In 2012, the bicentenary year of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children and Household Tales), published 1812 and 1815 in two volumes, numerous conferences and individual lectures in Europe and North America were held that commemorated and celebrated the achievement of the Brothers Grimm. Moreover, their tales continued to be honored in 2013 and 2014. Almost all the conferences that I attended produced new insights into the significance of the Grimms’ tales from different critical perspectives. Yet, from my own standpoint, it was clear to me that many scholars and critics were not fully aware of the cultural heritage of the Grimms’ folk and fairy tales and their impact throughout the world. Therefore, in the talks that I delivered, I concentrated on the different legacies of the Grimms’ tales. In my opinion, there are many legacies to consider, not just one. My goal was to test my ideas at the conferences, learn from the critical reception, and then revise my talks after a year to address the question of the legacies of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen in greater depth.
Central to my efforts was the question: Did the Grimms consciously begin collecting folk and fairy tales with the intention of bequeathing a legacy that would be cultivated in German-speaking principalities? Related to this question are others such as: What exactly is a legacy? How have the Grimms’ tales as legacy been received and honored in Germany up to the present? How have the tales been received as legacies in other countries and regions of the world? As I have stated, it is quite clear that there is more than one legacy. Moreover, it is also clear that the Grimms’ intentions were different from the reception and impact that the tales have had, not only in Germany, but also in other parts of the world. And this difference is indeed great.
To give one example: It is impossible in the twenty-first century to think of all the Walt Disney adaptations of fairy tales and their worldwide popularity without the legacy of the Brothers Grimm. In fact, it is, in part thanks to the Disney corporation, impossible to think about the dissemination of fairy tales throughout the world without taking into account the Grimms’ collection of tales, even though most of the Grimms’ stories were not strictly speaking fairy tales, nor were they intended for children. Through Disney, the Grimms’ name has become a household name, a trademark, and a designator in general for fairy tales that are allegedly “appropriate” for children. More than any author or collector of fairy tales, including Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimms are totally associated with the fairy-tale genre, and their tales, which have been translated into 150 languages, have seeped into the conscious and subconscious popular memory of people throughout the world.
Some of the ramifications of the Grimms’ worldwide influence have been carefully analyzed in a recent book, Grimms’ Tales around the Globe: The Dynamics of Their International Reception (2014) edited by Vanessa Joosen and Gillian Lathey. However, it is, of course, impossible to study the impact of the Grimms’ tales in the cultural heritage of all the countries in which they have had an important reception. Therefore, my present study focuses primarily on the role that the Grimms’ tales have played in German-speaking and English-speaking countries. My hope is that my work might pave the way for similar studies about the reception of the Grimms’ tales as a legacy in other countries.
Most of the essays in my book were first composed as talks that I held at various conferences and universities in 2012 and 2013. The introduction, “The Vibrant Body of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales, Which Do Not Belong to the Grimms,” discusses how the Grimms began developing the corpus of their tales at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the purpose of preserving an ancient tradition of storytelling. The Brothers were among the first scholars to recall and establish the historical tradition of “authentic” folk tales that stemmed from oral storytelling. In the course of their research from 1806 until their deaths, Wilhelm in 1859, and Jacob in 1863, they published seven large editions and ten small editions of folk and fairy tales along with separate volumes of notes that were constantly changed and edited. These are the books that form the body of their work on folk and fairy tales, but it is a live and vibrant body that consists of other books of legends and tales that they collected, edited, and published. In addition, one must take into consideration the 150 or more translations and the Grimms’ manuscripts such as the Ölenberg manuscript of 1810 and their posthumous papers. What then, I ask, is the corpus that they left behind them? How are we to appraise the neverending and seemingly eternal reproduction of their tales?
In chapter one, “German Popular Stories as Revolutionary Book,” I propose that the Grimms’ legacy was already undergoing a change during their lifetime, and this change was brought about directly by the influence of a young British lawyer. One of the fascinating aspects of their legacy in English-speaking countries is that the first so-called translation, German Popular Stories, by Edgar Taylor, published in 1823 and 1826 in two volumes, generated three major “myths”: (1) that the tales were primarily intended for children (which they weren’t); (2) that the Grimms themselves collected the tales from peasants, represented by the image of an ideal peasant woman, whom Taylor called Gammer Grethel; (3) that the tales were German (which they aren’t). The great success of Taylor’s books with illustrations by the famous caricaturist, George Cruikshank, stimulated the Brothers, especially Wilhelm, to change the format of their tales so that they might find a greater resonance among young readers primarily from middle-class families in German-speaking principalities.
Chapter two, “Hyping the Grimms’ Fairy Tales,” explores Taylor’s influence in greater depth to examine how, without realizing it, the Brothers began embellishing and marketing their tales to seek a greater reading public. There was an overt change in policy that was initiated in 1825, when they decided to publish their Small Edition of fifty tales with illustrations by their brother Ludwig Grimm. It was not a question of money and profit, but the Grimms created more hyperbolic paratexts to their editions with the hope that German folk culture would gain the respect that it deserved. At the same time, they also maintained their scholarly philological approach. However, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries this marketing strategy also led to a trivialization if not banalization of the tales. So in this chapter, I discuss the ramifications of hyping the Grimms’ tales in today’s hyperglobalized cultures.
