Ölenberg: an Intertextual Dialogue Between Fairy-Tale Retellings and the Sociohistorical Study of the Grimm Tales
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Back to Ölenberg: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Retellings and the Sociohistorical Study of the Grimm Tales Vanessa Joosen Marvels & Tales, Volume 24, Number 1, 2010, pp. 99-115 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v024/24.1.joosen.html Access provided by Wayne State University (26 Feb 2014 10:22 GMT) 24360_06_099_115_r3ln.qxp 6/3/10 9:17 AM Page 99 VANESSA J OOSEN 1 2 3 4 5 Back to Ölenberg: An Intertextual 6 Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Retellings 7 and the Sociohistorical Study of the 8 9 Grimm Tales 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Introduction 21 22 In discussions of fairy-tale retellings, the concept of intertextuality is often in- 23 troduced to explain the relationship between a retelling and the traditional 24 fairy tale(s) to which it refers.1 Although the notion of intertextuality was de- 25 veloped by scholars such as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, and Gérard Genette 26 as a far more expansive network of verbal and even nonverbal texts, it is con- 27 ventionally employed in literary studies to analyze the relationships and dy- 28 namics between fictional texts only. If we adopt a broader concept of intertex- 29 tuality, one that considers not only fictional but also nonfictional pre-texts, a 30 whole new intertextual dimension becomes accessible. For fairy-tale studies, 31 such an approach offers valuable possibilities, especially when it comes to the 32 interaction between fairy tales and the critical and theoretical discourses that 33 have the fairy tale as their subject. Various thematic overlaps and mutual con- 34 cerns can be perceived between fairy-tale retellings and feminist, psychoana- 35 lytic, and Marxist criticism so that fairy-tale criticism appears as a relevant in- 36 tertext for the retellings, and vice versa.2 In this essay I will explore the 37 intertextual dialogue between a selection of fairy-tale retellings from Dutch, 38 39 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2010), pp. 99–115. Copyright © 2010 by 40 S Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. 41 R 99 2nd Pass Pages 24360_06_099_115_r3ln.qxp 6/3/10 9:17 AM Page 100 VANESSA JOOSEN 1 German, and English writers and the sociohistorical study of the Grimm 2 brothers’ fairy tales. I will demonstrate how certain retellings have helped to 3 undermine the Grimms’ authority as truthful and reliable folktale collectors, 4 moving on to analyze in more detail retellings that seek an alliance with criticism 5 on the oral tradition underpinning the Grimm collection. 6 7 In Search of the Truth 8 9 As the best-known collection of fairy tales worldwide, Jacob and Wilhelm 10 Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) has been a 11 popular topic of research. In the course of the twentieth century the editorial 12 process of the Brothers Grimm came under discussion at various times and in 13 various contexts. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the first academic 14 publications had already appeared on the editions of Die Kinder- und 15 Hausmärchen, and the question of editorial changes remained on the agenda 16 throughout the century.3 In 1975 Heinz Rölleke sparked new interest in the 17 collection’s genesis when he published Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder 18 Grimm, an annotated edition of the Ölenberg manuscript from 1810, printed 19 next to the tales as they appeared in the first published edition from 1812. 20 This manuscript contains a handful of earlier versions of the Grimm tales as 21 the Grimms had assembled them for their contemporary Clemens Brentano. 22 The manuscript and subsequent published editions of the tales were the topic 23 of further research by scholars such as Siegfried Neumann, Eric Hulsens, John 24 Ellis, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Klaus Doderer, Wilhelm Solms, Jack Zipes, and 25 Maria Tatar. Writing in 1983, Jack Zipes states that “[u]ntil the 1970s it was 26 generally assumed that the Brothers Grimm collected their oral folktales 27 mainly from peasants and day laborers and that they merely altered and re- 28 fined the tales while remaining true to their perspective and meaning. Both as- 29 sumptions proved to be false” (Subversion 61). A substantial number of articles 30 and books have addressed the issue of whether the Brothers Grimm “merely 31 refined” the oral versions they had collected or whether they (un)consciously 32 manipulated them in favor of their own ideology and literary taste. Although 33 Zipes claims that the Grimms did change the