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Back to lenberg: An Intertextual

Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Retellings
and the Sociohistorical Study of the
Grimm Tales

Introduction
In discussions of fairy-tale retellings, the concept of intertextuality is often introduced to explain the relationship between a retelling and the traditional
fairy tale(s) to which it refers.1 Although the notion of intertextuality was developed by scholars such as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, and Grard Genette
as a far more expansive network of verbal and even nonverbal texts, it is conventionally employed in literary studies to analyze the relationships and dynamics between fictional texts only. If we adopt a broader concept of intertextuality, one that considers not only fictional but also nonfictional pre-texts, a
whole new intertextual dimension becomes accessible. For fairy-tale studies,
such an approach offers valuable possibilities, especially when it comes to the
interaction between fairy tales and the critical and theoretical discourses that
have the fairy tale as their subject. Various thematic overlaps and mutual concerns can be perceived between fairy-tale retellings and feminist, psychoanalytic, and Marxist criticism so that fairy-tale criticism appears as a relevant intertext for the retellings, and vice versa.2 In this essay I will explore the
intertextual dialogue between a selection of fairy-tale retellings from Dutch,
Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2010), pp. 99115. Copyright 2010 by
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201.

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German, and English writers and the sociohistorical study of the Grimm
brothers fairy tales. I will demonstrate how certain retellings have helped to
undermine the Grimms authority as truthful and reliable folktale collectors,
moving on to analyze in more detail retellings that seek an alliance with criticism
on the oral tradition underpinning the Grimm collection.

