The Hero beyond the Mask: Discussing Children’s Referential Problems in Literary and Audiovisual Texts

The main objective of this article is to discuss critically children's referential problems in literary and audiovisual texts. As many know children's intuitive age group (4-8 y.o.) present a unique developmental features that are embodied by the primitivist aesthetics principles. For this reason children within such age group present special psychological needs for which deserve close attention from all agents involved in child's cultural productions, especially in literary and audiovisual texts. For such texts are referenced by many as the ones with which children have more contact, thus, this article starts from the referential problems children may face during the reading process. It makes use of the classic children's novel: the Little Prince written in 1943 by the French classic author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, as sample of analysis. The analysis occurs in both versions of the story (literary and audiovisual) from which is also possible to identify some key referential problem for children's intuitive age group. In order to demonstrate how such children age group realizes their sense of story, this article presents a narratological approach based on the primitivist aesthetics. The concept for heroism, in turn, plays key role in the analysis in the form of four interchanging frameworks towards revealing the specific psychological needs children have during the intuitive age of development. As a result, the article concludes that children's intuitive age group tend to realize their sense of story by following the intuitive conceptual references left along the stages of hero's journey. If any prime intuitive concept (animism, artificialism, and finalism) is missing in the narrative, so it can provoke referential problems in a consecutive order affecting the overall understanding of the story, consequently not satisfying children's main psychological needs