The Legacy of the Grimms' Tales in Picturebook Versions of The

Introduction: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Tales in Picturebook Versions of the Twenty-First Century Vanessa Joosen et Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer https://doi.org/10.4000/strenae.6515 Index | Plan | Texte | Notes | Citation | Auteurs Entrées d’index Mots-clés : introduction, Grimm (Jacob et Wilhelm), conte, illustration Keywords : introduction, Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm), fairytale, illustration Haut de page Plan Overview on the contributions Haut de page Texte intégral PDF Les formats PDF et ePub de ce document sont disponibles pour les usagers des institutions abonnées à OpenEdition freemium for Journals. Votre institution est-elle abonnée ? Signaler ce document The editors would like to thank Lauren Ottaviani for her assistance in copy-editing the articles in this issue. In addition, they want to acknowledge the financial and logistic support that helped them to co-organize the symposium from which this themed issue stems. This support was provided by the International Youth Library in Munich, the Märchen-Stiftung Walter Kahn, the University of Tübingen and the University of Antwerp. • 1 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German Popular Stories, translated from the Kinder and Haus Märchen collec (...) 1Over two centuries after the Brothers Grimm started their work on Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales, 1812‒1815), their fairy tales have not lost their appeal to readers, authors and, as the contributors in this special issue explore, illustrators. The history of illustrated editions of the Grimms’ tales did not start in Germany – the first German edition had no illustrations, while the second edition of 1815 had just two small drawings by Ludwig Emil Grimm, a younger brother of Jakob and Wilhelm, on the frontispiece and half title. The history of illustrating the Grimms’ tales started instead in the United Kingdom, when George Cruikshank created numerous copper etchings for the first English translation entitled German Popular Stories (1823‒1826).1 His illustrations showed the potential of pictures to draw readers into the stories and add layers of meaning to them. This famously inspired the Brothers Grimm to publish smaller, illustrated versions of their collection. While they initially planned to publish a German edition with Cruikshank’s illustrations, they eventually convinced Ludwig Emil Grimm to create 25 copper engravings for a “smaller” edition with selected tales that saw the light of day in 1825. Although they hoped to attract a broader audience, it was to little avail, as it was the Cruikshank edition that especially contributed to the tales’ popularity as children’s literature. Transnational exchanges thus contributed to the popularity of illustrations in the Grimms’ fairy tales from the very start, and have remained a constant throughout its history. • 2 On the Grimms’ editions in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, see Jennifer Schacker, Nat (...) • 3 Regina Freyberger, Märchenbilder–Bildermärchen: Illustrationen zu Grimms Märchen 1819–1945, Oberhau (...) 2A wealth of British illustrators, such as Richard Doyle, Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane, Arthur Rackham and Mervyn Peake, followed in Cruikshank’s footsteps in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.2 Their illustrations appeared in lavishly and richly stocked editions which are now rare collectibles. In Germany, however, the wood engravings by Ludwig Richter and the copper engravings by Moritz von Schwind contributed to a retrospective recognition of the Grimms’ tales in the second half of the nineteenth century.3 At the same time, the individual tales had been revised time and time again in order to adjust them to a prospective child audience. • 4 The critical reception of the Grimms’ tales is discussed in Donald Haase, The Reception of Grimms’ (...) • 5 George Bodmer, “Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane, and Maurice Sendak: The Picture as Literary Fairy Tale (...) 3Despite translations into other European languages that were commissioned as early as the nineteenth century, the international success story of the Grimms’ tales only took off in the twentieth century.4 Apart from splendid gift books with ornate illustrations successively produced by Crane, Rackham and Kay Nielsen, artists increasingly turned toward smaller formats and editions, thus paving the way for picturebook versions of individual fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. This tendency notwithstanding, renowned artists and graphic designers still felt compelled to create high-quality illustrations for fairy-tale collections.5 The list of names is impressive and encompasses prominent representatives of international book illustration, such as Michael Foreman, Nikolaus Heidelbach, Werner Klemke, Anton Pieck, Maurice Sendak, Jiri Trnka and Lisbeth Zwerger, to name but a few. • 6 See, for instance, Joyce Irene Whalley, “The Development of Illustrated Texts and Picture Books”, i (...) • 7 These different types of text-picture-relationships are explained in: Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scot (...) • 8 See David Lewis, Reading Contemporary Picturebooks. Picturing Text, London, RoutledgeFalmer, 2001. 