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Band 58 Heft 3 Harald Höbus ch, Rebeccah Dawson (Hr sg.) C O L L O Q U I A G E R M A N I C A I n t e r n a ti o n a l e Z e it s c h r ift f ü r G e r m a n i s ti k Die Zeitschrift erscheint jährlich in 4 Heften von je etwa 96 Seiten Abonnementpreis pro Jahrgang: € 173,00 (print)/ € 210,00 (print & online)/ € 173,00 (e-only) Vorzugspreis für private Leser € 124,00 (print); Einzelheft € 55,00 (jeweils zuzüglich Versandkosten). Bestellungen nimmt Ihre Buchhandlung oder der Verlag entgegen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG, Dischingerweg 5, D-72070 Tübingen · eMail: info@narr.de Aufsätze - in deutscher oder englischer Sprache - bitte einsenden als Anlage zu einer Mail an hhoebu@uky.edu oder bessdawson@uky.edu (Prof. Harald Höbusch oder Dr. Rebeccah Dawson, Division of German Studies, 1055 Patterson Office Tower, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027, USA). Typoskripte sollten nach den Vorschriften des MLA Style Manual (2008) eingerichtet sein. Sonstige Mitteilungen bitte an hhoebu@uky.edu © 2025 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Alle Rechte vorbehalten/ All Rights Strictly Reserved Druck: Elanders Waiblingen GmbH ISSN 0010-1338 ISBN 978-3-381-14101-2 BAND 58 • Heft 3 Themenheft: Fairy Tales - New Ways of Reading, New Ways of Teaching (Gast-)Herausgeber: innen: Rebeccah Dawson und Melissa Sheedy Inhalt Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations Rebeccah Dawson and Melissa Sheedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom Matthew O. Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Triumph of the Stump: German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics Marking Victories in the Midst of Physical Loss Fred Yaniga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Faustine in a Fairy Tale Kyung Lee Gagum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women Melissa Sheedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Verzeichnis der Autor: innen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations 267 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0016 Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations Rebeccah Dawson and Melissa Sheedy University of Kentucky / University of Wisconsin-Madison And when they are small, and wonder is all they know, I will read them the old stories, the ones that start once upon a time Stephen King, Fairy Tale (598) Fairytales are living, breathing things. Shaped as much by their tellers as they are by editors, publishers, and especially listeners and readers, tales invite us to take part in a collaborative, mutually affective storytelling process. The constant practice of reinvention and creation renders each iteration unique, conjuring transformative potential and the kind of magic that lives on beyond childhood. The tension this perpetual rejuvenation generates between the familiar and the innovative is also a wellspring for the political and subversive. The Grimms’ own editorial choices gradually whittled their Kinder- und Hausmärchen into neatly sanitized stories - the lessons of which suited the shifting moral and religious values of the time. These ethical structures predicated on nationalist ideals as well as rigid family and gender roles eventually gave way to the socialist and feminist tales of the mid to late 19 th century by writers such as Hedwig Dohm and the anonymous author of the Märchen-Buch für Kinder des Proletariats (1893). The 20 th century witnessed the violent and fascist appropriation of tales as well as DEFA’s ( Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft ) enormously popular and folksy series of fairytale films in East Germany, which likewise sought to claim a sense of German legitimacy via a 19 th -century heritage. Today, alongside the milquetoast mainstream, we see adaptations that are fiercely feminist or subtly subversive. The list goes on: the genre is, undeniably, richly political. Often disguised as bedtime reading or simple entertainment for children, the fairytale is uniquely poised to transmit ideological messages, hidden codes, and implications between the lines. It is no wonder that fairytales continue to mesmerize and fascinate. From the widely available canonical tales by the Grimms to hidden archival gems and the 268 Rebeccah Dawson and Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0016 abundance of contemporary adaptations streaming on Netflix or displayed on the #booktok tables of Barnes and Noble or Dussmann, there is always a new tale to tell. Scholars and educators working both on and with fairytales today confirm that the magic of the familiar is not exhausted: new and exciting work within the genre is appearing all the time, and fairytales remain of perennial interest in language and literature classrooms across the United States. 1 Fairytale scholars have borrowed the tools and methodologies developed by theorists in neighboring fields, and exciting work is being done with fairytales and feminism, queer studies, the environmental humanities, disability studies, transcultural studies, and pedagogical approaches. These new directions simultaneously look to the future while also reminding us of the enduring relevance of old tales. Academics, students, and casual readers of tales have long benefitted from interventions by scholars who have shed light on the significance of fairytales and folklore for literary studies. From Bruno Bettelheim, Max Lüthi, and Heinz Rölleke to Angela Carter, Maria Tatar, B. Venkat Mani, and Jack Zipes, academics have long had a vested interest in fairytales, resisting the popular - and erroneous - rebuke that “fairytales are not literature.” Germinal works in the field have variously made innovative connections, built on existing theories, and also brought forgotten or lost tales to light. Recent examples of work that reframes familiar stories in new ways include Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill’s Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms (2012) and Amanda Leduc’s Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space (2020). Ann Schmiesing’s new biography of the Grimms (2024) contextualizes the brothers’ lives and work, shedding light on the problematic discourses of nationalism and antisemitism in their œuvre and bringing to life the many women without whom the Kinder- und Hausmärchen would never have existed. Important works by Shawn C. Jarvis ( Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen ; 2012) as well as Jarvis and Jeannine Blackwell ( The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780—1900 ; 2001) have made fairytales by women more accessible than ever. Another key reserve that lifts up these voices is the open-access Sophie Digital Library, hosted by Brigham Young University, that houses works by German-speaking women ranging from pre-17 th century to the early 1900s. These resources are treasures in the classroom and beyond, reminding us that even “lost” tales are not forgotten. And yet, there is more work to be done. While vast bodies of scholarship adorn our bookshelves, much of it is disproportionately focused on texts written (or edited) by men, normative narratives, and conventional lines of inquiry. Even in 2025, little attention has been paid to women writers and storytellers whose work has indelibly shaped the genre, but who have remained undercredited for centuries. We know that the Grimms’ assembly of tales is heavily - even Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations 269 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0016 predominantly - indebted to the stories shared by, coaxed from, or even conned out of such women as Elisabeth Schellenberg, Dorothea “Dortchen” Wild, Dorothea Viehmann, Marie, Amalia, and Johanna Hassenpflug, Annette and Jenny von Droste-Hülshoff, Ludovica Brentano Jordis, and many others. Contemporary and recent interventions by writers such as Tatar, Greenhill, Turner, Leduc, Jarvis, Blackwell, Schmiesing, and others emphasize the need to focus on and highlight these and other underrepresented identities and how they are depicted in fairytales. For example, what is the relationship between disability and a tale’s happy - or unhappy - ending? How do transgressive sexualities or gender performances align with or subvert our expectations of a familiar story? What role do students play as both consumers and creators of narrative? These questions were just a few to arise out of the annual fairytale-focused panel at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (KFLC) held at the University of Kentucky in April 2024. The four contributions of this special issue developed from conversations in Lexington, and they examine fairytales through a variety of theoretical lenses that consider gender, gender identity and expression, sexuality, race, disability, and class. A broad understanding of the term “fairytale” is articulated throughout the issue: articles contend with texts representing four centuries, seven authors, and multiple cultures, and they examine media beyond short-form prose texts, including drama, manga, and the visual arts. Individual contributions work well in tandem with one another, as each seeks to showcase lesser-known works and authors, uncover new or undertheorized perspectives, and challenge conventional understandings. Reading between the lines, the authors featured in this issue seek to reveal the hidden story 2 that lurks within a fairytale’s pages, transmitting a message that is frequently at odds with the normative narrative on the surface. Matthew Anderson’s “From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom” invites readers into the author’s own classroom, sharing a pedagogical framework that helps students take an active role in their own learning and engagement with tales. Anderson’s practice of utilizing fairytale illustrations in class to unsettle student expectations and assumptions (particularly of those learners who have grown up with Disney and other pop culture adaptations of tales) presents a new way of connecting with stories beyond prose on the page. Anderson reveals how working with both classic iconography and less familiar works of art in the classroom can give students a sense of ownership, obliging them to grapple with questions of textual fidelity and authenticity, focalization, and publication and reception history. In class, Anderson emphasizes a kind of “productive contamination” of tales through these creative interventions, a practice that encourages learners to take part in the storytelling process itself. Anderson’s piece demonstrates how students ulti- 270 Rebeccah Dawson and Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0016 mately emerge with a more in-depth understanding of fairytales and their own roles as readers, listeners, and creators who themselves can help shape the story. While Anderson’s contribution is the only one to explicitly contend with pedagogy, all of the articles have implications for the classroom and provide fresh insights into familiar tales. Fred Yaniga’s “Triumph of the Stump: German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics Marking Victories in the Midst of Physical Loss” connects the motif of triumph despite grievous injury to national identity discourses in German literature. Through a lens informed by Disability Studies, Yaniga investigates tales that feature amputations and prosthetics, highlighting the problematic narrative of “overcoming disability” that underpins many fairytales. Drawing on the “social model” 3 of disability, the article crosses national and chronological borders as it hones in on Adelbert Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814), the Brothers Grimm tale “Sechse kommen durch die Welt” (1812), and Thomas Bernhard’s Victor Halbnarr. Ein Wintermärchen nicht für Kinder (1966). In his interrogation of the depictions of physical disability and (in)accessibility in fairytales, Yaniga’s piece illustrates how moments of triumph in adversity in these texts tell a universal story of the strength of the human spirit. Like Yaniga, Kyung Lee Gagum’s “Faustine in a Fairy Tale” investigates socially imposed barriers and how characters subvert or transgress them. Gagum’s work focuses on Kore Yamazaki’s five-volume manga series Frau Faust (2017), which reimagines the Faust figure as an adolescent young woman who moves beyond prescribed social roles. Gagum reads the series as a transmodern fairytale retelling of the Faustian legend through a cross-cultural and queer lens. As the article makes