In Search of the Truth

As the best-known collection of fairy tales worldwide, Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimms Kinder- und Hausmrchen (Childrens and Household Tales) has been a
popular topic of research. In the course of the twentieth century the editorial
process of the Brothers Grimm came under discussion at various times and in
various contexts. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the first academic
publications had already appeared on the editions of Die Kinder- und
Hausmrchen, and the question of editorial changes remained on the agenda
throughout the century.3 In 1975 Heinz Rlleke sparked new interest in the
collections genesis when he published Die lteste Mrchensammlung der Brder
Grimm, an annotated edition of the lenberg manuscript from 1810, printed
next to the tales as they appeared in the first published edition from 1812.
This manuscript contains a handful of earlier versions of the Grimm tales as
the Grimms had assembled them for their contemporary Clemens Brentano.
The manuscript and subsequent published editions of the tales were the topic
of further research by scholars such as Siegfried Neumann, Eric Hulsens, John
Ellis, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Klaus Doderer, Wilhelm Solms, Jack Zipes, and
Maria Tatar. Writing in 1983, Jack Zipes states that [u]ntil the 1970s it was
generally assumed that the Brothers Grimm collected their oral folktales
mainly from peasants and day laborers and that they merely altered and refined the tales while remaining true to their perspective and meaning. Both assumptions proved to be false (Subversion 61). A substantial number of articles
and books have addressed the issue of whether the Brothers Grimm merely
refined the oral versions they had collected or whether they (un)consciously
manipulated them in favor of their own ideology and literary taste. Although
Zipes claims that the Grimms did change the meaning of the oral folktales, he
stresses that their intentions were honorable (61) and that there is no evidence to indicate that the Grimms consciously sought to dupe German readers
and feed them lies about the German past (Brothers Grimm 110). He refers
here to the impression that the Brothers Grimm created of their tales being
German stories when several of the best-known tales in their collection have
older variants from Italy and France. Moreover, Zipes emphasizes, the
Grimms were totally conscious and open about their endeavors to make their
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ily, their sense of a folk aesthetic, and their political ideas in the tales (112).
Heinz Rlleke is more skeptical about this alleged openness: They have only
remained silent with regard to these issues, ambiguously silent, as the reception shows (Quellen und Studien 36).4 More radical and less accepted in academic circles is John Elliss view that the Grimms deliberately, persistently,
and completely misrepresented the status of their tales and made claims for
them which they knew to be quite false (viii). Part of the problem in verifying
this process is that the notes and manuscript versions of these other variants
have not been preserved and that the oral tradition from which the Brothers
Grimm supposedly drew their tales has long been beyond reach. Whether or
not the Grimms intentions were honorable, comparisons between the various
editions of Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen have invariably come to the conclusion that the brothers, especially Wilhelm, substantially altered the content
and style of the tales. It is thus problematic to read the Grimm stories as the
authentic rendition of an oral tradition.
The debate on the editorial changes in the Grimm collection proved inspirational for various critics, and related opinions and ideas also surface in some
retellings. This is not to say that these authors have necessarily read fairy-tale
scholarship, or that they apply theories or concepts in the same way as scholars. In the intertextual dialogue between fairy-tale retellings and literary criticism, it is usually difficult to trace where an idea appeared first or whether
ideas that occur on similar occasions were actually borrowed from each
other. According to Maria Nikolajeva, the question of who has borrowed the
idea from whom is in fact totally uninteresting to intertextual analysis (183).
It is more valuable to focus instead on the different use that authors and critics
make of the same idea. Indeed, although several fairy-tale retellings can be intertextually linked to debates on the Grimm editions, they do so within a fictional context, and their assertions about the Grimms are often humorous and
ambivalent. The alterations made by the Grimms, for example, are frequently
called upon in fairy-tale retellings to explain their own raison dtre. Not surprisingly, most of these lack the nuance of the scholarly debates, and the
brothers are usually not given the benefit of the doubt with regard to their
honorable intentions. In an attempt to lure in the reader, the narrators of these
tales claim to tell a more accurate version of the fairy tale, to report what really
happened. Such fictional claims can be found in titles by Louise Murphy (The
True Story of Hansel and Gretel), Bruce Bennett (The True Story of Snow
White), Liya Lev Oertel (The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty), and Jon Scieszka
(The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!), as well as in the titles and introductions
of countless other retellings.5 Tomi Ungerer, for example, uses such a truth
motif to catch the interest of his readership in the first lines of Little Red Riding
Hood (1975):
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The little girl in red was called . . . yes . . . youve already guessed it,
she was called Little Red Riding Hood. But it was not the Little Red
Riding Hood that you may have read about before. No. The Little Red
Riding Hood here is the real, true Little Red Riding Hood, not the one
from that stupid fairy tale, and this story is, I bet you a hundred to
one, its truthful history. (87)6
Rather than unearthing the true account of Red Riding Hood, should such a
version exist at all, Ungerer writes a parody of the traditional version. Most
retellings that contain such a fictional claim for truth do the same. In 1982,
however, the Dutch critic Nel Teeuwen-Opheij wrote about Ungerer: In the
collection Fairy Tales the original given is not distorted. Sometimes evenas
in the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hoodit is brought back further to its
original form, before the Brothers Grimm adapted it (108).7 Although this reviewer seems to be aware of the critical views on the genesis of Die Kinder- und
Hausmrchen, she confuses the critical debate with the literary convention of
playfully addressing the issue of truth.
Such confusion is unlikely to happen with the high number of retellings
in which the claim for truth is formulated by a fairy-tale character who pretends to set the record straight. Jaak Dreesens version of Tom Thumb
(2002), for instance, begins with such a reference to the Brothers Grimm:
Little Thumbling.
Call me Thumb.
I am old and sick, and I want to tell my story.
It will be, I promise, grimmer than that dull narrative that was
launched by two German brothers. They mentioned a small house in
the forest, a crone and a giant, and seven-league boots with which
the giant crossed the land, looking for me and my six brothers. Nonsense! (Dreesen 46)8
As with Ungerer, the claim for truth is accompanied by an antiauthoritarian attack against the Grimms version (that stupid fairy tale / that dull narrative). What these texts share with critics such as John Ellis is the fact that they
discredit the Brothers Grimm as truthful mediators of either a fictionally true
course of events or an oral tradition. That in Dreesens tale it is a fictional character who sets the record straight, and not a scholar, opens up the possibility
for the retelling to be read not only as a parody of Tom Thumb, but also of
Elliss critique of the Brothers Grimm.
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An author who reflects more extensively on the Brothers Grimms editorial

process is Roald Dahl (1989). He includes an autoreflexive comment in the
scene where Gretel shoves the witch into the oven.
The Brothers Grimm who wrote this story
Made it a thousand times more gory.
Ive taken out the foulest scene
In order that you wont turn green. [ . . . ]
It might have been okay, who knows,
If thered been humour in the prose.
Did I say humour? Wilhelm Grimm?
Theres not a scrap of it in him.
(Rhyme Stew 63)
By holding Wilhelm responsible for the cruel content and lack of humor, Dahl
displays an awareness of popular theories regarding the genesis of the Grimm
collection. In academic discussions Wilhelm was indeed identified as the most
zealous editor and so the main target of critique.
In these retellings, the concept of truth becomes a shifting signifier that
changes meaning every time it is used by a new narrator. This strengthens the
impression that these stories deny the authority of any text, celebrating instead
the possibility of multiple versions and truths. In problematizing the idea of one
fixed fairy tale, retellings that make a fictional claim for truth can thus be placed
in what Linda Hutcheon calls the project of postmodernism: The challenging
of certainty, the asking of questions, the revealing of fiction-making where we
might have once accepted the existence of some absolute truththis is the
project of postmodernism (48). As Elizabeth Wanning Harries argues: [R]ecent
storytellers tend to stress the subjective unreliability of their narrators. Each new
tale is only one version of the many possible versions. They encourage to see the
new retelling as a version, as one, but not the only, way to tell a tale (102). By deduction, the retellingssometimes directly, sometimes indirectlymake an appeal to their readers to consider every fairy tale as a versionin particular, the
canonized ones that they may once have considered true and authentic.

