The Polylingual Tables of Vasily Zhukovsky’s Initial Course of Study in the Context of Children’s Board Games of the F irst Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

In the early 1850s, Vasily Zhukovsky develops tables with drawings of objects and phenomena and their coded names in four languages. The consistent use of visual didactics in them looks quite innovative against the background of textbooks of the time. The tables are part of the Initial Course of Study, which Zhukovsky was developing in the last years of his life. By that time he had already accumulated considerable experience in teaching Russian as a foreign language on the basis of his own handmade visual aids. Most of the tables are filled with plotlike images, but some also contain symbols, diagrams and maps. The variety of plot and composition solutions in the drawings deserves special attention. This specifically concerns plots, which are independent and developed. The drawings contain details which considerably supplement the basic meaning of the word, they are obviously designed for close examination, comparison and interpretation. The visual emphasis on letters and pictures seems to qualify the manual developed by Zhukovsky as a polylingual picture book, but the usual aims and objectives of an ABC book are here considerably more complicated. The textbook has many more parallels with the board games of that time. It can be seen as an organic continuation of the tradition of “useful” family board games as it displays affinity with them not only at the level of visual and spatial solution, visual and tactile form, but also at the level of mechanisms of interaction of a child with the handbook. It is in the sphere of board games that Zhukovsky finds means to solve the tasks of visual learning set by leading European teachers; such learning would lead a child from sensually perceived concreteness to the formation of concepts. The greatest parallels with Zhukovsky’s tables are found, firstly, in games with ruled cardboard fields. Secondly, word games (charades, rebuses, riddles) clearly influenced the development of the tables. The tables use all the principal advantages of board games in terms of visual learning: bright visual, tactile and spatial landmarks, compact information transfer in the form of diagrams and symbols, informative richness of all game elements, a variety of visual elements. Games on a ruled cardboard field also have plots, though manipulation with the field and chips, acquaintance with drawings and texts in squares on the field in such games always realize a very simple plot. Since for Zhukovsky the main plot a child should be introduced to in the learning process was the universal connection of concepts, the fields of tables, drawings and names extracted by decoding should lead a pupil towards an understanding of the relationship between objects and phenomena of this world. Within the framework of the emblematic tradition, which was still alive in Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century and which Zhukovsky never set out to destroy or overcome, interpretations of combinations of concepts and images presented in his tables had to develop freely, obeying a chain of individual associations of a pupil. At the same time, these associations were guided in the right direction because the structure of the visual series predetermined the child’s actions. The comparison of elements within one cell was followed by the comparison of cells of one column, one row, the table as a whole and the whole complex of tables. In this way, a child progressed towards generalisations; s/he was guided by the logic of the mnemonic construction of the Initial Course of Study that showed the relationship between facts of history, geography, physics, natural history, art history, etc.