meaning of the oral folktales, he 34 stresses that their “intentions were honorable” (61) and that “there is no evi- 35 dence to indicate that the Grimms consciously sought to dupe German readers 36 and feed them lies about the German past” (Brothers Grimm 110). He refers 37 here to the impression that the Brothers Grimm created of their tales being 38 German stories when several of the best-known tales in their collection have 39 older variants from Italy and France. Moreover, Zipes emphasizes, “the S 40 Grimms were totally conscious and open about their endeavors to make their R 41 material more suitable for children and to incorporate their notion of the fam- 100 2nd Pass Pages 24360_06_099_115_r3ln.qxp 6/3/10 9:17 AM Page 101 BACK TO ÖLENBERG ily, their sense of a folk aesthetic, and their political ideas in the tales” (112). 1 Heinz Rölleke is more skeptical about this alleged openness: “They have only 2 remained silent with regard to these issues, ambiguously silent, as the recep- 3 tion shows” (Quellen und Studien 36).4 More radical and less accepted in aca- 4 demic circles is John Ellis’s view “that the Grimms deliberately, persistently, 5 and completely misrepresented the status of their tales” and “made claims for 6 them which they knew to be quite false” (viii). Part of the problem in verifying 7 this process is that the notes and manuscript versions of these other variants 8 have not been preserved and that the oral tradition from which the Brothers 9 Grimm supposedly drew their tales has long been beyond reach. Whether or 10 not the Grimms’ intentions were honorable, comparisons between the various 11 editions of Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen have invariably come to the conclu- 12 sion that the brothers, especially Wilhelm, substantially altered the content 13 and style of the tales. It is thus problematic to read the Grimm stories as the 14 authentic rendition of an oral tradition. 15 The debate on the editorial changes in the Grimm collection proved inspi- 16 rational for various critics, and related opinions and ideas also surface in some 17 retellings. This is not to say that these authors have necessarily read fairy-tale 18 scholarship, or that they apply theories or concepts in the same way as schol- 19 ars. In the intertextual dialogue between fairy-tale retellings and literary criti- 20 cism, it is usually difficult to trace where an idea appeared first or whether 21 ideas that occur on similar occasions were actually “borrowed” from each 22 other. According to Maria Nikolajeva, “the question of who has borrowed the 23 idea from whom” is in fact “totally uninteresting” to intertextual analysis (183). 24 It is more valuable to focus instead on the different use that authors and critics 25 make of the same idea. Indeed, although several fairy-tale retellings can be in- 26 tertextually linked to debates on the Grimm editions, they do so within a fic- 27 tional context, and their assertions about the Grimms are often humorous and 28 ambivalent. The alterations made by the Grimms, for example, are frequently 29 called upon in fairy-tale retellings to explain their own raison d’être. Not sur- 30 prisingly, most of these lack the nuance of the scholarly debates, and the 31 brothers are usually not given the benefit of the doubt with regard to their 32 honorable intentions. In an attempt to lure in the reader, the narrators of these 33 tales claim to tell a more accurate version of the fairy tale, to report “what really 34 happened.” Such fictional claims can be found in titles by Louise Murphy (The 35 True Story of Hansel and Gretel), Bruce Bennett (“The True Story of Snow 36 White”), Liya Lev Oertel (“The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty”), and Jon Scieszka 37 (The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!), as well as in the titles and introductions 38 of countless other retellings.5 Tomi Ungerer, for example, uses such a truth 39 motif to catch the interest of his readership in the first lines of “Little Red Riding 40 S Hood” (1975): 41 R 101 2nd Pass Pages 24360_06_099_115_r3ln.qxp 6/3/10 9:17 AM Page 102 VANESSA JOOSEN 1 The little girl in red was called . yes . you’ve already guessed it, 2 she was called Little Red Riding Hood. But it was not the Little Red 3 Riding Hood that you may have read about before. No. The Little Red 4 Riding Hood here is the real, true Little Red Riding Hood, not the one 5 from that stupid fairy tale, and this story is, I bet you a hundred to 6 one, its truthful history. (87)6 7 Rather than unearthing the true account of “Red Riding Hood,” should such a 8 version exist at all, Ungerer writes a parody of the traditional version. Most 9 retellings that contain such a fictional claim for truth do the same.