Recovering the Oral Tradition

By problematizing the concepts of truth and authorship, Ungerer, Dreesen,
and Dahl playfully break with the mythic status of the Grimm tales and legitimize their own right to adapt the stories. Few readers will consider their
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rewritings as more truthful or authentic than the tales in Die Kinder- und
Hausmrchen. Yet, in the wake of the critical debate on the Grimms editions,
other authors have turned to the older and supposedly more authentic versions in the lenberg manuscript. Without referring to the manuscript explicitly in the literary text itself, these retellings return to it implicitly through intertextual links with the older versions. The authors sometimes reflect on this
process in peritextual material (prefaces or interviews).
A first strategy of return to the older variants is via the undoing of the
changes that occur in the Grimm editions after 1810. For example, several influential critics, including Bruno Bettelheim and Heinz Rlleke, have addressed
the Grimms replacement of biological mothers with stepmothers in the second
edition of Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen (1819). In many retellings, stepmothers
are reconverted into biological mothers. An early example is Otto Gmelins
retelling of Hansel and Gretel (1978). He explains his adaptation as follows:
Our variant printed above goes back to those before Grimm. [ . . . ] At the
same time the closeness to folklore was a refusal of the Biedermeier and often
tarted up Grimm fairy-tale treasure as it is still run-of-the-mill in many records
and radio broadcasts (Bses 131).9 His adaptation of The Frog Prince, most
notably the deletion of the king and the change in the female protagonists attitude toward the frog, is likewise informed by his knowledge of earlier (printed)
versions of the Grimm tales. Moreover, Gmelin, like most philological scholars,
distinguishes here between the attitudes of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm regarding
the adaptation of the oral material (Tapfere Mdchen 6667).
The lenberg manuscript is mentioned as a source of inspiration in the
peritextual material of several retellings of Snow White, most notably those
by Tom Naegels, Angela Carter, and Wim Hofman. These three authors incorporate longer passages from earlier versions. In Spiegelliegeltje, for instance,
Naegels adds a paragraph from the lenberg manuscript that is not included
in the 1812 printed edition of the Grimm tale.10 When the mother tells the tale
to her daughter, she resorts to a variant of the so-called expulsion episode:
Spiegelliegeltje was abandoned by her mommy in the dark forest. It
was a bad mommy, who was jealous of Spiegelliegeltje because
Spiegelliegeltje was so beautiful. More beautiful than mommy and
mommy couldnt bear that! So she brought Spiegelliegeltje in her
coach into the forest, and in the middle of the forest, she said all of a
sudden: Oh, do get out and pick some of those beautiful roses for
me! But as soon as the girl had got out, the mother closed the door
and drove away at full speed. And she hoped that the wild animals
would quickly devour her beautiful little daughter. (Naegels 96)11
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This description differs from the canonical version of Snow White, in which
there is only one expulsion episode, when Snow Whites stepmother orders a
huntsman to kill her daughter. The double expulsion in Naegelss retelling signals an intertextual return to the variant in the lenberg manuscript that was
later deleted:
And as the Lord King had once travelled to war, so she had her coach
harnessed & ordered to drive into a great dark forest & she took Snow
White with her. Now in the same forest stood many really beautiful
red roses. When she had now arrived there with her little daughter,
she spoke to her: oh Snow White do get out and break off some of
those beautiful roses for me! And as soon as she had left the coach to
obey this order, the wheels drove on at full speed, but the Lady Queen
had ordered it all like that because she hoped that the wild animals
would soon devour her. (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 244, 246)12
In the preface to the collection in which Spiegelliegeltje appeared, Naegels
explains that the basis of his retelling is the oerversie, the prototypical Snow
White, and not the later version, adapted by Wilhelm Grimm, that is included
in all fairy-tale collections, not that of Disney (10).13 In fact Naegelss Spiegelliegeltje combines elements from the lenberg manuscript and the printed
editions of Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen with personal alterations.14 He rephrases the second expulsion episode in a style that dramatizes the readingaloud session with a young child. This is notable in the choice of words (a bad
mommy) and the addition of exclamation marks. The adaptation of the register clashes with the non-adaptation of the disturbing content. The tale that
Spiegelliegeltjes mother tells is in fact even crueler than the Grimms version,
because the mother replaces the name of Snow White with her own daughters,
thereby encouraging identification.15
Angela Carters retelling of Snow White, The Snow Child (1979), is inspired by a second variant based on a letter by Ferdinand Grimm from 1808
and included in the lenberg manuscript but not in the printed version of Die
Kinder- und Hausmrchen. The lenberg manuscript mentions it as an alternative beginning (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 250). This variant starts with a
count and countess who travel together in a coach. The count wishes for a
daughter with the features of Snow White, and the countess then tries to get
rid of her. Some of the scenes in Carters tale are reminiscent of the expulsion
episode in the lenberg manuscript and in Naegelss retelling. The countess
asks the girl to retrieve her glove, for instance, in order that she should leave
the coach. In the lenberg manuscript, Snow Whites mother uses a similar
excuse to get rid of her daughter when she asks her to pick some roses.
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According to Soman Chainani, this variant is a version of Snow White that eschews all the popularized, supposedly indispensable elements of the tale
through which Angela Carter can reclaim the storys original meaning (217).
It is, however, debatable whether the variant is more original than the other
manuscript version of Snow White, on which the subsequent editions were
based. That the latter was better known may have motivated the Brothers
Grimm to include it in the first edition. And that the concept of originality is
problematic in the discussion of Snow White variants also becomes apparent
