Cultural Semiotics and Mythification in Children's Literature: Illustrated Narratives, Cultural Memory, and the Transformation of Literary Characters

Semiotics involves the analysis of meaning construction and transformation in terms of verbal, visual, and cultural semiosis. In the presented study, cultural semiosis is examined using the medium of children's literature with specific emphasis on the relationship between narrative, illustration, character depiction, and cultural meanings conveyed through these components. The NCERT Barkha books serve as an example of the study's central case with illustrations depicting social and cultural practices of India in such features as clothes, food, home life, gestures, games, and social interactions. At the same time, the paper extends theoretical examination of the issue to mythification and offers another illustrative example of Winnie-the-Pooh as a character whose cultural identity has gone beyond the original narrative of A. A. Milne. Using Ferdinand de Saussure's, Roland Barthes', Yuri Lotman's theories of semiotics and multimodality in children's literature, the study distinguishes between cultural representation and circulation of symbolic meanings after their naturalization. The reason for Winnie-the-Pooh being used as a comparative example, therefore, rather than an empirical case study, is that of Indian children's books. It is stated in the paper that illustrated children’s literature not only functions as a form of narrative media but as a signifying practice by which identity, values, memories, and ideology are constructed.