Copyright by Matthew Owen Anderson 2019
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Copyright by Matthew Owen Anderson 2019 The Dissertation Committee for Matthew Owen Anderson Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation: Bildung and Bilder? Text, Illustration, and Adventure in Popular German Children’s Books of the Early Nineteenth Century Committee: Kirsten Belgum, Supervisor Peter Hess Kirkland A. Fulk Michael B. Winship Bildung and Bilder? Text, Illustration, and Adventure in Popular German Children’s Books of the Early Nineteenth Century by Matthew Owen Anderson Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2019 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Germanic Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, and the assistance of substantial research grants from the American Friends of Marbach (AFM) and the Fulbright Commission, which enabled me to conduct the majority of my research on site in Germany from 2017-2018. I am particularly indebted to the archival librarians who helped me during this stage of my research. Dietrich Hakelberg, Nicolai Riedel, and Julia Maas at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (DLA) in Marbach dedicated a considerable amount of time to helping me locate, label, and haul up carts of uncatalogued adventure novels from the bowels of the archive. They were with me every agonizing meter of the way, yet never once complained. Albeit blessed with a (moderately) more modern call system, Carola Pohlmann and Sigrun Putjenter at the Children and Young People’s Books Division of the Prussian State Library in Berlin were equally vital in helping me gain my footing in the first months of my year in Berlin. Thanks are also due to Julia Benner at the Humbolldt University and Sebastian Schmideler at the University of Leipzig, both of whom read and critiqued early drafts of Chapter 6. Last but not least, I must thank my wife Alicia Zachary-Erickson for her incredible patience and long-distance support during the year I gallivanted across Europe in search of adventure. Thanks Duck! During this extended—and often very lonely—period of intensive research, I was especially grateful for the support of friends in Germany. Alex Kuuskoski and Miriam Heyny came to my rescue during my second month at the DLA in Marbach. In Berlin, I similarly cherished the companionship of Gunnar Franck and Lars Schirrmeister, who helped to keep me grounded during periods of (literal) darkness and despair. Special iv thanks are also due to David Ciarlo, who encouraged and uplifted me during a particularly difficult stage of my dissertation research. I am especially indebted to my advisor Kit Belgum, who was the reason I chose to pursue graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, and the reason I decided to pursue a PhD in 2014. Her constant guidance and support have been the principle red threads throughout my entire doctoral career. In particular, her writing advice has been invaluable to my academic progress and personal Bildung. Thanks are due to the other committee members—Peter Hess, Alex Fulk, and Michael Winship—who have joined me on this considerable reading adventure. By the same token, I would like to thank the other professors who had a hand in steering my dissertation from its earliest stages, particularly Katie Arens and Per Urlaub. Thanks are also due to Terry Belanger and Erin C. Blake at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School, whose courses on historical book illustration were incredibly helpful to developing the historical vocabulary for my project, and (again) to Kit Belgum and Vance Byrd, who organized and continue to promote historical Visual Cultural Studies through the German Studies Association. I would also like to thank Sabine Hake for her sage advice and for giving me the opportunity to hone my editing skills on other people’s prose at the German Studies Review, and my friend, colleague, and conference roommate John Benjamin, for years of camaraderie and support, and for proofreading this massive document. Finally, I would like to thank my middle school German instructor, Mary Fair, who first inspired a love for the German language that—over seventeen years later—has blossomed into a career. Vielen Dank, Frau Fair! v Abstract Bildung and Bilder? Text, Illustration, and Adventure in Popular German Children’s Books of the Early Nineteenth Century Matthew Owen Anderson, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2019 Supervisor: Kirsten Belgum This dissertation explores the impact of graphic innovation on the established book culture of nineteenth-century Germany through an often-overlooked medium: the illustrated youth adventure book. Despite their ubiquity during this time period, these works have received relatively little scholarly attention beyond identification in sweeping, literary historical surveys or presentation in archival exhibition catalogs. This dissertation approaches illustrated books for young readers in the same way that scholars in the fields of children’s literature and visual cultural studies treat picture books, comic books, and graphic novels: as cultural products that rely on the interplay of two distinct but intrinsically linked semiotic domains, the written word and visual image, to create meaning. Drawing on theoretical insights from the fields of children’s literature, art history, critical bibliography, and—visual cultural studies, it sees the illustrated youth book as a multimodal whole instead of a text that happens to have visuals attached to it. vi The case studies included in this dissertation highlight the following four, thematically and chronologically overlapping works of German youth adventure in their various guises: Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere (1779/80, trans. Robinson the Younger), Frederick Marryat’s Masterman Ready (1841), James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (trans. Lederstrumpf-Erzählungen, 1845), and Theodor Dielitz’s Land- und Seebilder (1841-1861, trans. Images of Land and Sea). Each chapter follows a similar structure—moving from pedagogical and historical contexts into textual, visual, and then multimodal analyses—but has a slightly different focus. By focusing on a genre, period, and medium defined by the tension between education (Bildung) and entertainment, this dissertation specifically seeks to understand the importance of illustration (Bilder) to the development of a central genre of intentional German youth literature. vii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................1 Introduction .........................................................................................................................1 From Villified to Virtuous: Changing Attitudes Towards Adventure ................................5 Archival Adventures: Finding the Middle Path ...................................................................9 On Archives and Source Selection ...........................................................................10 Outline of Dissertation ......................................................................................................14 CHAPTER 2: DAS ABENTEUERBILD: APPROACHING ADVENTURE THROUGH TEXT AND IMAGE ..................................................................................................................16 Introduction .......................................................................................................................16 Defining Historical Youth Literature .................................................................................17 Pedagogical Red Threads: The Development of Intentional KJL in Germany .................20 Late-Eighteenth Century ...........................................................................................20 Early-Nineteenth Century .........................................................................................27 Terms of Adventure ...........................................................................................................32 A Brief Conceptual History of Abenteuer ................................................................32 The Challenge of Adventure as Acceptable Youth Reading Material ......................37 Falling Action? Squaring the Adventure ......................................................39 Forming Virtue .............................................................................................40 Based on "True Events" ................................................................................42 Adventure with a Purpose: A Means to Another End ...................................44 Visual Innovations in the Nineteenth Century ...................................................................45 viii Re-Viewing Adventure: From Text or Image to Illustrated Book ....................................51 Project Scope ............................................................................................................52 General Theoretical Framework ...............................................................................56 Image-Text Dynamics ...............................................................................................60 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................68 CHAPTER