in Chainanis article. Whereas in the beginning of her article she still uses the
term original meaning with reference to the variant that includes the count
who is not Snow Whites father (217), a few pages later she uses original story
for the variant that lies at the basis of the 1812 edition: Carter brings back the
King/father figure to imply that an unflinching depiction of current relations
provides sufficient context for a meaningful revision of the original story (219).
Chainani discusses Carters tale in the context of her other fairy-tale
retellings and notices that Snow Child stands out because of an apparent incompleteness of revision: in contrast to the other stories, where Carter mixes
fairy-tale elements with other genres, Snow Child retains and even exaggerates the fairy-tale milieu (218). In his attempt to determine the intertextual
pre-text of Wim Hofmans Zwart als inkt (Black as ink), the Dutch scholar
Tom Baudoin comes to similar conclusions: Hofman has not so much sought
alliance with the definitive version of Snow White as with the creative process
that the Grimms themselves went through (379).16 In some aspects, Hofmans
retelling returns to the lenberg manuscript. First, Snow White is not persecuted by her stepmother, but by her biological mother. Second, in the first edition of Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen, it is not mentioned where Snow Whites
father has gone once his wife starts to pursue their daughter. Both the lenberg
manuscript and Hofmans retelling do state his absence explicitly and give the
same explanation: he has gone to war (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 244; Hofman
1112, 14). Third, the wish that Snow Whites mother expresses in Hofman is
more similar to the wish of the count in the alternative Snow White variant
included in the lenberg manuscript (1810 B) than to the first edition of 1812:
1810 (A)
then she wished & said: ah, if only I had a child, as white as this
snow, with cheeks as red as this red blood and eyes as black as this
window frame! (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 244)17
alternative variant 1810 (B)
then the count wished and said: if only I had a girl, with cheeks
as red as this blood! Soon thereafter three coal-black ravens flew over
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and the count wished once again for a girl with such black hair like
these ravens. (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 250, 252)18
1812 (C)
so she thought: if only I had a child white as snow, red as blood
and black as this window frame. (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 245)19
Hofman
She has to be white as snow, her lips red as blood and her hair as
black as those ravens there. (Hofman 14)20
Hofmans wish includes the element hair as black as ravens (alternative variant
1810 B) but puts these words in the mouth of Snow Whites mother. In the long
version of 1810 (A), the mother wishes for a child with eyes as black as the window frame. The 1812 printed edition (C) leaves unspecified what aspect of the
child should be black, but does include the window frame as a reference point.
For another aspect of the wish, the fact that the girls lips should be red, the 1812
edition presents itself as a more relevant intertext: in the 1810 versions (A and B),
the mother (long version) and count (alternative version) do not wish for red lips,
but for red cheeks. Like Naegels, Hofman mixes elements from versions in the
lenberg manuscript with aspects from the printed tales and personal alterations.
Some of Hofmans alterations intensify changes that the Grimms had
made, as Baudoin has noted but discusses only briefly. Hofman increases the
number of religious references, for instance, a dimension that the Grimms had
developed only in later editions (Hulsens 29). Likewise, the list of household
chores that Snow White is ordered to fulfill in exchange for her stay at
the seven dwarves house gradually increases in the later editions (30), and is
further expanded in Hofmans retelling:
1810
The dwarves pitied her and invited her to stay with them, and to
cook their diner when they left for the mine. (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 246, 248)21
1812
Then the dwarves pitied her and said: if you take care of our
household, and cook, sew, make the beds, wash and knit, also keep
everything tidy and clean, you can stay with us and you will lack
nothing; in the evening we come home, then dinner has to be ready,
during the day we are in the mine and dig for gold, then you are
alone. [ . . . ] (Rlleke, Mrchensammlung 251)22
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In Hofman, the dwarves become even more demanding and give Snow White
very specific instructions:
Thats how it began. The girl stayed / at home, they went to work.
[ . . . ] / A few weeks long they got soup. / From beans and nettles, /
plenty of nettles. / You could cook something else, you know, / they
said. / She cooked apples and beans / and the leaves of a cabbage. /
You should first take off the caterpillars, / the dwarves said. Take off
the caterpillars / and throw them into the fire. / Just take care of the
garden a bit, / put ladybirds with the lice. / Hang the bunches of
onions / here on the joists. / Hang the bags of beans too. / The rats
cant reach them then. / If you see a rat: kill it.[] (Hofman 66)23
Whereas the dwarves in Grimm discuss the tasks when Snow White arrives,
Hofmans dwarves gradually become more exigent. Their part of the arrangement, which was still included in the Grimm version of 1812 (you will lack
nothing), remains more implicit in Hofman. The list of random instructions
becomes so elaborate, extending over several pages, that Snow White needs to
write it all down, which leads to even more orders (67). Her personal freedom
is increasingly curbed by trivial instructions that affect every single one of her
actions. She is required to attend to and maintain the household in exactly the
fashion preferred by the dwarves, and to sit still and be quiet for the rest of the
time. Several commands are patronizing and reminiscent of parents speaking
to a young child (do not wobble your legs); others seem to have no purpose
at all except to exert power (crawl under the table). From these examples, it
becomes clear that Hofmans expansions can indeed be said to intensify the editorial process of the Grimms. However, Hofmans retelling appeared after the
so-called second wave of feminism and its counterpart in fairy-tale criticism;
when the list of Snow Whites tasks extends over three pages it is clear that the
Grimms enumerations are exaggerated to a degree that invites criticism. Hofman
drives to the extreme some of the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the Gattung Grimm,
and the effect is a parody with an implied feminist twist.