clear, the series does not merely present a gender reversal; rather, it also synthesizes narrative conventions of fairytales, canonical European literature, and Japanese shōjo manga to challenge traditional generic borders and interrogate social hierarchies based on gender, race, education, and class. Gagum’s contribution establishes a critical dialogue on gender identity and fluidity, as she examines Yamazaki’s work through a queer theoretical lens that troubles established binaries to articulate gender as performative, conditional, and ultimately unstable. Gagum’s analysis reveals the character of Johanna Faust to be a subversive, transgressive figure who transcends these limitations via - and in spite of - the fairytale’s restrictive structures. Melissa Sheedy’s contribution also employs a queer lens in its examination of lesser-known mermaid tales penned by women. Her article “Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women” explores queerly configured water spirits in Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “Die Nymphe des Rheins” (1812) and Ricarda Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” (1896). Building on existing work by Sue-Ellen Case and Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Sheedy’s article develops a queer ecocritical lens to examine these subversive Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations 271 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0016 tales, each of which feature harbingers of a feminized natural world at odds with masculine-coded civilization. Like Yaniga’s focus on deviations from physical norms, Sheedy also analyzes the materiality of the mermaid body, whose queerly “in-between” form disrupts the nature-culture binary and simultaneously attracts and repels male interlocutors. Interrogating intersections of sexuality, gender, and deception, she reveals the complex characterizations of these figures who challenge conventional stock portrayals and transgress both bodily and sociocultural norms to resist patriarchal suppression and control. Taken together, the four contributions in this issue work in conversation with each other and with other recent scholarship to offer new ways of reading and teaching fairytales that look both within and beyond canonical texts. They identify familiar tales as well those lesser known to readers to unsettle established expectations, revealing a body of German folklore that is neither homogeneous nor standardized. Ultimately, they look ahead to a future in fairytale scholarship and teaching that deconstructs normative binaries, challenges our students, and acknowledges a range of identities both on and off the page. Notes 1 For more on recent trends in fairytale scholarship and teaching, see Melissa Sheedy, “Beyond the Seven Hills: Fairytales and Folklore in Recent Scholarship and Pedagogy.” 2 Donald Haase points out the existence of what he terms a “coded text” (16) within fairytales that are created or told by women, but ultimately edited, published, and associated with men such as the Grimms. According to Haase, the female voice transmits a secret language that finds resonance even in remediated versions of the story. See Haase, Donald. “Fairy Tales and Feminism.” 3 See Amanda Leduc’s Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space . Works Cited Haase, Donald. “Fairy Tales and Feminism.” Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches . Ed. Donald Haase. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. King, Stephen. Fairy Tale . New York: Scribner, 2022. Leduc, Amanda. Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space . Coach House Books, 2020. Sheedy, Melissa. “Beyond the Seven Hills: Fairytales and Folklore in Recent Scholarship and Pedagogy.” Monatshefte 116.4 (2024): 705—26. From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom2 7 3 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom Matthew O. Anderson Furman University Abstract: Generations of American college students first encounter Grimm fairy tales as children through Disney film adaptations and often struggle to overcome the nostalgic, visual connections they have when approaching the fairy tales again as adults. My main goals in the classroom are to unsettle my students’ associations and assumptions that have been preconditioned by those films, and to help them take an active role in the storytelling experience. Analyzing a range of fairy tale illustrations can help students unsettle their assumptions and reset their expectations as they (re)approach the text. This article shares some of the unsettling, illustrated collections that my students and I have found useful for productively contaminating fairy tales. Each of the collections explored forces the reader/ viewer to engage directly with questions of textual fidelity, publication and reception history, and narrative focalization. Taken together, they are useful tools to help students disenchant the Disney spell and explore the delightful and disturbing depths of the fairy tales’ form, content, and context. Keywords: Brothers Grimm, fairy tales, illustration, iconography, teaching I would like to preface this article with a confession: my interest in Grimms’ fairy tales is as much about inspiring bold student adaptations in my fairy tale seminar as it is about exploring and adapting the specific content(s) and form(s) of the tales themselves. By far the biggest challenge I face when preparing students to take ownership of those narratives involves unraveling the strong, often totalizing bonds that they have created to specific iterations of a given multiform text. Generations of American college students - including myself - first encounter Grimm fairy tales as children through Disney film adaptations and often struggle to overcome the nostalgic connection they have when meeting the fairy tales again as (young) adults. With this in mind, my main goals in 274 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 the classroom are to unsettle my students’ associations and assumptions that have been preconditioned by those films, and to help them take an active role in the storytelling experience. In my fairy tale seminar, I use Maria Tatar’s Classic Fairy Tales anthology to A) introduce students to English translations of classic and contemporary fairy tale narratives and B) engage them directly in the storytelling process. The anthology’s organizational concept makes this task easy for the instructor: by positioning stories in direct dialogue with similar narratives that she describes as parts of the same fairy tale multiform, Tatar’s anthology forces readers to engage with a wide spectrum of similar stories . In the introduction to the volume, she claims that “fairy tales are always more interesting when something is added to them. Each new telling recharges the narrative, making it crackle and hiss with cultural energy” ( xiii ). This creative spark starts with the crackle and hiss of the texts they read, but soon the students are making their own additions: as their fairy tale horizons expand, they take on new roles as critics, editors, and authors of their own fairy tale adaptations. One of my primary aims in those classes is to revive the aura of those fairy tale texts by helping students stake claims on them. To borrow Jack Zipes’ provocative term from Sticks and Stones , I want students to get comfortable “contaminating” a fairy tale, that is, to “enrich it by artfully introducing extraordinary motifs, themes, words, expressions, proverbs, metaphors, and characters into its corporate body so that it will be transformed and form a new essence” (103). That may sound great, but it is often easier said than done! I have found that, in this instance, a picture really is quite literally worth a thousand words. Analyzing a range of fairy tale illustrations can help students unsettle their assumptions and reset their expectations as they (re)approach the text. In this article, I will share some of the unsettling illustrations that my students and I have found useful for contaminating fairy tales. In his Afterword to George MacDonald’s fairy tale The Golden Key, W. H. Auden states that “the way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in” (85). Fairy tales are stories that encourage - and frequently demand - active reader engagement to produce meaning. They invite readers into their magical worlds and share imagination, terror, and wonder with their audiences and co-creators through the act of telling. In practice, the fairy tale text’s invitation to “throw oneself in” is intermittently “throw themselves out” to the reader. From the nineteenth century on, illustrations and other visual accompaniments shaped reader engagement with all aspects of those magical, fairy tale worlds. Over the course of the nineteenth century, as silent reading gradually overtook oral storytelling as the primary mode of consuming and disseminating folklore and fairy tales, DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 275 more prominent, ubiquitous, and vibrant illustrations took on a larger role in determining how these stories were perceived and remembered by readers. Illustrations not only transmitted a clear sense of what readers should “throw themselves” into while reading, they also made clear what details readers should “throw out” when engaging with the narrative. Even in our twenty-first century world awash in dynamic, digital media, physical book illustrations can still exert a powerful influence on the reader’s experience of the fairy tale text. As children’s literary scholars Maria Nikolajeva, Perry Nodelman, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, and others have noted, illustrations are not functionally limited to amplifying the meaning conveyed by a text’s verbal register; they can in fact challenge and subvert canonical and conventional readings of the textual narrative. For familiar fairy tale collections with well-worn iconographic traditions like Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen ( Children’s and Household Tales ) , critical visual reinterpretations have great potential to unsettle the reader and their assumptions about the content and character of a given tale. For this reason, they are a particularly effective means to help students reframe and engage with fairy tale narratives whose terse, straightforward language often belies the depth and breadth of meaning(s) they contain. After providing a brief sketch of their early nineteenth-century visual history, I will explore a range of visual interventions across five illustrated collections of Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen that I have found useful in the fairy tale classroom: 1) Frank Flöthmann’s Grimms Märchen ohne Worte (Grimms’ Fairy Tales Without Words , 2014); 2) Maurice Sendak’s The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm (1973; re-republished in 2003); 3) Shaun Tan’s photographed sculpture work for Grimm Tales for Young and Old ( Grimms Märchen , published in 2013) and The Singing Bones (2016); 4) Natalie Frank’s gouache paintings for Tales of the Brothers Grimm (trans. Jack Zipes, 2015); and 5) Corwin Levi and Michelle Aldredge’s Mirror, Mirrored: A Contemporary Artist’s Edition of 25 Grimms’ Tales (2018). Each of these collections force the reader/ viewer to engage directly with questions of textual fidelity, publication and reception history, and narrative focalization. Each of them can be useful tools to help students disenchant the Disney spell and explore the delightful and disturbing depths of the fairy tales’ form, content, and context. Let’s start by winding back the clock. 