Deformity in Children’s Illustrations: A Historical and Interpretative Journey between the Uncanny and the Educational Dimension

Abstract

Children’s literature, rooted from its origins in folk tales, abounds with characters whose bodies deviate from conventional norms. Over time, literature has offered numerous – also iconographically rich – representations of physical deformity. The term “deformity”, understood as a social construct, does not merely suggest non-conformity, but rather evokes the notion of the unpleasantly different or disfigured. As such, the sight of a deformed body often elicits a primal sense of the uncanny, a form of cognitive dissonance in the observer. Therefore, the portrayal of a monstrous body implicates complex dimensions that authors – particularly within children’s literature – are called to engage with, often in the search for textual and visual strategies shaped by pedagogical intentions. While illustrators of fairy tales typically enjoy greater expressive freedom, drawing on a fantastic imaginary, other authorial approaches tend to depict a more “domesticated” deformity, conforming to established visual codes. This contribution aims to offer an interpretative analysis of the iconographic representation of the deformed body, exploring – through a diachronic perspective – the relationship between collective imaginary and educational paradigms in children’s literature, from past to present.