Iring Fetschers Critical View on the lenberg Manuscript

For Carter, Naegels, and Hofman, the recovery of older Grimm editions
proved inspirational, and they engage approvingly with the textual material.
Iring Fetscher takes a more critical position with regard to research on the
Grimms manuscript and editions. In 1972, even before Rlleke had published
the annotated manuscript, Fetscher addressed the philological study of the
Grimm tales in Wer hat Dornrschen wachgekt? (Who kissed Sleeping Beauty
awake?). It contains several Ur-Versionen, which supposedly lie at the basis
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of the Grimms collection. Fetschers prototypes are in fact all parodies. His
Ur-Version of Snow White, in which the protagonist is depicted as a militant
member of the labor union, is concluded as follows:
This is whatreduced to its essential featuresthe proto-version of
Snow White must have looked like. The fearful adaptors from the
petty bourgeois or crofter circles, to whom we owe the version noted
by the Grimms, have done everything to disguise this prototypical
version so as to be unrecognizable: they turned Snow Whites voluntary, politically motivated decision into an expulsion from the court
motivated by the jealous stepmothers private revenge. (6162)24
In Cinderella Fetscher shifts the focus of the authenticity question from the
Brothers Grimm to their oral sources: It appears to me that in this case the
Brothers Grimm are not solely to blame for the adaptation. It is likely that they
have come across the fairy tale in an already fearfully distorted form and
merely harmonized and smoothed it further (63).25
While Fetscher parodies the philological discourse on the Grimm editions, even before the most vehement debates had truly started, he had and
still has some interesting insights to offer. To what extent did the oral sources
of the Brothers Grimm, whether they were educated middle-class women or
elderly peasants, apply some form of self-censorship? And, one may add, if
this was the case, does that make their versions less representative of the oral
tradition? Is the oral tradition uniquely reserved for the lower social classes
and the illiterate? How is our concept of this tradition formed, and, to refer
back to Fetscher, is it ever possible to retrieve a tale in an undistorted form?
Fetschers parody explicitly addresses the Grimms tendency to harmonize the
tales, yet he also invites critical reflection on the contrived mythic status of
the oral tradition, a topic that Ruth B. Bottigheimer (2009) has picked up
again most recently in her alternative history of fairy tales.
Fetscher reproaches the philological paradigm for its arbitrariness and irrelevance and seems to be well acquainted with the methods and findings in
this field of research. From his retelling of Snow White, it becomes clear that
Fetscher was equally familiar with the research on the Grimm editions. His
retelling of Mother Holle provides further evidence. Fetscher claims that his
(fictional) alternative version is inspired by a textual fragment that was discovered by philologists: Fortunately the progressive folklorists year-long search
has now been rewarded with an unexpected find (109).26 The report that
follows parodies the discovery of the Grimm manuscript in the monastery
of lenberg. Fetschers new version of Mother Holle, supposedly discovered
in a Franciscan monastery, turns the traditional versions upside down in a
move reminiscent of the critical debate regarding the lenberg manuscript. In
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comparison with the old text, the printed Grimm version of Mother Holle is
shown to promote racial purity and blind obedience. In nonfictional fairy-tale
criticism, findings of older texts by feminists did the same with regard to gender: scholars such as Zipes, Bottigheimer, and Rlleke revealed that Wilhelm
Grimm had inscribed the tales with patriarchal ideology and argued that the
lenberg manuscript and earlier editions of Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen still
showed aspects that were more controversial to the nineteenth-century middleclass image of women (for instance, the existence of the bad mother). These
older versions also featured heroines with greater personal freedom and
agency.27 Yet the subtleties in the research of these scholars contrast with the
exaggerated results that Fetschers critics achieve. His claim that philologists
manipulate textual material to confirm any random meaning is supported by
the fact that the fictional fifteenth-century manuscript links up perfectly with
twentieth-century Marxist and feminist critiques, as well as with the reproach
of the late 1940s that the Grimm tales were partially responsible for generating attitudes that led to the acceptance of the Nazis and their monstrous
crimes (Zipes, Brothers Grimm 231). Fetchers warning that philologists may
use the older texts to support a contemporary ideological agenda also has
validity outside the fictional realm.