2012 marked the 200th anniversary of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen initial publication, and many publishers across the globe produced illustrated editions to commemorate the occasion. In the 212 years since their initial publication, images have become integral elements of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, and a quick Google Image 276 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 search will return thousands of red riding hoods, gingerbread houses, and sleeping beauties. Yet however ubiquitous these fairy tale icons are today; they were not always a central feature of the Grimm fairy tales. The first edition appeared in two parts - one published in 1812 and the other in 1815 - neither of which was illustrated. In 1819, the second edition was published with only the frontispiece and half title by Jakob and Wilhelm’s lesser-known Malerbruder, Ludwig Emil Grimm. The frontispiece depicts the final scene from the eleventh tale in the collection, “Brüderchen und Schwesterchen” (“Brother and Sister”) - a now lesser-known tale with a similar narrative frame to “Hansel and Gretel.” The title page is purely decorative, with wreathlike ornamentation evoking a garden of familiar narrative delights. These two visual accompaniments reflect the staid, bourgeois publishing conventions in Berlin and across Prussia and the rest of the German Confederation. This and subsequent nineteenth-century editions were designed to grace the bookshelves of respectable family homes. The Grimms’ fairy tales were presented quite differently in England. The first English-language translation - German Popular Stories, translated by Edgar Taylor - appeared in 1823 with numerous copper etchings by George Cruikshank, the caricaturist most famed for his later work with Charles Dickens. According to Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Vanessa Joosen, the success of the Cruikshank edition “especially contributed to the tales’ popularity as children’s literature,” a popularity that shows no sign of waning two hundred years later as the “multiplicity of meaning that fairy tales carry still leaves ample space for contemporary illustrators to exploit” (“Introduction”). Cruikshank’s copper engravings capture pivotal moments in the stories with levity and wit, establishing a playful tone that generations of subsequent illustrators would seek to emulate. The rest of this early history of illustrated Grimm editions is as long and storied as the list of prominent artists and illustrators who have revisualized and reinterpreted their fairy tales since the early nineteenth century. Just as they did with other bestsellers and perennial successes, publishers in Germany and across Europe and the US released new editions that leveraged cutting-edge illustration techniques to (re)frame and (re)sell the stories to a new generation of child readers. Fairy tale imagery proliferated as the wood-engraved relief prints and hand-colored copperand steel-engraved intaglios of the early nineteenth century gave way first to full-color, chromolithographic inserts in the late 1800s, and eventually photographic reprints by the time Disney began adapting Grimm fairy tales for the silver screen in the late 1930s. Art and book historians frequently locate the “highlights” of this visual history around the turn of the twentieth century, when Arthur Hughes, Walter DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 277 Crane, Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen, and many, many other representatives of the so-called “Golden Age of Illustration” produced ornate gift books with beautiful, full-page color illustrations. One prominent example is the 1882 Household Stories, from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm, featuring Walter Crane’s illustrations (or, as he calls them, the stories “done up in pictures”) to accompany his wife Lucy’s translations. Paola Spinozzi calls the illustrations to this volume “meticulous visual narrations of the verbal narrations” that “construct their meaning through direct reference to the text. The aim […] is not to create counter-narratives but to capture and render the appeal of the story. They exemplify narrative illustration” (265). Crane’s title image combines many familiar elements - female storytellers, animals, books, and a child proxy for the young reader - and places them in a house of stories. Like Ludwig Emil Grimm’s title image and the works of his Golden Age counterparts, Walter Crane’s illustrations emphasize faithfulness to the fairy tale’s content and present the fairy tale collection as a safe, familiar, and welcoming narrative home. Crane’s tendency toward narrative fidelity is mirrored in the iconographic continuity that links all illustrated editions of the Grimm fairy tales. In her article “Fairy Tale Illustrations and Real World Gender,” Ruth B. Bottigheimer notes that the iconographic legacies of well-known fairy tales like “Rapunzel” or “Dornröschen” are so fixed that they may preclude visual reinterpretation entirely: “preexisting iconographic traditions like towers and roses play a large part in the image content of such fairy tales’ illustrations, so that Rapunzel without her tower or the sleeping princess without her bed, thorny rosebushes, and kneeling prince are nearly unthinkable” (143). Since the late nineteenth century, Grimms’ visual icons have become so culturally ubiquitous that they were and are often immediately recognizable even outside of their immediate narrative contexts. Fidelity to this legacy is further reflected in the various “heritage,” “vintage,” and “original” labels attached to contemporary collectors’ editions, which prioritize and signal the desire to belong to this narrative and iconographic continuity. Yet, despite the breadth and depth of this illustrative visual history, Disney film images and the affective connections they engender are what continue to dominate student associations with the Grimm fairy tales today. In his provocative article “Breaking the Disney Spell,” Jack Zipes suggests that these films represent the final victory of the technical and the visual arts over the oral (and textual) fairy tale narrative. Disney’s animated films, he argues, are “intended to both smash the aura of heritage and to celebrate the ingenuity, inventiveness, and genius of the animator” (424). While the animators make some direct visual allusions to the dress, architecture, and landscapes of late 278 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 nineteenth-century chromolithographs, they introduce much more visual material into the narrative that push Disney’s own narrative inventions - from dopey dwarfs and anthropomorphized animal sidekicks abetting the heroine and/ or stepmother to buffoonish parents plotting marriage alliances that will produce royal grandchildren - into the foreground. In this light, the Disney films become the endpoint of the Grimm fairy tales’ medial and rhetorical history: in 1812, the Grimm’s record orally disseminated folklore which is then codified and calcified into a textual narrative, which over the course of the nineteenth century is continually censored, reshaped, and embellished with visual adornments for a younger, bourgeois readership, before its visual and narrative history is co-opted as source material for the burgeoning film industry in the early to mid-1900s. The illustrated editions I explore below complicate the overall picture, but it is difficult to dispute the complete break that Disney introduces into this reception history. The enduring popularity of Disney adaptations - and particularly the success of the Grimm “princess” films Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959) - not only conditions human expectations and interpretations of the story’s narrative content (setting, music, themes, conclusion, moral etc.), but the preponderance of online discourse on these films feeds artificial intelligence models too. If you ask ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini or any of the other large language models (LLMs) that have emerged in the past few years to reproduce the text (or, in the case of DALL-E, the visuals) of any Disneyfied fairy tale, their predictive text algorithms will, predictably, return content that corresponds to the Disney film version of that story. How can new generations of readers and students resist this tendency and reset their expectations to meet the story with a fresh pair of eyes? Newer illustrated collections of Grimm’s fairy tales offer a variety of starting points for such a reset. Frank Flöthmann’s 2014 Grimms Märchen ohne Worte (Grimms’ Fairy Tales Without Words) , eschews the fairy tale text entirely. His illustrations reposition visual icons from the canon of Grimm illustrations within and alongside other iconographic traditions to present the fairy tales exclusively through non-verbal registers. In Flöthmann’s case, Grimm icons are filtered through the visual registers of stick drawings, children’s comics, and digital-era logograms or emojis. His two-page spread for “Rotkäppchen” (Little Red Cap, fig. 1) artfully and playfully combines conventional editorial markings, street signage, and the structure of comic book panels to (re)present the fairy tale text without words. DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 279 Fig. 1. Two-page spread for “Rotkäppchen” (Flöthmann 4—6) Working through the syntax and content of the visual narrative can be a good starting point for helping students identify the most significant, most conventional icons for each fairy tale. However, it gives them less to sink their teeth into when considering alternatives. Grimms Märchen ohne Worte substitutes sequential visualization for textual narrative, the illustrations reproduce a similar sanitized and truncated version of the narratives they visualize. Like Disney’s cell animated films, Warner Brother’s Looney Tunes, or other comic strip or cartoon creations, Flöthmann’s text treats themes of sex and violence with a wink and a nod, robbing them of their force or consequence. Other illustrators have used conventional means to exploit adult reader familiarity with Grimm iconography to unsettling effect. One of the best-known twentieth-century collections is Maurice Sendak’s The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm, which was first published in 1973 and re-released in 2003. Sendak’s visuals are at once familiar and foreign - his pen and ink illustrations recall the look and feel of early nineteenth-century copper engravings like Cruikshanks’, while his round and whimsical figures allude to the Romantic cherubs of German illustrators like Adrian Ludwig Richter (Bodmer 134). However, the settings and situations that these figures are depicted in suggest alternate readings of canonical framing devices and fairy tale scenes. Many of Sendak’s revisualizations also connect individual Grimm fairy tales to the oral 280 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 storytelling frame. In one example (see fig. 2), the witch in Hansel and Gretel adopts the posture and pose of the grandmotherly narrator - a clear visual allusion to the figure frequently depicted at the beginning of illustrated collections 1 . Unlike many of the genial, smiling storytellers in Mother Goose and other Grimm editions, the gaze and grin of Sendak’s grandmother suggest a figure more ambiguous in nature. The direct glance, exposed canines, and hand gesture that appears half wave, half hex, suggest something uncanny about the figure - and the stories she will tell. Fig. 2. Frontispiece for “Hansel and Gretel” (Sendak 1973), front matter With other illustrations in the volume, Sendak takes a darker tack than many of his predecessors, “avoiding the obvious images and repositioning them as stories for adults” (130). Take, for example, his perspective on Rapunzel. Historically, most illustrators chose to portray this scene from outside the tower, emphasizing Rapunzel’s distance from the prince. Sendak, by contrast, focalizes the image through Rapunzel’s perspective. The foreground is uncomfortably close, DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 281 suggesting a stifling domestic space utterly separate from the flat, decorative castle and landscape that Rapunzel gazes longingly towards. Her hair hangs out the window, hardly visible - and the prince is absent entirely. Like the narrative protagonist, we are powerless to escape the narrative prison. Illustrations like these are an excellent starting point for exploring more drastic visual interventions in the source material. More recent, and more extensive reworkings and adaptations, like Neil Gaiman’s trio of graphic novels Hansel & Gretel (2014) ; Snow, Glass, Apples (2019) ; and The Sleeper and the Spindle (2019) refocalize the narrative around minor characters or “villains” and reframe established themes, characters, and conflicts in the visual vernacular of the graphic novel. The illustrators that Gaiman collaborated with each bring something different to his adaptations. Lorenzo Mattotti’s black-and-white lithographs for Hansel & Gretel use atmospheric darkness and light to capture the stark dichotomies between despair and hope and hunger and satiety in the story. Chris Riddell’s work in The Sleeper and the Spindle recenters the figure of a conscious Briar Rose - a figure most frequently, famously, and often exclusively portrayed in a comatose state. Finally, Colleen Doran’s unflinching