Mrs. Nonsense visits the Kingdom of Backwards

Abstract

The work of María Elena Walsh belongs to the collective imagination of Argentina. Her poetry books Tutú Marambá (1960), El Reino del Revés (1963), and Zoo loco (1965); her children’s stories Cuentopos de Gulubú (1966) and El País de la Geometría (1974); the novel Dailan Kifki (1966); and her musical comedies for children Canciones para mirar (1962) and Doña Disparate y Bambuco (1963) played a transformative role in the literary system of the 1960s and helped to establish a new writing paradigm within the field of children’s and youth literature. In these works, nonsense is the core of the texts’ plot. This generative center, around which all of María Elena Walsh’s children’s poetry —and part of her prose— is shaped, has deep folkloric roots, both Spanish and English. Based on modern translation theories, this article examines the hermeneutic work carried out by María Elena Walsh as she rewrites, reformulates, and transmutes poetic traditions from other literatures into her own language.