Conclusion
The motto of Wim Hofmans Zwart als inkt is a quotation from T. S. Eliots Little Gidding. It can be read as a metacomment on his use of intertextuality and
on the use of intertextuality in the genre of fairy-tale retellings as a whole:
What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make
a beginning (qtd. in Hofman 5). Whereas the final edition of Die Kinder- und
Hausmrchen, with its status as the ultimate fairy-tale collection, has been
said to have curbed the oral tradition,28 Hofman shows that it also creates new
beginnings: the beginning of intertextual play with the old and the canonized
versions, and the beginning of a new tradition of parodies and retellings. Tom
Baudoin convincingly shows that Zwart als inkt, like other fairy-tale retellings,
thus creates an alliance with a fundamental characteristic of the oral traditionits performativity and flexibility: In the process of telling and retelling
some constant elements can be noted, yet fundamental for the story is the act of
telling itself, with all its improvisations, additions and accentuations (Baudoin
379).29 Some of these additions can be connected intertextually to fairy-tale
criticism, yet the examples above show that the retellings rarely duplicate the
criticism directly, completely, or uncritically. Rather, what can be perceived is a
dynamic process that involves a combination of textual elements from various
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pasts with aspects and interests of the present, a fascinating amalgam of critical
insights and creative transformations.

Notes
1. See, for example, Tom Baudoin, David L. Russell, Claire Malarte-Feldman, and
Belinda Stott.
2. See Joosen (2004; 2007; 2008).
3. Notable publications include Ernest Tonnelats Les contes des frres Grimm (1912
[The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm]); Elisabeth Freitags doctoral thesis, Die
Kinder- und Hausmrchen der Brder Grimm im ersten Stadium ihrer
stilgeschichtlichen Entwicklung (1929 [The Childrens and Household Tales of
the Brothers Grimm at the first stage of their historical stylistic development]);
and Wilhelm Schoofs Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Grimmschen Mrchen (1959
[On the origin of Grimms fairy tales]).
4. All the translations included in the body of this essay are my own. The original
text is given in the endnotes. Original text for Rlleke: Sie haben zu diesen Dingen nur geschwiegen, vieldeutig geschwiegen, wie man an der Wirkung sieht.
5. Note that this is an equally popular strategy in fairy-tale films, such as Hoodwinked and Ever After.
6. Das kleine Mdchen in Rot, es hie . . . ja . . . das habt ihr lngst erraten, es hie
Rotkppchen. Aber es war nicht das Rotkppchen, von dem ihr vielleicht schon
einmal gelesen habt. Nein. Dieses Rotkppchen hier ist das echte, richtige
Rotkppchen, nicht das aus dem albernen Mrchen, und diese Geschichte ist,
hundert zu eins gewettet, seine wahre Geschichte.
7. In de bundel Sprookjes wordt het oorspronkelijke gegeven niet vervormd.
Soms zelfszoals in het sprookje van Roodkapjenog verder teruggebracht
naar de oorspronkelijke vorm, voordat de gebroeders Grimm het bewerkten.
8. Klein Duimpje. Zeg maar Duim. Ik ben oud en ziek, en ik wil mijn verhaal
vertellen. Het zal, dat beloof ik, grimmiger zijn dan het fletse vertelsel dat door
twee Duitse broers de wereld werd ingestuurd. Zij hadden het over een huisje in
het bos, over een vrouwtje en een reus, en over zevenmijlslaarzen waarmee de
reus over het land liep, op zoek naar mij en mijn zes broers. Belachelijk!
9. Unsere oben gedruckte variante ging auf solche vor Grimm zurck. [ . . . ] Zugleich war die folklorische nhe eine absage an den biedermeierlich und oft verkitschten mrchenschatz Grimm, wie er in vielen schallplatten und funksedungen
auch heute noch gang und gbe ist. Note that Gmelin uses alternative spelling,
refraining from using capitals for nouns, as is common in German.
10. Spiegelliegeltje is an untranslatable title, a nonsense word relying on wordplay. It
refers to the name of the little girl in the story and is an extension of the Dutch word
spiegel (mirror). The association with the verb liegen (lying) is also possible.
11. Spiegelliegeltje werd achtergelaten door haar mama in het donkere bos. Het was
een slechte mama, die jaloers was op Spiegelliegeltje omdat Spiegelliegeltje zo mooi
was. Mooier dan mama en dat kon mama niet verdragen! Dus bracht ze Spiegelliegeltje met haar koets het bos in, en in het midden van het bos zei ze plots: Och,
stap toch uit en pluk van die mooie rozen voor mij! Maar zodra het meisje uit-