depictions of blood, sex, and violence in Snow, Glass, Apples help ground the reader in Gaiman’s bleak, brutal narrative world and justify the queen’s vendetta against her vampiric, romantic rival, Snow White, as the only means for survival. Australian artist Shaun Tan’s photographed sculpture work stands out amongst recent illustrated treatments of the Grimm fairy tales for its creativity and poignance. For each tale, Tan meticulously sculpts, stages, and photographs evocative figures that capture the raw, primordial qualities of the story and its key figures. Tan’s work was commissioned to accompany the German (re)translation 2 of Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales for Young and Old ( Grimms Märchen , published in 2013) , but also appeared in a 2016 English-language collection entitled The Singing Bones. The most salient feature of Tan’s work in Grimms Märchen and The Singing Bones is its inversion of the text-image hierarchy - in Tan’s hands, the images dominate. Whereas the English-language edition of Pullman’s text eschews illustration completely, these two editions accentuate Tan’s minimalist sculpture. This is most prominent in The Singing Bones, which jettisons Pullman’s complete text translations in favor of succinct captions. In this collection, Tan reduces or refines each fairy tale to one central scene, theme, or figure. Tan’s choice of material and form for his illustrations reflects this desire to reduce the tales to their “elemental” qualities: “by paring down and sandpapering these small figures - between 6 cm and 40 cm in height […] Tan has distilled each tale down to its essence and achieved what he calls the bone-like structure of 282 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 the tales” (Lathey). In his illustration for Little Red Cap, we see the eponymous figure perched on a chaise-like wolf, accentuating the danger lurking behind seemingly familiar appearances. Fig. 3. Illustration for “Hansel and Gretel” (Tan 19) Similarly, in his illustration for Hansel and Gretel (Fig. 3), Tan’s witch arises from behind the gingerbread house to capture and imprison the distracted children. The artist’s material choices connect the witch to her magic - she and her house are sculpted from the same clay, and the silver dragées or edible sprinkles, connoting an appealing but unnatural hunger, are mirrored in her eye. Examples such as these present unique opportunities for students to reflect on the central tensions in each of the individual fairy tales, as well as identify and explore continuities and connections between them. One recent collection that has received insufficient scholarly attention was conceived by the fine artist Natalie Frank. Inspired by Jack Zipes’ 2015 retranslation of the 1812-15 first editions , Frank created a series of 75 gouache and chalk DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 283 pastel pieces, which were exhibited in 2015 at the Drawing Center in New York City and the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas - where I was fortunate enough to view them as a graduate student. In her accompanying art book, Tales of the Brothers Grimm (2015) , Frank’s artwork is paired with 36 tales from Jack Zipes Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. In an essay accompanying the collection, art historian Linda Nochlin writes, “Frank’s versions of the familiar and not-so-familiar tales are un-syrupy and anti-Disneyesque, sometimes gruesome. Cruelty and crude eroticism, magic and bizarre fantasy, mark their folkloristic roots; weirdness and irrationality distance them from both everyday life and the moralism of happily ever after” (250). These traits are on full display in Brier Rose III, which emphasizes the objectification and sexual violence inherent in the moments preceding her awakening. In this painting, the princely “savior” is a leering rapist straddling the vulnerable body of the non-consenting, comatose princess. While this rendition reflects an understanding of this scene common among scholars, his stands in stark contrast to the chaste images of gentle, decidedly sexless awakening common to illustrated Grimm collections. In a similar fashion, Little Red Cap I raises the sexual subtexts present in some versions of the protagonists’ final confrontation with the wolf to the level of visual text - a vivid, disrobed Little Red Cap stands facing a reclining wolf lewdly gesturing at his genitals. The opportunity to work with complex and disturbing scenes like these drew Natalie Frank to undertake this project. In a 2015 interview with Artforum, she described the appeal and unique challenge of illustrating the Grimm fairy tales: Arthur Rackham did them, Gustave Doré did some, and Walter Crane, David Hockney, and Maurice Sendak have all done illustrations, but no fine artist has ever tackled a large group of them. When I started to read these fairy tales, I was so taken by them. I’d never read anything like it - they’re so dark, sexual, and violent, and yet I sensed that there were such incredible roles for women in these stories, which I’ve never noticed in most fairy tales. (Bradley) One of the most fraught in Frank’s collection is “All-Fur.” Also translated as “All-Kinds-of-Fur” or “Thousandfurs,” “All-Fur” is Zipes’ rendition of Grimm tale number 65, “Allerleirauh,” a lesser-known tale about humiliation, loss, and royal incest. Following the death of his golden-haired wife, a king sets his eyes on his own daughter as the object of his affection and proposes an incestuous marriage. To forestall this, the princess makes a set of - what she deems - impossible demands: three dresses, “one as golden as the sun, one as silvery as the moon, and one as bright as the stars,” and “a cloak made up of a thousand kinds of pelts and furs” one from each animal in the kingdom (Epstein). When the king manages to procure these items, the princess flees with the cloak. Disguised as 284 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 an animal, she returns to the castle as a kitchen servant but, after thrice proving her worth in the kitchens, is eventually discovered. The story ends with her apparently 3 marrying back into the nobility in a neighboring kingdom. Fig. 4. Natalie Frank’s illustration “All Fur II” from Tales of the Brothers Grimm (2015) The figure of “All-Fur” appears in each of the three images inspired by the story - first, as a visual counterpart to the beautiful, golden-haired princess, then, as a composite figure incorporating the animal connections (Fig. 4), and finally, as a portrait of the princess caught between forms. While the princess appears in each of Frank’s paintings, the king’s unsettling lust takes center stage in All Fur I, the Bacchanalian indecency of his exposed testicles further accentuated by his donkey head. Frank’s decision to foreground the tale’s unresolved concerns about incest recomplicates its otherwise straightforward conclusion - the res- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 285 toration of the princess to the royal family. In this and other images like Fig. 4, the garish contrast between natural, earth tones and “bright, obnoxious colors” is intended to “create an unnatural look” that highlights the unsettling, uncanny elements present in the fairy tales (Bradley). In the same interview, Frank mentions the “carnivalesque slippage” of women exploring gender roles as a central motivation. There is also significant slippage in content between tales - a feature present across oral folklore that Frank wanted to maintain in her art: In these tales you can find everything: sex, violence, magic, animals, transformations. Also, because they were oral tales, many of them contain elements of each other. For instance, Cinderella appears within many other tales as a subset of that story, as in “All-Fur” - one of two stories about incest. I wanted to show some of the well-known tales, such as “Snow White,” and “Briar Rose,” which is “Sleeping Beauty,” but I also wanted to include some of the more obscure ones like “The Ungrateful Son.” (Bradley) Recombined with their source texts, interpictorial paintings like Natalie Frank’s unsettle and - to borrow Jack Zipes’ term once more - contaminate the Grimm fairy tales. Scenes like these compel all students - including those who might otherwise be inclined to dismiss or rationalize uncomfortable contexts of incest or sexual violence - to stop and reflect on the stated and unstated aspects of the narrative. Reading her images alongside and against the sanitized and staid visual (and textual) conventions that preceded them provokes confrontation with the often-uncomfortable subtexts lurking at the edges of the textual narrative. Beyond drawing interpictorial connections within the collection of Grimm fairy tales, fine art illustrations can also be used to help students see the (dis)continuity of their visual interpretation over time. Michelle Aldredge and Corwin Levi’s Mirror, Mirrored is a fascinating combination of fine art and translation that reframes and represents the Grimm fairy tales through their visual history. The collection features original artwork from twenty-nine “established and emerging artists” to accompany E. Yumiko Blackwell’s reinterpretation of Margaret Hunt’s 1884 English-language translation of the seventh edition (1857) of the Grimm fairy tales. Alongside the reimagined text and images, Mirror, Mirrored reorganizes a smaller selection of twenty-five stories into four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. In her preface to the volume, Michelle Aldredge describes the Grimm’s fairy tales as a folkloristic “rescue operation” intended to preserve. Mirror, Mirrored is a rescue operation of another kind - an attempt to “visually liberate” the Grimm fairy tales from “narrow interpretations.” After all, Aldredge reminds us, the “best art opens up meaning instead of closing it down” ( xi ). Like Natalie Frank’s 286 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 illustrations, most of the works in Mirror, Mirrored are intentionally both individual and interpictorial - inviting and utilizing comparison, contrast, and cross-contamination to explore, rather than define, the meaning(s) of the stories. Co-editor and illustrator Corwin Levi’s collages are interwoven throughout the entire collection - sometimes as ornament, sometimes as whole or twopage spreads that connect two or more different stories. Taken as a whole, they present as a fascinating history and commentary on the iconographic traditions and trajectory of the Grimm fairy tales. In the preface to the volume, Levi describes his collages as “repictions” or “repicts” that condense, contrast, and (re) present an amalgamation of decades of Grimm illustrations as a visualization of the stories’ iconographic history. The repicts are all rich visual texts that utilize visual (re)iteration to explore iconographic trends, tendencies, and contrasts. Fig. 5. Little Red Cap repicted by Corwin Levi Some of the most potent are his repicts for Little Red Cap ( Rotkäppchen ), seen in Fig. 5 above. His first repict portrays an array of red and white hoods - the most recognizable icon from the tale, and one that he has (re)imbued with symbolism DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 287 through side-by-side iteration. At end of the story, Levi’s final collage highlights Little Red Cap’s rescue. In this repict, Levi positions Henri le Montaut’s 1865 wood engraved depiction of the hunter cutting open the belly of the wolf as a visual frame and then places smaller images of the hunter - and not Little Red Cap or her grandmother - emerging from its innards. Levi’s choice to highlight the hunter figure alludes to two branches of the multiform’s reception history: 1) to the success and popularity of the Grimm iterations of the Red Riding Hood multiform which feature him prominently, and 2) to others, such as Charles Perrault’s Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, in which Little Red Cap is devoured and not saved at the end. Like the hunter in the Grimm fairy tale, Levi slices open the belly of the story and allows excess, suppressed, and half-digested meaning to (re)emerge into the narrative. How many times has this story been told - and what kinds of fears and figures can emerge through its retelling? In this and all his illustrations for Mirror, Mirrored , Levi’s work deftly dissects the fairy tales’ iconographic tradition while also cleaving or hewing to it intensely. Both his prefatory comments and the repicts themselves affirm the role of the verbal and