Andersen’s beautifully clueless fairy tales

Abstract

The article reviews the recently reprinted Czech monograph Slavíci, mořské víly a bolavé zuby: Pohádky H. Ch. Andersena: mezi romantismem a modernitou (Nightingales, Mermaids and Toothaches: Andersen’s Fairy Tales between Romanticism and Modernity) by Helena Březinová. By outlining the Czech context of research in the field of children’s literature and analyzing Březinová’s book, the review shows the substantial contribution of the publication for the Czech speaking audience. Březinová carefully analyzes several examples of Andersen’s work to convincingly show its ambiguous, disturbing potential, which was lost in the vast majority of Czech retellings and adaptations. Consequently, Andersen’s work is commonly perceived as purely children’s literature in the Czech context. Březinová questions this notion by thoroughly uncovering Andersen’s subtle play with genre norms and readers’ expectations on multiple text layers. Březinová’s book is intended not only for literary experts, but also for a wide audience of readers with her eloquent and witty writing. Her primary focus is a narratological analysis, however, she makes good use of translation studies, literary history, linguistics, and philosophy as well. In her close readings, she shows Andersen’s simple, yet highly sophisticated stories as rooted in romanticism but also anticipatory of modernist themes such as the crisis of language and subject.