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gestapt was, sloot de boze moeder de deur en reed er in volle vaart vandoor. En ze
hoopte dat de wilde dieren haar mooie dochtertje snel zouden opeten.
12. Wie nun der Herr Knig einmal in den Krieg verreist war, so lie sie ihren Wagen
an [ . . . ] spannen u. befahl in einen weiten dunkeln Wald zu fahren, u. nahm
das Schneeweichen mit. In dem selben Wald aber standen viel gar schne rothe
Rosen. Als sie nun mit ihrem Tchterlein daselbst angekommen war, so sprach
sie zu ihm: ach Schneeweichen steig doch aus u. brich mir von den schnen
Rosen ab! Und sobald es diesem Befehl zu gehorchen aus dem Wagen gegangen
war, fuhren die Rder [ . . . ] in grter Schnelligkeit fort, aber die Frau Knigin
hatte [es, HR] alles so befolen. weil sie hoffte, da es die wilden Thiere bald
verzehren sollten.
13. niet de latere, door Wilhelm Grimm herwerkte versie die in alle sprookjesboeken
staat, niet die van Disney.
14. Naegels also doubles the ending, combining both Disneys (the kiss) and the
Brothers Grimms (Snow White coughs up the apple).
15. Spiegelliegeltje is a retelling for children that tells the story of a mother who suffers from manic depression and attempts to kill her daughter with a poisoned
apple. It is unclear whether the daughter dies and is revived by magic or if she
simply pretends to have died. At the end of the story, the mother kisses her back
to life.
16. Hofman niet zozeer aansluiting zoekt bij de definitieve versie van Sneeuwwitje
als wel bij het creatieve proces dat de Grimms zelf doormaakten.
17. da wnschte sie u. sprach: ach htte ich doch ein Kind, so wei wie diesen
Schnee, so rothbackigt wie dies rothe Blut u. so schwarzugig wie diesen Fensterrahm!
18. da wnschte der Graf u. sprach: htte ich ein Mdchen, mit so rothen Wangen,
als dieses Blut! Bald darnach flogen drei kohlschwarze Raben vorber u. der Graf
wnschte wiederum ein Mdchen von so schwarzem Haar, wie diese Raben.
19. so dachte sie: htt ich doch ein Kind so wei wie Schnee, so roth wie das Blut
und so schwarz wie dieser Rahmen.
20. Wit moet ze zijn als sneeuw, haar lippen rood als bloed en haar haar zo zwart als
die raven daar.
21. Die Zwerge hatten Mitleiden mit ihm u. ersuchten es, bei ihnen zu bleiben, u.
ihnen das Een zu kochen, wann sie ins Bergwerk ausgingen.
22. Da hatten die Zwerge Mitleiden und sagten: wenn du unsern Haushalt versehen,
und kochen, nhen, betten, waschen und stricken willst, auch alles ordentlich
und reinlich halten, sollst du bei uns bleiben und soll dir an nichts fehlen; Abens
kommen wir nach Haus, da mu das Essen fertig seyn, am Tage aber sind wir im
Bergwerk und graben Gold, da bist du allein [ . . . ].
23. Zo begon het. Het meisje bleef / in huis zij gingen werken. [ . . . ] / Een paar
weken lang kregen ze soep. / Van bonen en brandnetels, / brandnetels genoeg. /
Je mag ook wel iets anders koken, / zeiden ze. / Ze kookte appels en bonen / en
de bladeren van een kool. / Je moet wel eerst de rupsen eraf halen, / zeiden de
dwergen. Haal de rupsen eraf / en gooi ze in het vuur. / Zorg maar wat voor de
tuin, / zet lieveheersbeestjes bij de luizen. / Hang de bosjes met uien / maar hier
aan de balken. / Hang de zakjes bonen ook maar op. / De ratten kunnen er dan
niet bij. / Als je een rat ziet: sla hem dan dood.[]