visual editor in shaping and guiding the reception of the Grimm fairy tales. His strategies of reposturing, repositioning, and reframing the familiar can help push students to move past conceiving the fairy tale narrative and its illustration only as it presents itself and begin critiquing that presentation and exploring alternative moments and means for representing it as they believe it should be seen. Jack Zipes warns of the seductive veneer of the Disneyfied fairy tale: “The diversion of the Disney fairy tale is geared toward nonreflective viewing. Everything is on the surface, one-dimensional, and we are able to delight in one-dimensional portrayal and thinking, for it is adorable, easy, and comforting in its simplicity” (“Breaking the Disney Spell” 434). Each of the illustrated collections I have detailed above punctures that veneer and push readers/ viewers to pause, reflect, and explore. Testing the “readability” of Frank Flöthmann’s visual narratives can help students appreciate the prevalence and ubiquity of Grimm icons, while Natale Frank and Corwin Levi’s interpictorial artwork can help them see the connective tissue - both between individual stories and over lifetimes of storytelling. Similarly, Maurice Sendak’s illustrations and Shaun Tan’s sculpture work can be introduced as interventions and interruptions of the iconographic continuity that accompanies most illustrated collections of Grimms’ fairy tales. Many other textual adaptations and visualizations than the ones listed above may be used in and out of the classroom to help student readers break the Disney spell. In my fairy tale seminars, I always budget at least one or two full class days for students to get their hands on as wide a variety of illustrated editions 288 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 as I can tote to the classroom. Comparing and contrasting dense visualizations of the same or similar stories can help students recognize the significance of artistic and editorial decisions in the storytelling process and explore what might have been otherwise . I find that foregrounding their engagement with a given fairy tale on the level of its visual interpretation also primes them to be open to a variety of critical interpretations of the same text(s) - perspectives that they will encounter through secondary literature in Maria Tatar’s Classic Fairy Tales anthology. In their own way, each of these artist’s interpretations challenges and reframes the interpretive horizons of the fairy tale text, transforming previously buried subtexts into points of visual emphasis and renewed semantic contention. In this context, what once were unseen sights become must-see sights. Notes 1 Stephen King reuses Sendak’s original illustrations for his adaptation of Hansel and Gretel (Harper Collin’s Children’s Books, published in September 2025). 2 Gillian Lathey provides an excellent analysis of the strange, tortuous, transnational publication history of this work in “Nostalgia, Novelty and Innovation: the illustration of Grimms’ tales in the UK in the twenty-first century.” 3 This is one of many possible interpretations of the story’s conclusion. For more on the ambiguity surrounding her re-entry into the monarchy, see Margaret Yocom’s “‘ But Who Are You Really? ’ Ambiguous Bodies and Ambiguous Pronouns in ‘Allerleirauh’” in Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms , edited by folklorists Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill (2012). Works Cited Aldredge, Michelle. “Preface Two: Fairy Tales, Now More Than Ever.” In Mirror, Mirrored: A Contemporary Artist’s Edition of 25 Grimm’s Tales, viii-xiii. Harrisville, NH: Gwarlingo & Uzzlepye Press, 2018. Auden, W. H. “Afterword.” In The Golden Key . By George MacDonald. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967: 81—89. Bodmer, George. “Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane, and Maurice Sendak: The Picture as Literary Fairy Tale.” Marvels & Tales 17, no. 1 (2003): 120—137. Bottigheimer, Ruth B. “Fairy Tale Illustrations and Real World Gender: Function, Conceptualization, and Publication.” Relief 4, no. 2 (2010): 142—157. Bradley, Paige K. “Natalie Frank Speaks About her Exhibition at the Drawing Center.” Interviews. Artforum, 7 April 7 https: / / www.artforum.com/ interviews/ natalie-frankspeaks-about-her-exhibition-at-the-drawing-center-51436 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom 289 Epstein, Ian. “Natalie Frank’s Grim Fairy-Tale Art.” Vulture, 7 May 2015. https: / / www. vulture.com/ 2015/ 05/ natalie-franks-grim-fairy-tale-art.html. “Exhibitions - Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm.” Blanton Museum of Art. 10 August 2022 https: / / blantonmuseum.org/ exhibition/ natalie-frank-the-brothers-grimm/ Flöthmann, Frank. Grimms Märchen ohne Worte. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag Gmbh, 2013. Gaiman, Neil. Hansel & Gretel. Illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti. New York: Raw Junior LLC, 2014. Gaiman, Neil. Snow, Glass, Apples. Illustrated by Colleen Doran. London: Headline Publishing, 2019. Gaiman, Neil. The Sleeper and the Spindle. Illustrated by Chris Riddell. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Translated by Jack Zipes. Illustrated by Andrea Dezsö. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Joosen, Vanessa and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. “Introduction: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Tales in Picturebook Versions of the Twenty-First Century.” Strenæ 18 (2021). Accessed 10 August 2022 http: / / journals.openedition.org/ strenae/ 6515 Lathey, Gillian. “Nostalgia, Novelty and Innovation: The Illustration of Grimms’ Tales in the UK in the Twenty-first Century.” Strenæ 18 (2021). Accessed 10 August 2022. http: / / journals.openedition.org/ strenae/ 6648 Levi, Corwin. “Preface One: Words and Pictures.” In Mirror, Mirrored: A Contemporary Artist’s Edition of 25 Grimm’s Tales . Harrisville, NH: Gwarlingo & Uzzlepye Press, 2018: vi—vii. Levi, Corwin and Michelle Aldredge, eds. Mirror, Mirrored: A Contemporary Artist’s Edition of 25 Grimm’s Tales. Translated by E. Yumiko Blackwell. Harrisville, NH: Gwarlingo & Uzzlepye Press, 2018. Marta, Karen. Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Bologna: Damiani, 2015. “Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm.” The Drawing Center. 10 August 2022 https: / / drawingcenter.org/ exhibitions/ natalie-frank-the-brothers-grimm Nochlin, Linda. “Natalie Frank: The Dark Side of the Fairy Tale.” In Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Bologna: Damiani, 2015: 249—254. Pullman, Philip. Grimms Märchen. Translated by Martina Tichy, illustrated by Shaun Tan. Stuttgart: Aladin Verlag, 2013. Sendak, Maurice. The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm . Translated by Lore Segal and Randall Jarrell, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2003. Spinozzi, Paola. “Accurate Reproduction, Ingenious Representation: Lucy and Walter Crane’s Household Stories, from the Collection of the Bros. Grimm (1882).” Word & Image 30: 3 (2014): 261—272. Tan, Shaun. The Singing Bones . New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2016. Tatar, Maria. “Introduction.” In The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 2017: xi— xxvi. 290 Matthew O. Anderson DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0017 Zipes, Jack. “Breaking the Disney Spell.” In The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 2017: 414 — 435 . Zipes, Jack. “The Contamination of the Fairy Tale.” In Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2001: 99—125. DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 Triumph of the Stump: German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics Marking Victories in the Midst of Physical Loss Fred Yaniga Hillsdale College Abstract: German literature is replete with woe and warfare and all-too frequent tragic endings. One unlikely literary motif reveals an unsuspected wealth of victorious, even uplifting tales from the depths of painful physical loss: amputations and prosthetics. A recent growth in literature concerning this topic has emerged in both the sociological field of Disability Studies (Grayson and Scheurer) as well as within literary studies (Engelstein’s Anxious Anatomy and Ingwersen’s “Prothesen und Cyborgs”). German literature offers countless examples of amputated or prosthetically enhanced figures within this unusual but illustrative motif. This paper focuses on three wellknown stories involving amputations and prosthetics: Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814), the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt” (1819) and Thomas Bernhard’s “Viktor Halbnarr. Ein Wintermärchen nicht für Kinder” (1966). The grotesque nature of the conspicuous injuries and their various prosthetic adaptations are leveraged through literature to elevate fragmented, incomplete human beings and even national identities by highlighting the indefatigable nature of the human spirit. Keywords: German fairy tales, prosthetics, amputations, disability studies, happy endings The canon of German literature has the reputation for being overly filled with depressing tales of woe, black stories of earnest doom and gloom, and an unending supply of depressingly tragic endings. We have all heard the complaint from students and colleagues, or perhaps we have even thought it quietly to ourselves: “Are there no happy endings in German literature? Must these stories always end so tragically? ” The reflex answer is often: “Ja, immer tragisch, 292 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 manchmal komisch-tragisch, aber meistens nur tragisch” which can be followed with enlightening platitudes like “Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof ” or “Das Glück ist nicht immer lustig.” 1 This difficult truth is enough to lead many to abandon their travels through German literature, or at very least, to view it with suspicion and perhaps even scorn. Such was the realization that inspired this paper. Although there are sufficient moments of darkness in German literature, there are also incredible moments of light, triumph and even joy. For example, German literature contains a rich collection of stories involving amputations and prosthetics which seem on point with the reputation of the “Literature of Doom and Gloom.” However, within this niche literary motif, an unsuspected wealth of victorious, even uplifting tales can be identified, and the fairy tale genre lends itself as an ideal conveyer of such tales. These stories of grotesque and painful loss, bodily fragmentation and conspicuous injury are presented not merely as personal and sometimes national tragedies, but are frequently coupled with moments of triumph and introspection about the indominable nature of the human spirit. Two of the stories presented below are classical “amputation stories”: “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt” from the Brothers Grimm and “Viktor Halbnarr” by Thomas Bernhard both feature leg amputees. One story, Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl, is a more abstract and symbolic story of amputation, but one which illustrates the need to beware of different modes of amputation and prosthetics present throughout literature (Ingwersen 174). 