, illustrated with examples from contemporary texts and a discussion of how these typologies reflect differing cultural ideals of childhood. We conclude that modern Kazakh and English literary depictions of children, while sharing archetypal patterns, diverge in ways that illuminate each culture's ethos – whether communal or individual – and that a psychoanalytic lens can enrich our understanding of the child's symbolic role in fiction.