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24. So muauf die wesentlichen Zge reduziertdas Ur-Schneewittchen etwa
ausgesehen haben. Die ngstlichen Bearbeiter aus dem kleinbrgerlichen oder
kleinbuerlichen Milieu, denen wir die von dem Grimms notierte Fassung verdankten, haben alles getan, um diese Urform unkenntlich zu machen: Aus dem
freiwilligen, politisch motivierten Entschlu Schneewittchens machten sie diese
Verbannung vom Hofe auf Grund eines privaten Racheaktes der eiferschtigen
Stiefmutter.
25. Mir scheint, in diesem Fall darf man den Brdern Grimm jedenfalls nicht allein
die Schuld an der Umarbeitung geben. Sie haben das Mrchen vermutlich schon
in ngstlich deformierter Gestalt vorgefunden und es lediglich weiter harmonisiert und geglttet.
26. Zum Glck ist nun aber die jahrelange Suche der progressiven Volkskundler
durch einen berraschenden Fund belohnt worden.
27. See, for example, Bottigheimers analysis of Our Ladys Child in various editions
(Bad Girls 87).
28. See Pischke, Das vernderte Mrchen (The altered fairy tale).
29. In het proces van navertellen en doorvertellen zijn weliswaar enkele constanten
aan te wijzen, maar wezenlijk voor het verhaal is het vertellen zelf, met al zijn improvisaties, toevoegingen en accentueringen. [ . . . D]eze openheid en dynamiek
[zijn] ook kenmerkend voor de versie van Wim Hofman.

Works Cited
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Sneeuwwitje. Literatuur zonder leeftijd 43 (1997): 37794.
Bennett, Bruce. The True Story of Snow White. 1999. The Poets Grimm: 20th Century
Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales. Eds. Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson.
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Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany: State U of New York P, 2009.
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Carter, Angela. Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories. London: Vintage, 1996.
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Ellis, John M. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago:
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CONTRIBUTORS

Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochre teaches modern English and comparative

literature at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), where she is currently
associate dean of the humanities. She is the author of Origin and Originality in
Rushdies Fiction (1997) and has contributed to Fairy Tales Reimagined (2009),
Postcolonial Ghosts (2009), The Seeming and the Seen (2006), Critical Essays on
Salman Rushdie (2002), and Dickens Studies Annual (1998). She is working on a
book-length study of Angela Carters translations from the French, and her
coedition of Satan and After: Essays in Honor of Neil Forsyth (with Kirsten Stirling)
is forthcoming.
Casie Hermansson is an associate professor of English at Pittsburg State University (Kansas, USA), where she teaches predominantly British literature and
film adaptation courses. She is on the editorial board for the journal Margaret
Atwood Studies and is the author of two books on Bluebeard: Feminist Intertextuality through Bluebeard Stories (2001) and Bluebeard: A Readers Guide to the
English Tradition (2009).
Sara Hines is completing a PhD in English literature at the University of Edinburgh. Her dissertation research focuses on a selection of narratives within Andrew Langs Fairy Books in relation to late nineteenth-century discourses on
science, religion, colonialism, and gender.
Vanessa Joosen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where she holds an FWO scholarship. After completing her PhD on the
intertextual dialogue between fairy-tale retellings and criticism (2008), she is
now researching the Dutch reception and translation of the Grimm tales.
Sharon McCann received a BA in English studies from Trinity College Dublin in
2006 and an MPhil in American literature from the University of Cambridge in
2007. She is a scholar of St. Johns College, Cambridge, and a candidate for the
PhD at the Universitys Faculty of English. Her doctoral research focuses on
testimony in the work of Charles Reznikoff.
Harold Neemann is an associate professor of French at the University of
Wyoming. His research focuses on the narrative discourse in late seventeenthcentury France and the history of ideas. He is the author of Piercing the Magic
Veil: Toward a Theory of the Conte (1999) as well as several articles on French
fairy tales.
Carmen Nolte is a PhD student and graduate assistant in the English department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her main research interest is
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.