2 All three of these stories can be classified as “fairy-tales”, or Märchen , although Peter Schlemihl bears the subtitle “ wundersame Geschichte ” and Thomas Bernhard pays homage to Shakespeare and Heine titling his short story “Ein Wintermärchen.” Each of these stories forces the reader to confront the ugliness of a human body physically fragmented. But the beauty of the fairy tale genre is to allow the story to grow beyond that initial handicap and rather than focus on the limitations, to celebrate the incredible power of the human soul to overcome disability. Perhaps better than any other genre, the fairy tale allows a writer and the reading audience to simultaneously recognize incompleteness in the original human form while refusing to allow that incompleteness to be understood as a compromise of basic human dignity. In an interesting extension of the amputation/ prosthetic motif, each of the fairy tale stories analyzed below has a connected historical national relevance as well in which the amputation element plays a significant role. Each of these fairy tale stories could and should also be read within their historical and political contexts. This motif then takes on a larger symbolic meaning beyond the affected individual human body, and then must be understood as a statement or plea for lamenting a national fragmentation, reconstituting or developing the DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 293 idea of a nation, and even striving for solutions to overcome contemporary political restraints and limitations. The genre of the Märchen , therefore, allows for a uniquely powerful and even visceral illustration of both personal and national struggles while allowing for the celebration of creative and hopeful triumphs in the midst of desperate situations. When talking about bodily fragmentations and the abilities of the human spirit, we can look to philosophers throughout the ages who have agreed that the human soul is active, mobile and unrestrained by the limitations of the body. Beginning with Aristotle’s treatise “On the Soul” the philosopher takes up a question concerning the essence of the human condition and the role of the body-soul relationship. The Greeks were keenly interested in not only the relationship of the body to the soul, but particularly in how human beings can endeavor to know things about their own nature, and therefore, what comprises a human being exactly. Aristotle struggles with the question of whether the soul and the body can share a kind of unity. In concluding Book II, Chapter 1 of “On the Soul” he summarizes saying: “From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body” (643). For Aristotle, it is this inability to separate body and soul which maintains the ever-important “essential whatness” or essence of that body. This is central to our discussion of amputated and prosthetically enhanced bodies in German tales. For if the amputated central figures would somehow be diminished, not only in their bodily form, but in that loss also be deprived of some “essential whatness,” this exploration would be a fruitless endeavor. The amputated person would simply be less of a person condemned by this loss to be evaluated as such. But Aristotle anticipates this discussion stating with mathematical certitude in Book 1, Chapter 4: If from a number a number or a unit is subtracted, the remainder is another number; but plants and a many animals when divided continue to live, and each segment is thought to retain the same kind of soul. (638) If this principal can be applied to “plants and many animals”, the same may also be true for human beings: the amputation of one part does not diminish the “essential whatness” of that person. This, at least, was the consensus in ancient times. However, moving from antiquity into modernity we can see an evolution within the idea of this body-soul unity. René Descartes argues quite differently than Aristotle in Part IV of his Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in Sciences (1637) that the soul is immaterial and separate from the body. What seems like a major discrepancy, and likely is for some philosophical debates (i.e. the question of the soul’s immortality), bears little consequence, however, for the particular argument 294 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 of this paper. Can the soul continue to exist within a fragmented, amputated body? Both philosophers insist in the affirmative. Might the soul actually be capable of transcending the limitations of that body? Here, too, both thinkers seem to agree. Descartes writes: “Accordingly this ‘I’, that is to say, the Soul* by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body; and would not stop being everything it is, even if the body were not to exist” (29). Whether Aristotle is talking about the soul as an “essential whatness” of a being, or Descartes is discussing a soul as separate from the body but essential for the existence of the “I,” there no doubt that both thinkers see the soul not only as active, mobile and necessary for human flourishing, but furthermore completely capable of overcoming physical limitations and handicaps. Stefani Engelstein tracks the development of this argument into the 18 th and 19 th centuries by reviewing scientific work being done on epigenesis and regeneration with plants and animals in those centuries. In her 2008 book Anxious Anatomy Engelstein applied theories from that time to literary narratives of E.T.A. Hoffmann and others . Quoting widely from early naturalists’ studies, she describes theoretical attempts to understand how certain plant and animal organisms possessed regenerative power not only to heal, but also to regrow lost limbs and avoid death (153). Living bodies, so one of these theories, intrinsically know their natural form and attempt to regain or replace this form by means of epigenesis (154). Engelstein suggests that E.T.A. Hoffmann borrowed the name for his mad-scientist professor figure Spallanzani in Der Sandmann from one of these 19 th century naturalist theoreticians, Lazzaro Spallanzani who worked exhaustingly on epigenesis in snails (158). With humans, application of this epigenetic theory directly would run into obvious limitations. While healing is commonly seen in humans, the regrowth of limbs would be more than unusual. Engelstein endeavors to overcome these biological limitations by introducing Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto.” This combination of human organisms with natural and mechanical elements certainly works to accommodate the human longing to regain a semblance of the original, natural, and organic form, albeit with the help of prosthetic enhancements rather than epigenetic regrowth. Still, the idea that amputations in our human literary figures might provoke some kind of enhancement of the soul remains, at this point, a mystery. Returning to Aristotle’s basic idea that “the essential whatness” of a being remains despite the negation of a singular part, and viewing this together with observations made from several examples of “amputation literature” may get us closer to a solution. There is frequently evidence within these amputation events, not only of a continuation of soulful presence in the body, but in spe- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 295 cific and extraordinary examples, a clear demonstration of magnification of the human soul in the remainder of that amputated body . The stories presented here briefly, are examples of that triumphant magnification of soul within, or perhaps because of, the amputated body. Colleagues in Sociology and those working within the area of Disability Studies have already developed this idea extensively. Erik Grayson and Maren Scheuer have published a collection of essays entitled Amputation in Literature and Film (2021) which challenge the normal perception of people living with the pain and loss of amputations. In their book, examples of capable, athletic and even sensually alluring prosthesis wearers come to the fore. In the fields of Cultural Studies and Technology Studies, the topic has been taken up with terms such as “cybernetics” and the question of the “posthuman” condition (Hayles). Katherine Hayles envisions this condition as one which can be liberating and humanizing in unique and novel achievement. Sigmund Freud in his 1930 work Das Unbehagen in der Kultur introduces the concept of “Der Prothesengott” in which human beings, through an indirect, non-connected interface with their environment, are able to “put on accessory organs” (Freud) to achieve “Märchenwünsche” - “fairy-tale desires.” These achievements must not always be understood in terms of Haraway’s Cyborgs or even Freud’s “Prothesengott.” Quite simply, we might take Aristotle at his word and understand that there is more there than is visibly there when it comes to human beings. When read with this focus, these German fairy tales, built around amputation and prosthetically completed characters, highlight this special interplay of the human body and soul. This highlight is not only strangely intriguing, but certainly also inspiring. Adding to the personal stories of overcoming handicap and loss, these stories also add something to the abstract discussion surrounding the national-historic context of their times. Each tale, in its own way, comments on historic national context of Germany and Austria in their various stages of building and refiguring the national psyche. The argument could be made then, that these tales offer both personal moments of triumph over difficulty alongside national moments of memory which provide soothing for frustration, fragmentation and loss and may even merit that long sought-after “happy end” status. In the second edition of the Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1819) we find included the tale of a soldier and his band of misfits who outsmart a king and wager their way to unlikely riches. We meet this soldier just as he has been denied his just wages following the cessation of fighting. He vows to return to the king and demand his payment once he gathers the right fighters around him. First, he finds a man in the forest so strong that he can pull entire trees out of the ground. Next, he adds to the troop a hunter who can shoot out the eye 296 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 of a fly from two miles away. Later, he comes across a man who can blow hard enough through one nostril to turn a windmill. Finally, our soldier secures for his team a runner who proudly introduces himself: Ich bin ein Läufer, und damit ich nicht zu schnell springe, habe ich mir das eine Bein abgeschnallt. Wenn ich mit zwei Beinen laufe, so geht’s geschwinder, als ein Vogel fliegt. (Grimm 370—371) For our purposes, it is this fantastic runner with the detachable prosthetic leg who is our centerpiece, but needless to say, each of the named “misfits” has an important role to play in the story. In true fairy tale fashion, the king has offered the hand of his daughter in marriage for the first man who can beat her in a foot race. Our runner straps on his prosthetic leg and leads the race easily from the outset. But of course, as this is a fairy tale, he stops midway for a short nap. Shortly thereafter, the king’s daughter passes him by laughing at his stupidity. Noticing the dilemma through his powerful scope, the hunter shoots the horse-skull pillow out from under the runner’s head to wake him, and, once again on his feet, the runner easily wins the race with ten minutes to spare. At the end of the day, the soldier and his band of misfits carry off the collected wealth of the entire kingdom. Despite the king’s best efforts, there is nothing he can do to stop them: They have beaten him fair and square and have outthought him at every turn. With great exasperation the king finally declares: “Laßt die Kerle gehen, die haben etwas an sich” (375). And truly there is somethings special about them, for, even in their seemingly outward awkwardness, incompleteness and handicap, they demonstrate that indominable spirit, Aristotle’s “essential whatness” of a human being, which allows them to triumph over seemingly impossible challenges. What is perhaps just as interesting as this simple “amputation story” itself is the Nachleben , or afterlife, of the story. This widely popular Grimm story has been understandably adapted many times over. Popular screen adaptations (Simon 1972 and Janson 2014), however, attempt to make it more palatable by removing the amputee from the story. Instead of the grotesquely fragmented body with its disturbing prosthetic replacement, modern interpreters have given the runner an iron boot (Simon 1972) or an anchor-laden backpack ( Janson 2014) to slow down his running. Many Grimm fairy-tales have been edited for commercial purposes or to appear less objectionable, thus compromising their original “Grimmness” (Zipes). Here especially, the runner’s amputated and fragmented body are absolutely necessary for a complete demonstration of the “triumph of the stump.” What might be seen as a harmless alteration might also rightly be criticized as a wrong-headed and poorly understood interpretation. For to DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 297 remove the amputee and his particular handicap (a fragmented body) diminishes the Aristotelian power of the soul, if you will, to re-organize the organism and transform what might be easily be viewed as a lack, a deformity, “eine Missbildung” into the central element of victory over mundane and passive completeness. Contemporary polite society harbors a fear of or even pointed revulsion when confronted with the fragmented body. Censors and well-meaning interpreters should, however, consider preserving one of the Grimm Brothers’ original intentions in this amputation story. As the soldier says as he adds each new member to his team: “Wenn wir sechs zusammen sind, sollten wir wohl durch die ganze Welt kommen” (370). If the lessons of solidarity and resiliency of the human spirit are be taught and learned, they require their original form, even if that original form is an amputated stump. 