One of the results of the hyping is explored in chapter three, “Americanization of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Twists and Turns of History,” in which I demonstrate that the Grimms’ tales have been so thoroughly Americanized that Americans (and people in other countries) are more liable to think that Disney created the Grimms’ tales. There is very little information in the United States about the Grimms’ lives and their scholarly project of salvaging relics from the past. Their image and their tales have been distorted in the popular memory of Americans, and yet there have been some interesting Americanized innovations and appropriations of their tales that lend them new meanings in the twenty-first century.
Although Germans respond to the Grimms’ tales much differently from Americans, there is still a noticeable similarity in the manner in which they have received the tales since 1945. Chapter four, “Two Hundred Years after Once Upon a Time: The Legacy of the Brothers Grimm and Their Tales in Germany,” reveals that, even in Germany, there is a tendency either to transform the Grimms’ tales into kitsch or to lionize them. While there was a stronger sense of nationalism among the readers of and listeners to the Grimms’ tales in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, a sense that the Grimms had contributed to a German national identity, World War II, and the Nazi appropriation of German culture have led to a more nuanced appreciation of the Grimms’ tales. German scholars have carefully analyzed this reception history, and therefore, I focus primarily on literary and filmic adaptations of the tales in the twenty-first century and also discuss a few recent scholarly studies that shed new light on the Grimms’ legacy.
In chapter five, “How Superheroes Made Their Way into the World of Fairy Tales: The Appeal of Cooperation and Collective Action from the Greek Myths to the Grimms’ Tales and Beyond,” I deal with an aspect of the tales that has made them memetically relevant in countries throughout the world from the Greco-Roman period to the present. I trace different variants of a particular tale type, “The Extraordinary Companions” (ATU 513), to understand how and why collective action forms the basis of hundreds if not thousands of stories. Greek gods, Japanese samurai, folk heroes, and superheroes share a basic purpose that connects them in remarkable international relationships and networks. I argue that if a particular international tale type such as the Grimms’ “How Six Made Their Way in the World” sticks in people’s memories throughout the world, there should be an evolutionary explanation for this relevance, and here I endeavor to connect the tale to our innate human disposition for cooperation.
Chapter six, “The Grimmness of Contemporary Fairy Tales: Exploring the Legacy of the Brothers Grimm in the Twenty-First Century,” is a critique of the manner in which numerous contemporary English-speaking writers and artists have adapted the Grimms’ tales. There is, of course, no right way to rewrite the Grimm’s tales, but I maintain that one can discern whether the Grimms’ legacy is abused by writers, artists, and filmmakers. Basically I ask the questions: What is an authentic adaptation? Who does and who doesn’t take the Grimms’ tales seriously? Have the Grimms’ tales become merchandise? Is it possible to cultivate a genuine legacy when the Grimms made their legacy somewhat ambivalent?
The epilogue, “A Curious Legacy: Ernst Bloch’s Enlightened View of the Fairy Tale and Utopian Longing,” concludes this book with a philosophical discussion about the utopian quality of the Grimms’ tales and what role utopian longing plays in the legacy and tradition of the Grimms’ tales, and is an essential element in the magic appeal of fairy tales in general. Here I recount an interview about fairy tales that Bloch, the great German philosopher of hope, had with Theodor Adorno, the most astute member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Both were familiar with the Grimms’ tales, and ironically, though they were often at odds with one another in their writing about aesthetics and politics, they come to more or less the same conclusion in this conversation and reinforce some of the underlying notions that the Grimms had as they began to collect their tales some two hundred years ago.
As I have stated earlier, the essays in this book were first delivered in different versions as talks at Harvard University, Lisbon University, the University of Ghent, Kingston University, the University of Chichester, the Folklore Society (London), the Goethe Institute (Chicago), Miami University (Ohio), Göttingen University, the University of Winnipeg, and Homerton College (Cambridge University). Thanks to the invitations by colleagues from these institutions, I was able to share and discuss my ideas with different audiences of students, professors, and people interested in the Grimms, and thanks to their suggestions and critical responses, I altered and modified the talks as I began to transform them later into essays. At times I have been compelled to repeat information that I present in one chapter in another. I have endeavored to keep this repetition to a minimum, but sometimes it is unavoidable because the theses of the original talks depended on some of the same basic material.
Numerous friends and scholars have made suggestions that have helped me reevaluate my ideas, and they have also provided me with important information and materials. I should therefore like to express my gratitude to Maria Tatar, Francisco Vaz da Silva, Vanessa Joosen, Stijn Praet, Caroline Oates, Bill Gray, Andrew Teverson, Marina Warner, Irmi Maunu-Kocian, Wolfgang Mieder, Todd Cesaratto, Ulrich Marzolph, Pauline Greenhill, Karin Kukkonen, Morag Styles, and Maria Nikolajeva. In addition, I have benefited greatly from conversations and correspondence with Cristina Bacchilega, Sadhana Naithani, Don Haase, Pat Ryan, Mike Wilson, Mick Gowar, and David Hopkin. At the beginning of this project I was given wise counsel and encouragement by Alison MacKeen, and when Alison left Princeton, Anne Savarese graciously and seamlessly stepped in to become my editor and has been an enormous help to me. Sara Lerner has waved her magic wand as usual to make sure the production of the book went as smoothly as possible, while Jennifer Harris has provided careful and insightful copy-editing. Last but not least, I want to thank my wife, Carol Dines, who has been a great inspiration throughout the past thirty years.