Drängen, Fallen, Platzen. Menschenfresser:innen im Bilderbuch

This article inquires into the motif of man-eating in children’s and youth literature using two contemporary examples: Die Menschenfresserin by Valérie Dayre and Wolf Erlbruch (1996) and Maja Bohne’s Die unglaubliche Geschichte des Herrn Fliege (2006). Both texts feature protagonists who transform into monsters owing to their ‘pushing forward’ posture. In psychoanalysis, this movement is associated with the neuroses mania and depression, in which oral gratification compensates for existential loss. Die Menschenfresserin and Herr Fliege exemplify such manic-depressive dispositions. The protagonists’ grief forces them to push forward, fall and burst in all directions, thereby defy all developmental logic. The article argues that this habitus hinders their clear classification as either role models or anti-heroes; instead, they represent an organism in a constant state of flux, one that destroys and ejects, and that cannot be separated from its (civilised) environment.