The Murderer's Ape: Wegelius Jakob

Product Information

Nodleman, Perry. (2008). The Hidden Adult. Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. I don’t know when I last read a book with such pure and unalloyed pleasure. It’s ingenious, it’s moving, it’s charming, it’s beautiful, it’s exciting, and most importantly the characters are people I feel I know like old friends’– Philip Pullman Bushell, Sally. (2015). Mapping Victorian Adventure Fiction: Silences, Doublings, and the Ur-map in Treasure Island and King Solomon’s Mines. Victorian Studies, 57(4), 611–637. Massey, Doreen. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today, June, 24–29. Accessed April 18, 2021 from http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/91_06_24.pdf

The Legend of Sally Jones: Graphic Novel : Jakob Wegelius The Legend of Sally Jones: Graphic Novel : Jakob Wegelius

The methodology for the visualized mapping of the novel is influenced by Italian literary critic Franco Moretti. In Atlas of the European Novel, Moretti ( 1998) develops a method for mapping authorships and genres by plotting toponyms on a map. The maps he creates do not merely show where a narrative is set. Rather, they are “analytical tools that pose new questions, and force you to look for new answers” (Moretti, 1998, p. 4). Moretti explains his method in straightforward terms: “you select a textual feature, find the data, put them on paper—and then you look at the map. In the hope that the visual construct will be more than the sum of its parts: that it will show a shape, a pattern that may add something to the information that went into making it” ( 1998, p. 13). Thus, mapping does not merely involve plotting places on a map, but requires close interaction with and analysis of the text.

Several issues arose during the process. For one thing, many of the places Sally Jones visits on her travels are merely mentioned, and function as markers. I have nevertheless chosen to map them as part of the narrative. Also, places are frequently both places of action and projected places, e.g. when the narrator recalls an earlier point in the narrative. I have mapped such places as places of action. The mapping of large areas—such as oceans, rivers, deserts or whole continents—was also an issue, as such places cannot be mapped accurately. I have therefore omitted them from the map; in this way, the novel’s actual geography goes beyond what can be visualized. Finally, there is the matter of fictional places. Almost all places in The Murderer’s Ape refer to actual locations, but there are two places I could not locate: the maharaja’s palace and Agiere. Both are central to the narrative. The novel informs us that the palace is in Bhapur in India, and that Agiere lies along the river Zezere, not far from Constancia, Santarem. I have thus mapped these toponyms to represent the novel’s two fictional places. A heartbreaking journey from zoo to travelling circus eventually brings Sally to Chief Koskela. Under Koskela’s tutelage, Sally learns her way around a boat’s engine room. And, though she gets her opportunity to return to the jungle, Sally finds that she has been away too long, and her place is now with the Chief. Anderson, Benedict. (2014). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

The Murderer’s Ape Geography and Power: Mapping The Murderer’s Ape

Ernst, Waltraud, and Pati, Biswamoy (Eds.). (2007). India’s Princely States. People, Princes and Colonialism. London: Routledge. Travel lies at the heart of the novel. Sally Jones is in transit in Lisbon, she travels to India, and she explores parts of India with the maharaja. As argued, Wegelius establishes two rival senses of space. In her reading of The Legend of Sally Jones, Posti ( 2017, p. 195) asserts that Wegelius rewrites the colonially influenced adventure genre by evoking and undermining it at the same time. My geographic analysis in this article confirms and expands this assertion. In Wegelius’ novel, travel is not connected with conquest; it is instead a source of knowledge linked to the humanistic ideal of Bildung. Footnote 3 The Murderer’s Ape de-emphasizes the idea of nations and national territory as well as cultural boundaries. In her study on settlement narratives in children’s fiction, Bradford ( 2007) finds that place is infused with cultural specificities and liminal places where culture is negotiated. In The Murderer’s Ape, however, space and place are political, but rarely culture-specific; we have the naming of places, fado singing and Signor Fidardo’s Italian temper, but culture is never depicted as a boundary. Neither is language; the novel’s characters always understand each other perfectly—a more fantastic element than even the gorilla narrator.Sundmark, Björn. (2019). Maps in Children’s Books: From Playworld and Childhood Geography to Comic Fantasy and Picturebook Art. Filoteknos, 9, 123–137. Accessed April 18, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.23817/filotek.9-9. Poor, seedy and full of suspicious individuals, Alfama is the perfect place for plotting crimes, political conspiracies and deceit. As Moretti ( 1998, p. 35) underscores: “Each genre possesses its own space, then— and each space its own genre”, stressing the importance of literary space and place. Alfama’s dark and scary harbor is necessary for Wegelius’ crime plot, which leads to Alphonse Morro’s disappearance and Koskela’s arrest. However, though Alfama is depicted as dangerous at night, the real danger lies in the richer parts of the city. This is where the bishop—the leader of the royalist terrorists—resides. Meanwhile, the Alfama district becomes Sally Jones’ home and allows her to make friends. It is a place for the powerless, the underdogs—and thus a place for subversion. The novel presents Lisbon both as a form of critical spatial practice—a city environment critiqued and reshaped by means of the characters’ movement through it—and as representational space that encodes values and cultural practices. The sense of the city grows out of the combination of these presentations of space. Posti, Piia. (2017). Resor, äventyr och den andre: Exotism och det främmande i samtida svensk barnlitteratur. In Maria Andersson and Elina Druker (Eds.), Mångkulturell barn- och ungdomslitteratur: Analyser (pp. 181–197). Lund: Studentlitteratur.

The False Rose by Peter Graves, Jakob Wegelius | Waterstones The False Rose by Peter Graves, Jakob Wegelius | Waterstones

Lyngstad, Anne Berit, and Samoilow, Tatjana Kielland. (2022, forthcoming). Det kosmopolitiske mulighetsrommet i Jakob Wegelius’ Mördarens apa (2014). In Agora. Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon. No. 2-3. Hunt, Peter. (2015). Unstable Metaphors: Symbolic Spaces and Specific Places. In Maria Sachiko Cecire, Hanna Field, Kavita Mudan Finn and Malini Roy (Eds.), Place and Space in Children’s Literature 1789 to the Present (pp. 23–37) . Surrey: Ashgate. Pavlik, Anthony, and Bird, Hazel Sheeky. (2017). Introduction: Maps and Mapping in Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 48, 1–5. Accessed April 18, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-016-9303-5Merrifield, Andrew (1993). Place and Space: a Lefebvrian Reconciliation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18(4), 516–531. Created by environmental activist Trang Nguyen and award-winning manga artist Jeet Zdung, this is a great story that will delight young animal activists and enthusiasts, based on a true story. Bradford, Clare. (2007). Unsettling Narratives. Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Based on a true story, this stunning graphic novel follows Chang as she fights to protect her local forests and wildlife, and rewild a young sun bear, Sorya, who was captured by poachers as a cub.