130099 PS Literary Cross-Currents (PS): The Romantic Fairytale II: Essence (1799 to 2015) (2016S)

The objective of this course is to provide students with a thorough analysis of the Romantic Kunstmärchen. Our readings will explore the social and historical context that gave rise to this particular form of literary fairytale as an effective means of discourse and dissent from within and beyond the Romantic period. Emphasis will be placed on the Romantic protagonist and the inward development of the self-contained world, ‘a state of mind in which all things are possible’.
This course explores the formative essence of the Romantic Fairytale. With reference to the social, historical and, in particular, the artistic context from within which these tales were composed, our objective is to consider the specific conditions that gave rise to the creation of ‘a new and far more ambitious variety of literary fairy tale’, one that became ‘the very centrepiece of Romantic literary theory’. Our aim is to interpret these taleswhich combine simplicity of tone with an intricate web of allusionthrough the ‘secondary world’ of faërie, a self-contained realm in which the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ is less significant than the frame of mind through which the known and the unknown is perceived. ‘Madness’ is a close companion to our study. The marrow of these tales stretch the boundaries of human experience while forcing the reader to the precipice of codified perception; this course seeks to reclaim the stilled voice of the individual who sees beyond that precipice. These fairytales were never intended for children or fools; they are for those who never quite fit the image of what others would have them be.
With a point of origin in German Romanticism and "The Naked Saint" of Wilhelm Heinrich Wakenroder’s Phantasien über die Kunst für Freunde der Kunst (1799), our survey will lead through the folktale collections of the early nineteenth century and branch off into their direct literary descendant ­ the true Kunstmärchen, an art form far removed from the confections of the early eighteenth century that colour our collective rendering of what a 'fairytale' is and should be. The readings in this course are of an altogether different thread. Milton’s 'The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’ pervades, and may in part explain why 'the ability to turn out a finely crafted fairy tale was considered a mark of the highest literary accomplishment’ throughout the nineteenth century. The craft is of the soul: the foremost authors of the Kunstmärchen did not dabble in diversions or mere trifles but framed a complex artistic vision ‘that expresses something essential about the nature of the real world’. The 'happy-ending' is not of these tales.
Our discussion will encompass two centuries of the genre. Music and art relevant to time and subject will accompany the readings and complement our understanding of the manner in which ‘respectable’ society at once embraced and distanced itself from the faëried subversion of those who dared to grasp ‘a state of mind in which all things were possible’. Blinded as a boy yet still able to perceive, Marvel’s Daredevil concludes our analysis of the protagonist who inhabits our pictorial consciousness of the Romantic Fairytale.