Grimms, Hoffmann, and Irving

Dramatic irony in “Rip Van Winkle”

Dramatic irony: the reader understands something about a character’s situation that the character does not yet understand.

Rip does not understand some of the things he sees, but the reader does:

• The flag with “stars and stripes”
• The pole with “a red nightcap” on top: a liberty pole, a symbol of the Revolution
• The new name of the inn: “The Union Hotel”
• The picture of King George, now labeled “GENERAL WASHINGTON”
• “members of Congress,” “heroes of seventy-six”

The old village and the new village

• The Revolution changed the people as well as the politics.
• Before: calm (“phlegm”) and sleepy. The people are subjects of the king, so they don’t make public decisions.
• Now: “busy, bustling, disputatious.” The people are citizens of the republic, so they must make public decisions.
• “Drowsy” connects the old village to Rip due to his idleness.

Prophecy in “The Story of the Hard Nut”

The horoscope says how to cure Princess Perlipat:

• She must eat the kernel of the nut Krakatuk.
• A young man who has never shaved and never worn boots must crack the nut.
• He must give her the kernel with his eyes closed.
• He must then take seven steps backward and not stumble.

It’s a set of instructions, almost like a recipe.

Contrast with other prophecies like Sophocles’s Oedipus the King

• Prophecy: Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother.
• By trying to escape the prophecy, the characters in Oedipus fulfill it.
• In Hoffmann, the characters try to follow the prophecy, but they mess it up.

“Away with that nasty Nutcracker!”

• She rejects him because he is ugly.
• But a moment before, she was just as ugly as he now is, so she’s a hypocrite.
• Moreover, Drosselmeier became ugly because he cured her. She is not grateful.
• In most fairy tales, the hero who lifts the curse marries the princess.
  • This story undercuts that expectation.

Older genres that feed into fantasy

Connections from these genres to modern fantasy

• Like folk heroes, fantasy characters are reimagined by readers in other scenarios
  • e.g., fan fiction and memes
• Unlike folktales, modern fantasy is typically not related from one speaker to another based on their memory of the story
• Modern fantasy inherits a lot of its distinctive features (e.g., dragons, wizards) from fairy tales
• Transmogrification (especially from human to animal or vice versa) features in many of these stories
• These older genres are all much shorter. They are designed to be shared verbally (e.g., as a bedtime story or after-dinner entertainment)

“Unauthored” tales and literary fairy tales

• “What is an author?” is a complicated question¹
  • Everyone here has written an email. But not all of us are “authors.”
• Folktales and fairytales seem like they don’t have authors. They can’t be attributed to an author in the way that Tolkien is the author of Lord of the Rings.
• The Brothers Grimm describe themselves as collectors of tales, not authors.
• Literary fairy tales, by contrast, have a known author who invents a new story in the old style (e.g., Hoffmann).
• But this is not a clean distinction. An “unauthored” tale has many authors. An authored tale borrows pieces from other authors.
  • e.g., Irving took the plot of “Rip Van Winkle” from a folktale, “Peter Klaus the Goatherd.”

Fantasy frames in these stories

• “The Story of the Hard Nut” is a story told to a child inside of a longer story, Nutcracker and Mouse King (1816).
• “Rip Van Winkle” supposedly comes from the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, a dead historian of Dutch New York

Frame narratives make the fantastic plausible

• The fantastic is by definition implausible or impossible.
• Frame narratives authorize stories by saying that they are not merely the invention of the named author.
• For example, the “Note” at the end of “Rip:”

The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvellous events and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authenticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle myself, who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice, and signed with a cross, in the justice’s own handwriting. The story, therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. “D. K.”

Fiction vs. nonfiction

• Fiction vs. nonfiction is a surprisingly recent distinction
• Early novels like Don Quixote (1605) and Robinson Crusoe (1719) present themselves as if they were true.
• Legends like the stories of King Arthur are similarly ambiguous.
• In Anglophone literature, only by the mid-1700s was the distinction beginning to be used.²

Frame narratives and truth

• Frame narratives help authors use magic and the impossible without inviting too much skepticism from the reader.
• The author tells a tale first told by another
  • Even if they invented that other writer, as Irving invented Knickerbocker
• Fantasy contains extraordinary and unverifiable events. But the author of a tale with a frame narrative does not claim to have witnessed them.