3 The Brothers Grimm allow the soldier’s prosaic fairy tale declaration at the end of “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt” to comment not only on the overcoming of individual, personal handicap, but perhaps to bear simultaneously a deeper national commentary as well. At the time of the publication of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen , the German nation was merely a dream. With the Napoleonic occupation of German lands only recently ended, and nationhood still decades away, the Grimms were gathering stories meant to inspire Germans to believe in exactly the kind of solidarity, unity and indominable spirit which the soldier proclaims at the end of the fairy tale. The use of a runner with a prosthetic leg surrounded by a mighty team of triumphant misfits seems to fit this narrative quite well. Just five years before the first publication of “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt,” Adalbert von Chamisso, a refugee from the French Revolution, published his well-known novella, Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814) . In this fantastic adventure, our title figure Peter Schlemihl endures a rough sea voyage in order to meet and do business with a certain Mr. Thomas John. When he finally locates Mr. John, he finds him in the countryside accompanied by a small party of merry-makers. With them there is a quiet, inconspicuous “grey man” who, quite magically, is able to produce from his coat pockets everything that John demands: bandages for a cut finger, a telescope, food and drink, even expensive Turkish carpets are produced. Upon request, and without raising a comment, the grey man finally brings out a tent, and even three horses complete with saddles and harnesses: Mir war schon lang unheimlich, ja graulich zumute; wie ward mir vollends, als beim nächst ausgesprochenen Wunsch ich ihn noch aus seiner Tasche drei Reitpferde, ich sage dir, drei schöne, große Rappen mit Sattel und Zeug herausziehen sah! (26) 298 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 None of the guests pay the grey man any attention, and Peter Schlemihl, a complete outsider in this party, finds himself alone with man who begins to converse with him: Während der kurzen Zeit, wo ich das Glück genoß, mich in Ihrer Nähe zu befinden, habe ich, mein Herr, einige Male - erlauben Sie, daß ich es Ihnen sage - wirklich mit unaussprechlicher Bewunderung den schönen, schönen Schatten betrachten können, den Sie in der Sonne und gleichsam mit einer gewissen edlen Verachtung, ohne selbst darauf zu merken, von sich werfen, den herrlichen Schatten da zu Ihren Füßen. (28) The grey man admires Schlemihl’s shadow, and the Faustian bargain ensues. Schlemihl agrees to sell his shadow in exchange for a magical sack, the famous “Fortunati Glücksäckel,” from which an endless supply of gold coins can be taken at will. Topp! Der Handel gilt; für den Beutel haben Sie meinen Schatten. Er schlug ein, kniete dann ungesäumt vor mir nieder, und mit einer bewundernswürdigen Geschicklichkeit sah ich ihn meinen Schatten vom Kopf bis zu meinen Füssen leise von dem Grase lösen, aufheben, zusammenrollen und falten und zuletzt einstecken. (29) What follows this “shadow-ectomy” is the tragic tale of Peter Schlemihl trying and failing to make his way through the world, but now without the help of his shadow. Immediately he encounters an old woman on the road who yells to him: “Watch out, Sir, you have lost your shadow” (24), and a group of street kids begin throwing clods of manure at him yelling: “Ordentliche Leute pflegen ihren Schatten mit sich zu nehmen, wenn sie in die Sonne gingen” (24). In order to distract these detractors, Schlemihl throws gold coins at them and flees into an elegant hotel, which, luckily enough, faces north and assists him in avoiding the sun. But no matter what he tries, going out only at night, keeping to the indoors, even hiring an artist to paint him a new shadow, all of these attempts fall short and he is again and again exposed as being an incomplete human being, missing his shadow and therefore cursed to live his life as a lowly and sorrowful, albeit wealthy, amputee. The grey man returns later and offers Schlemihl the return of his shadow in exchange for his soul. 4 Schlemihl declines the offer: Ich will Ihnen auch weiter nichts von meinem Habe verkaufen, sei es auch um den angebotenen Preis meines Schattens, und unterschreibe also nichts. Daraus läßt sich auch abnehmen, daß die Verkappung, zu der Sie mich einladen, ungleich belustigender für Sie als für mich ausfallen müßte; halten Sie mich also für entschuldigt, und da es einmal nicht anders ist - laßt uns scheiden! (52) DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 299 This turns out to be the wisest decision Schlemihl makes throughout the entire story. Only a short time later the grey man appears again to torment our friend even more. Schlemihl inquires about Sir Thomas John, and the grey man begins laughing, and reaching into his bag, pulls out by the hair, none other than the blue-lipped form of Sir Thomas John who speaks as from the depths of hell: “Justo judicio Dei judicatus sum; justo judicio Dei condemnatus sum.” (68) - “I have been judged and condemned by the just judgement of God.” Schlemihl has avoided eternal damnation, but his disfigurement has nonetheless condemned him to a life apart from polite society. Schlemihl wears out his boots wandering aimlessly, mostly at night. He decides to buy a used pair of boots at a church festival market, and this is where his luck takes a fortunate turn. These boots prove to be seven-league boots, an orthotic footwear that allows him to pursue a new life of intense and accelerated botanical studies. Striding faster than lightening around the globe, Schlemihl is overjoyed by his new life as a solitary botanist until one day he is surprised by a polar bear, falls into freezing water, and catches a deadly cold. He is just barely able to save himself and wakes up in a hospital which bears his very name: “ SCHLEMIHLIUM ” the sign in the recovery hall reads. No one recognizes him because of his long beard and strange clothes. They actually mistake him for a wandering Jew. But it seems that his old friends, using his long since abandoned money, have opened a charity hospital for the poor in his name. The patients are even reminded, by means of another sign hanging in the recovery room, to pray for the initiator and benefactor of the hospital, Peter Schlemihl (76). Clearly, this is a different kind of “amputation-story.” Moritz Ingwersen, in his 2020 book Behinderung, argues that prosthetics must be understood not only as materially attached technologies, but as cultural metaphors which are simultaneously constructions of identity (74). This story hints at the feelings of displacement and fragmentation of identity from which Chamisso himself certainly suffered as a transplanted refugee in German lands. It symbolically takes on the message of an amputated identity and the attempt to restore to completeness that fragmented human nature with the help of a prosthetic identity (wandering botanist) and a prosthetic orthotic device (seven-league boots). We cannot help but think that a story of symbolic and allegorical amputation such as this must have special meaning among a people historically so divided, politically carved up, and tragically separated as the German people have been throughout the centuries. At very least, Chamisso provides a truly German “Happy-End” to this “wundersame Geschichte” - Schlemihl recovers fully and again takes up his very productive scientific studies promising to donate his Latin manuscripts to the Berlin University before his death (79). Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte is a story of an amputated identity completed with 300 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 the help of prosthetics and even magnified in fulfillment by the experience and overcoming of bodily fragmentation. Until now this essay has regarded literary examples from the 19 th century which include both a classical Grimm fairy tale and a novella written as a kind of Kunstmärchen . Before crossing into the 20 th century with Thomas Bernhard’s self-proclaimed “Wintermärchen,” it might be worthwhile to consider why the fairy tale genre is so effective in presenting these very challenging stories to a reading audience. The fairy tale genre clearly gives the writer the opportunity to present the unpresentable in literary form. This means that ideas which would otherwise be unacceptable due to social mores, political realities, religious taboos, etc., now have a field in which the reader is able to access them and engage more freely and without threat of direct repression. This brief literary suspension of disbelief, however, provides a powerful opportunity for new ideas to be tried out, and, if found fruitful, to grow and expand. The idea that an amputee could make a useful contribution to a military team (“Sechse kommen durch die Welt”) or that a man deprived of his shadow might derive life-fulfilling assistance from prosthetic seven-league boots is revolutionary. But the fact is, there are thousands of readers suffering very real disabilities who can take inspiration and hope from these uplifting stories. The fairy tale makes possible what the real world often rejects or derides. The triumph of the stump, then, comes when real people can engage with these tales and gain for themselves the hope that they need to carry themselves beyond their disability and into a productive new life. Thomas Bernhard’s moving little tale “Viktor Halbnarr” features just such a hero. First published in 1966 in a volume entitled Dichter erzählen Kindern and then again later in his 1979 collection Erzählungen , Bernhard directs our attention from the very start to the significance of the genre. By subtitling “Viktor Halbnarr” as “Ein Wintermärchen” he echoes Heinrich Heine’s satirical epic poem “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen,” and perhaps even Shakespeare’s problem play with a happy ending, The Winter’s Tale . By consciously making these connections, Bernhard is engaging with a corpus of literature which considers both the political and real-world ramifications of storytelling. These literary texts are not simply written and read and left to rot in the forgotten libraries of time. They are picked up later, strapped on by others, put to work for new readers and writers and over time they can accumulate potency and new potential. Bernhard’s bizarre tale features a legless protagonist “Viktor” who straps on his prosthetic wooden legs and takes on a ludicrous 800 Schilling bet with a local mill owner. The bet is that he, Viktor, could traverse the high forest DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 301 road between the alpine towns of Traich and Föding. It is dark and snowing, and still, Viktor insists that he undertake the journey and, hopefully, will arrive at the doors of the church in Traich before the stroke of midnight (91, 93). This is no easy journey, even for a person with legs. Bernhard tells us this through his narrator and second figure in the story, the doctor, who is making a similar journey that night. The doctor is on his way from Traich to Föding to visit a sick patient. The narrating doctor calls the high forest road between Traich and Föding “tödlich” - deadly, even for the healthiest of travelers (91). Halbnarr has forgotten about his handicap in the heat of the bet, but this does not change the fact that he lost those legs eight years ago in a train accident. Now, he has fallen and broken both prosthetic wooden legs in the midst of this foolish journey: “Ich habe auf einmal vergessen, dass ich Holzbeine habe, keine eigenen, ich habe geglaubt, dass ich wieder eigene Beine habe! ” (91). Like the Good Samaritan in St. Luke’s gospel (Luke 10, 25—37), the doctor, who literally stumbles over the prone amputee while making his sick visit (90) takes pity and helps the crippled man, thus saving him from a certain and miserable death in the snow. In the course of carrying Halbnarr, and the doctor does not fail to comment on the irony of the name - “man denke, er hieß Halbnarr! ” (91) - the doctor hears of why the