Empatia ecologica nei classici della letteratura finlandese per l’infanzia

Abstract

English article title: Ecological empathy in classic Finnish children's literature

This article examines examples of empathy in the works of three classic authors of Finnish children’s literature, specifically Zacharias Topelius (1818-1898), Anni Swan (1875-1958) and Yrjö Kokko (1903-1977), active between the second half of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. The analysis focuses on examples of empathy as an ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings and the experience of another, observed from an environmental and interspecies perspective. It also examines how the texts describe and propose attitudes of compassion and protection towards each other in relations between humans, animals and plants from an educational point of view. The authors approach nature in a romantic, symbolic and biological ways; what the examples examined have in common is that they all depict an intimate relationship with nature and non-human otherness. The knowledge of the other promotes empathy which eventually leads to the desire for care and protection.