4In contrast to picturebooks, these collections devote more space to the text rather than the illustrations. These books usually have an illustration every couple of pages. It is common practice in current academic discourse to make a clear distinction between an illustrated book and a picturebook.6 While the text dominates the illustrations in an illustrated book, a picturebook usually displays a well-considered balance between text and visuals. The relationship between text and illustration in picturebooks differs in manifold respects. Besides symmetrical picturebooks where text and illustration redundantly tell the same narrative, there are picturebooks where text and pictures fill each other’s gaps (“complementary picturebooks”) and picturebooks where text and illustrations seem to contradict each other, as in “ironic picturebooks”.7 Ample studies have investigated the different interactive modes of this multimodal medium to the extent of maintaining that the shift between text and visuals may alter from one doublespread to the next.8 • 9 Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, New York, Tha (...) • 10 See Vanessa Joosen, Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue Bet (...) • 11 On German illustrated books of the Grimms’ tales, see Heinz Wegehaupt, Illustrationen zu Märchen de (...) 5In the long twentieth century, picturebook makers discovered the huge potential of fairy tales, particularly the tales written by the Grimm Brothers. Due to their universality, the tales offer artists the opportunity to develop their own imaginative space, irrespective of any cultural, social or historical restraints. This increasing interest in the visual power of fairy tales stands in contrast to Bruno Bettelheim’s attitude. In The Uses of Enchantment (1976)9, he argues against illustrations, as they would interfere with the child’s imagination, thus slowing down their imaginative power.10 But this claim did not hamper book illustrators and picturebook makers at all. It is up to the individual illustrator whether they set an individual tale within a historical or contemporary setting, whether they use a naturalistic or more abstract style, or whether they connect a Grimm tale with interpictorial references to other works of art and media formats.11 • 12 See Sandra Beckett, Recycling Red Riding Hood, New York, Routledge, 2002, and Sandra Beckett, Red R (...) • 13 Elaborated studies on the illustrated versions of individual tales are scarce; however, see Rachel (...) • 14 On postmodern picturebooks, see Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.), Postmodern Picturebook (...) • 15 See on this topic, Vanessa Joosen, “Picturebooks as Adaptations of Fairy Tales”, in Bettina Kümmerl (...) 6Some illustrators recognized these possibilities early on and created their own individualistic versions of popular tales. Innumerable picturebook editions of “Little Red Riding Hood” – seemingly the most popular tale among picturebook makers around the globe12 – and other tales, such as “The Bremen Town Musicians”, “Hansel and Gretel”, “Snow White”, and “Sleeping Beauty”, pay testimony to the international breakthrough of picturebook versions of the Grimms’ tales13. The range of artistic styles used encompasses abstract design, realistic drawings, illustrations inspired by comics or films, visuals that show the impact of vanguard tendencies of the interwar period or pick up neo- avantgarde trends, even photography and caricature. The tendency to create hybrid forms and to deliberately use the qualities of different materials and formats increased with the surge of the postmodern picturebook in the 1980s and 1990s.14 In the same vein, author- illustrators drafted postmodern fairy-tale versions by creating topsy-turvy storylines, adding new segments and plots as well as exchanging gender roles or scrutinizing traditional conceptualizations of class, gender, race and age. These parodic fairy-tale revisions together with sophisticated and often tongue-in-cheek illustrations broadened the existing domain of fairy-tale adaptations and pointed to the potentially inherent critical stances of the traditional tales.15 • 16 See Sandra Beckett, Crossover Picturebooks. A Genre for All Ages, London, Routledge, 2014. 7A second strand already discernible in the first half of the twentieth century but coming to the fore after the

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