Die Rache roher Texte. Treue zum Unsinn in den Kinder- und Hausmärchen Jacob und Wilhelm Grimms

Abstract

This essay focuses on two different but nonetheless interdependent phenomena: nonsense and revenge as hitherto underappreciated aspects of the original context of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen. In Jacob Grimm’s “Sammelaufruf zur Mitarbeit” of 1811, nonsense as creative surplus serves as an explicit reminder of the oral tradition. Nonsense in this form, however, is unrelated to the artistic nonsense found in German Romantic Kunstmärchen. In the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, revenge is an implicit and nonsense-utilizing strategy that acts on various levels: on the meta-level, nonsense serves as a vehicle for revenge directed at the displacement of the oral by the written form, as revealed in the earliest version of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1810). Closer analysis of the cumulative-tale genre further reveals that revenge finds expression in the combination of the chain-narrative form and linguistic repetition, which in turn supplants reason and sense with escalation and excess. (MK; in German)