Children's magazine of 1850s as metatext

The discourse of children's culture is a complex semiotic structure including organically connected verbal and non-verbal components. The verbal component is represented by "children's texts". In aggregate these texts are described by the term "children's literature", which possesses a number of features. "Children's literature" includes editions of various types united by the uniform reader and by their functions: aesthetic, informative, moral, didactic, which define its role in the society - to develop and educate by means of the word. The leading positions in the collections of children's books of the 19th century belonged to compiled text forms (metatexts): the children's magazine, the almanac, the collection. In the history of children's literature the flourishing of the children's magazine was in 1860s. Its formation and development as an aesthetic and communicative whole was due to a number of the reasons. First of all, compiling works into magazine ensembles was an inevitable step of development of children's literature that aspired to join the common literary process, which is characterized by interest in big art and functional art forms. There was an issue of search of adequate forms of children's literature representation. During the formation of children's literature children's magazine, by analogy to the adult one, was perceived as a field for experiment. Here new genres, forms, subjects, figurative means, which children's literature could make use of, were tested and acknowledged by children and critics. As an experimental field the magazine promoted search of children's writers and making this status independent. In the situation of children's literature formation when they only learned to write in the child-like way, the magazine allowed to counterbalance various author's positions thus creating an aesthetic whole. The magazine is not only a dialogue of various author's positions, but also a dialogue with the reader. The latter is possible via the third party, the parent (tutor). In this regard the function of the magazine is also to be a mediator in the course of literary communication from adult to adult and through the magazine - to the child. Such dialog feature of the children's magazine assumed a possibility to include materials (often non-artistic ones) for the adult reader. The children's magazine, thus, used various discourses. It was guided by children's interests and requirements, which the adults defined. It processed the data from diverse spheres into a cognitively ordered, emotional and axiological picture of the world.

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