Recurring features

There are rules, but the rules are not fully explained

• Nobody in these stories asks how the magic works. The characters accept it, including the astronomer who reads Perlipat’s horoscope.
• But the rules are enforced: The first king deceives Hans, and his daughter suffers for it. Drosselmeier stumbles on his seventh step and is cursed.
• Prophecy and fate also tell the reader that events in this world have a pattern.
• They foreshadow things to come, both good (marriage) and bad (marrying your mother).

Transformation and hybrids

• A hybrid is two things at the same time. Hans is a hedgehog above the waist and a boy below it.
• Transformations like this ask whether a person’s essence is tied to their body
• Characters usually answer yes even when the stories suggest the moral answer is no. Hans’s father is ashamed of him. Perlipat rejects Drosselmeier.

Olden times and monarchy

• “Hans-My-Hedgehog” and “The Hard Nut” take place in kingdoms.
• The king rules by decree, and those decrees set the plot in motion. Kings offer marriage to their daughters as a reward.
• “Rip Van Winkle” begins under a king and ends in a republic. It is the only one of the three stories in which the olden times end.
  • But Rip is better suited to the olden times.

Stories for children?

• The Grimms’ book is called Children’s and Household Tales.
• Hoffmann’s tale is told to a child in the frame narrative.
• But both of these stories for children have some violence.
• Irving wrote for adult readers.
• “For children” describes a style more than an audience: short, simple, and clear about good and evil.

Events without interiority

• Similar to what we saw in Paper Girls, we get the exterior world (actions, speech) without the interior world (thoughts, feelings).
• The Grimms and Hoffmann tell us what characters do, but rarely tell us what they think.
  • Hans-My-Hedgehog was surely hurt by his father’s wish that he would die, but the reader has to make that inference.
• To the extent that we get “thoughts,” they are narrated:

“The king was in a terrible fury that anybody should ever think of making a nutcracker his son-in-law…”

Some interiority

Irving gives Rip more interiority than either Hoffmann or the Grimms give their characters, but even this usually happens in dialogue. When Rip sees his son after waking up, he says,

“I’m not myself—I’m somebody else—that’s me yonder—no—that’s somebody else, got into my shoes—I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am!”

Free indirect speech

Free indirect speech is a technique used to represent interiority, where a character’s thoughts are narrated rather than spoken without explicit markers like “he said” or “he thought.” Here’s Rip’s response to seeing his son rewritten using free indirect speech:

Who was he? Heaven only knew; for he was sure he did not. He was not himself; he was somebody else. That was he, yonder, leaning against the tree. No! that was somebody else, who had got into his shoes. He had been himself last night, sure enough; but then he had fallen asleep on the mountain, and they had changed his gun, and everything was changed, and he was changed, and how, in the name of wonder, was a man to tell what his name was, or who he was? Something to this effect he stammered out to the company, being fairly at his wit’s end.

Parataxis

• Fairy tales and fables are often written in a paratactic style, which joins many simple statements together.
• People often tell stories paratactically when they are talking: “And then… And then… And then… And then…”
• Parataxis gives events, but often omits explanations or reasons.

Now it happened that another king came this way with his servants and messengers. He too got lost and did not know the way back home because the forest was so large. He too heard the beautiful music from afar, and asked one of his messengers to go and see what it was and where it was coming from. The messenger ran to the tree where he saw Hans-My-Hedgehog astride the cock-rooster.

Hypotaxis

• Hypotaxis is the antonym of parataxis.
• Hypotactic style uses subordinate clauses, relative pronouns, and other complex structures
• Here is an example from “Rip:”

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle.

You could rewrite this sentence paratactically like so:

At that time, that country was yet a province of Great Britain. In that country, there was a village. And in that village, there stood a house. To tell the precise truth, this house was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten. Yet in that house there lived a simple, good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van Winkle.

Comparing the writing styles of Hoffmann and Irving

Sexism

“Rip Van Winkle”

• Dame Van Winkle has no first name, and apparently only complains.
• The news of her death is “a drop of comfort” to Rip.
• She does the work that Rip does not.
• Rip is the protagonist despite being a bad husband.

“The Story of the Hard Nut”

• The king promises Perlipat as a prize.
• People judge her by her beauty.
• Perlipat judges Drosselmeier in the same way.
• She does not learn from her experience.

“Hans-My-Hedgehog”

• Two kings promise the “first thing that greets them” as payment to Hans. Their daughters are “the first thing.”
• When Hans returns as a human, he goes to his father. His mother is not mentioned.

For Tuesday

• “Transformation” by Mary Shelley (BBCF 41–50)
• “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” by Charles Dickens (BBCF 61–67)
• “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti (BBCF 188–195)