Hans-Jörg Uther’s Handbuch zu den “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” der Brüder Grimm: Enstehung, Wirkung, Interpretation (Handbook of the Grimm Brothers’ “Children’s and Household Tales”: Origin, Impact, Interpretation) is a work of reference dealing with the fairytales and other narratives that appear, or have appeared, in the Grimms’ extremely influential collection, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (hereafter KHM). Uther is a member of the editorial staff of the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, the author of the latest revision of the tale-type index [1], and the editor of several scholarly editions of the KHM. No scholar is more qualified to produce a well-rounded and up-to-date companion to the Grimms’ tales.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm developed an interest in folksongs, folktales, and legends, and began seeking out early literary evidence for them as well as collecting tales from acquaintances. In 1812-13 the first two volumes of their KHM appeared, and a volume of commentary followed much later (1822). By 1816 translations of tales from the KHM into other languages were appearing. Presently the brothers produced a revised edition (1819), modifying some tales, excising others, and adding new ones. The Large Edition with its 200 tales and ten religious legends appeared in 1837, answering to the previously published Small Edition (1825) with its selection of fifty tales, and a revised edition of the commentary came out in 1856. As edition succeeded edition, Wilhelm never ceased rewriting the texts. In short, the publication history of the collection and of the individual tales is quite complex. The KHM was a constantly evolving project.
In the present work Uther presents individual, encyclopedia-style entries for the 200 tales and ten religious legends (Kinderlegenden) of the Large Edition of the KHM, in their conventional sequence. Entries follow for another set of nearly fifty narratives that once appeared in the KHM but for one reason or another were excised. The volume concludes with a succinct essay on the history of the KHM, a bibliography, and several indices.
The entries on the individual tales treat such matters as publication history, folkloric classification, sources, literary history, interpretation, and illustration, concluding with a select bibliography. To illustrate, I summarize here the six pages devoted to Little Red Riding Hood. Rotkäppchen, “Little Red Cap (or Hood),” is tale no. 26 in KHM, appearing first in the original edition (1812); it is also found as no. 17 in the Small Edition (1825). Typologically it is ATU 333.
The KHM gives two versions of Little Red Riding Hood, one collected from Johanna Hassenpflug and the other from Marie Hassenpflug. The former shows an innocent young girl who comes into danger because she does not observe her mother’s advice; her rescue comes about by external agency. In contrast, the latter version features a child who masters the threatening situation. She is independent, mistrusts the wolf, and brings the animal to its death. The first version goes back indirectly to Charles Perrault’s Le petit chaperon rouge (1697). In Perrault the wolf is a sort of male seducer who urges Little Red Riding Hood to climb into bed with him. The moral with which the tale ends stresses the need for girls to guard themselves against wolves of every sort. A bilingual edition of Perrault’s tales in French and German was published in 1761, and playwright Ludwig Tieck drew upon Perrault’s version for a tragedy in verse-form, Life and Death of Little Red-Cap (1800). Tieck toned down the ending of the French literary version and also introduced the figure of a hunter who rescues the girl and dispatches the wolf. Overall, German versions foreground aspects of the tale that have to do with child-rearing such as obedience to one’s mother and dealing with strangers; anything suggestive of sexuality, as in Perrault, is avoided.
For several centuries Little Red Riding Hood has ranked very high internationally among the most favored folktales. It appears in almost all fairytale anthologies and has received treatment in the theater, film, radio, TV, cartoons, and the comics. This frequent recycling, including pornographic treatments, testifies to its adaptability.
The tale is also among the most interpreted of folktales. Whereas nineteenth-century researchers saw features of astral mythology, recent scholars view it as a parable of rape or as having to do with female initiation. Ancient and medieval sources have been searched for clues regarding the heroine’s head-covering and its color: the cap is a sign of menstruation, red symbolizes blood, etc. For his part, Wilhelm Grimm jotted down in the margin of a book that Little Red Riding Hood “must originally be something elfish.”
Ludwig Grimm, who illustrated the Small Edition of KHM, selected Little Red Riding Hood as one of seven tales for visual treatment. He portrays the heroine opening the bed-curtain and discovering in bed the wolf dressed as grandmother, a scene answering to the toned-down sexuality of the KHM version. Among the most influential and most reprinted illustrations is one by Gustave Doré for an edition of Perrault (1862). The artist shows a naïve and innocent girl looking the wolf straight in the eyes. Recent years have seen the potential sexuality treated more and more freely.
Uther’s handbook is a fine contribution to the scholarly literature on the KHM and will be a handy addition to the folk-narrative scholar’s toolbox.
[1] Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, 3 vols., FFC 284-286 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004), abbreviated ATU.
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[Review length: 904 words • Review posted on December 3, 2008]