man would undertake such a ridiculous challenge. Halbnarr tells him, that even though he did not believe himself that he could accomplish the feat, he took on the bet “weil man ja nichts unversucht, keine gute Gelegenheit, sich zu verbessern, ungenützt vorbeigehen lassen solle” (92). Halbnarr, for his part, while lamenting the loss of the bet, rejoices in beating death, and does not himself miss the irony of being saved by a doctor, “von einem Vertretter der Hohen Medizin” (93). As if this miraculous deliverance were not enough, Bernhard has his doctor-narrator carry the legless Halbnarr, splintered wooden legs and all, through the snow and the dark of night, so efficiently and quickly that they arrive at the church in Föding at exactly the stroke of midnight. The mill owner is there and with no small amount of disappointment, pays out eight one-hundred Schilling notes, grumbling all the while - “gewettet ist gewettet” (94). The doctor then carries Halbnarr to the nearby inn and pays in advance for a bed for the night. On their parting, Halbnarr tells the doctor that he plans to use the 800 Schilling to buy a pair of leather boots (94). Indeed, he won the bet, but lost his prosthetic legs which cost him 2000 Schilling. And the doctor leaves thinking: “Was für ein Mensch. […] Ist der verrückt? ” (95). This fantastic story of Viktor Halbnarr would not be a true fairy tale without an imaginative ending in which children of every age must take delight - and for this they would not even need an understanding of the ironical allusions to Heine or the gospel story at all. Thomas Bernhard is clearly up to the task 302 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 here. The key to understanding the story more fully, however, lays not in the confounding ending, but in the beginning. At the start of the tale, our doctor is particularly perplexed and frustrated, commenting that his patient suffers from a horrific “Kopfkrankheit” which is known in medical books, but for which no one has determined the causes (90). This tragic reality leads our good doctor into a state of malaise and helplessness which he blames further on his own “Vorliebe für das Nichtstun” (90). The fact that he stumbles upon and is able to help the doomed Halbnarr, raises his spirits and lends him the energy and purpose which he had lacked heretofore. What for Halbnarr, and perhaps even for the doctor’s hopeless patient, was a nonsensical journey, is indeed a very meaningful and life-affirming encounter for our Good Samaritan doctor. Those horrific and seemingly senseless amputations suffered eight years previous become the motivator for a courageous (albeit foolish) act by Viktor, and a selfless and heroic act by the doctor. Like both “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt” and Peter Schlemihl , Bernhard’s winter tale of “Viktor Halbnarr” and his prosthetic adventures serves a double purpose. On the one hand, Viktor (the ironic victor of the tale) emerges triumphant despite his physical handicap. On the other, Viktor could also be seen as a symbol of modern Austria. The depiction of this country limping and dragging itself out of the wreckage of two 20 th century wars is powerful. The devastation of war has left the nation physically amputated, reduced in size and status. And spiritually, any mid-century Austrian certainly faced questions about what “Austria” even means now in this new historic reality. There is no author better than Thomas Bernhard at throwing the ugliness of that Austrian situation right into the reader’s face: this once great empire has fallen, has been duped and has acted stupidly to the point of losing almost everything. And yet there is hope, and that hope emerges in the darkest, coldest most truly Austrian setting possible. 5 What is the meaning and purpose of literature if not to develop our minds and improve our hearts? Franz Kafka tells us: “Ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.” These amputation stories will certainly have the effect of Kafka’s axe on many readers. We are often shaken, frightened and maybe even disgusted at the sight of physical deformity, the gruesome depiction of fragmented limbs and awkward prostheses. These stories force us to look at the ugliness of an amputated stump and yet recognize the dignity and complete humanity of persons in these bodies making their way through the world. These stories have the power to engage our imagination and offer hopeful solutions not only to individuals, but in some contexts, even to wider national audiences as well. The possibility of the human soul extending beyond and overcoming the DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics 303 limitations of a misfortune, a handicap or disability is more than inspirational, it gives hope for not only the physically challenged, but for others with less obvious handicaps as well. The coupling of biological reality with mechanical ingenuity bears testimony to both an innate human recognition of original form and a longing to strive beyond the limitations of that form. Others will expand this idea to challenge the historic and traditional concepts of the ideal human form and how this ideal is being changed and even surpassed. Most importantly for the purposes of this essay is to demonstrate that stories like these can lead us to greater human empathy with those who have suffered, who have been fragmented and physically damaged, and stories like these must certainly have a place in our curriculum. They can also help us shed light on difficult historical realities which bear their own psychological difficulties not only on a personal level, but often on a national level as well. These amputation stories rise to highlight moments of human courage, creativity and that indominable Aristotelian spirit which return joy to our discipline by truly allowing us to celebrate the triumph of the stump. Notes 1 The opening dedication to Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 film Ali. Angst essen Seele auf . 2 Ingwersen states: “Für einen kulturwissenschaftlichen Zugang zum Phänomen Behinderung ist es unausweichlich, die Prothese gleichzeitig als am Körper materialisierte Technologie wie auch als produktive kulturelle Metapher zu verstehen” (74). Chamisso’s use of Peter Schlemihl‘s amputated shadow and procurement of prosthetic-like seven-league boots seem to fit this cultural metaphor perfectly. 3 An example of this in the positive would be the widley publicized announcement from The European Space Agency (ESA) that John McFall, a British surgeon with a prosthetic leg would become the first ever “Parastronaut” travelling to the International Space Station in an upcoming mission. 4 Goethe’s Faust had been published in 1808, only six years earlier, and there are many indications that Chamisso was reading Faust as he wrote Schlemihl. 5 While the references to Heine’s “Wintermärchen” and Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale” have already been made, we might here also think about Bernhard’s clear reference to Adalbert Stifter’s “Bergkristall” with all its fierce winter-time destructive beauty and Christian imagery mixed in. 304 Fred Yaniga DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0018 Works Cited Aristotle. The works of Aristotle. “De Anima - On the Soul.” Encyclopædia Britannica . Translated into English by J.A. Smith . Ed. William D. Ross. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952. 631—668. Bernhard, Thomas. “Viktor Halbnarr.” Erzählungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979. Chamisso, A. von. “Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte.” Sämtliche Werke in zwei Bänden / Adalbert von Chamisso. Ed. Werner Feudel und Christel Laufer . Munich: Hauser, 1982. Descartes, René. “A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. 1637.” Translated by Ian Maclean. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 18 September 2024 https: / / rauterberg.employee.id.tue.nl/ lecturenotes/ DDM110%20CAS/ Descartes-1637%20Discourse%20on%20Method.pdf Engelstein, Stefani. “Automotous or Automata.” In Anxious Anatomy. The Conception of the Human Form in Literary and Naturalistic Discourses. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008: 154—177. Freud, Sigmund. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1930. 17 September 2024 https: / / www.projekt-gutenberg.org/ freud/ unbehag/ chap003.html/ Grayson, Erik and Maren Scheurer. Amputation in Literature and Film. Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of Loss. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021. Grimm, Jacob, Wilhelm Grimm. “Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt.” In Kinder- und Hausmärchen: Ausgabe letzter Hand mit den Originalanmerkungen der Brüder Grimm . Ed. Heinz Rölleke . Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001: 339—369. Haraway, Donna J. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism for the 1980s.” Socialist Review , 15 (2) 1985: 65—107. Hayles, Katherine. How we became Posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Ingwersen, Moritz. “Prothesen und Cyborgs.” In Behinderung . Ed. S. Hartwig. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2020. Kafka, Franz. “Brief an Oskar Pollak, Prag am 27. Januar, 1904.” 18 September 2024 https: / / homepage.univie.ac.at/ werner.haas/ 1904/ br04-003.htm/ Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt. Dir. Uwe Janson. Askania Media Filmproduktion GmbH, 2014. Sechse kommen durch die Welt. Dir. Rainer Simon. DEFA, 1972. Zipes, Jack. Grimm Legacies: The Magic Spell of the Grimm’s Folk and Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 Faustine in a Fairy Tale Kyung Lee Gagum Midwestern State University, Texas Abstract: In a fairy tale, the social rules and exceptions are flexible, and the social hierarchy is in place precisely to display potential flexibility. In this research, Kore Yamazaki’s Frau Faust (2017) serves as a transmodern fairy tale retelling of the Faustian legend, challenging social boundaries by reimagining Faust as an adolescent female who pursues educational goals beyond her prescribed social status and gender role. Yamazaki employs the trope of absentation , defined by Vladimir Propp (1968) as a hero or family member leaving the security of home. Johanna Faust enacts this trope when she signs a contract with the devil and departs to satisfy her innate drive for knowledge - an opportunity otherwise unattainable due to her gender and social position. Through this contract, she secures the scholarship she desires, transcending societal constraints. In this fairy tale manga, Johanna is not confined by social expectations; instead, she actively challenges her marginalized position, and the educational barriers imposed on her. Yamazaki’s female Faust, across the five-volume series, contests the legitimacy of the dominant male Faustian legend. Her portrayal of the female Faust diverges from both the traditional male Faust, who pursues self-fulfillment through the quest for knowledge, and the figure of Gretchen, who guides Faust toward repentance and redemption. Instead, Yamazaki’s female Faust transcends the socially prescribed and gendered roles imposed by society, positioning her as a fairy tale protagonist who surpasses the limitations of these conventional narratives. Keywords: fairy tale, transmodern, Faustian, manga, gender Manga that engages a wide range of assigned gender topoi often appears in the shōjo genre, not only to challenge conventional gender roles but also to offer a space for critical reflection. These narratives frequently interrogate and subvert normative constructions of gender, cultivating a discursive space for both critique and imaginative reconfiguration. Among such explorations, gender-bend- 306 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 ing has emerged as a notable and recurrent theme - particularly in shōjo manga, Japanese comics primarily aimed at an adolescent female readership. 1 This study examines Frau Faust (2017) by Kore Yamazaki as a transmodern retelling of the Faustian legend, one that synthesizes the narrative conventions of shōjo manga and fairy tale traditions with elements of canonical European literature. In doing so, the text engages in a critical dialogue on gender identity, fluidity, and embodiment, positioning itself at the intersection of genre hybridity and gender discourse. Yamazaki’s five-volume manga centers on Johanna Faust, a character whose gender presentation shifts dramatically over the course of the narrative: initially appearing as a young woman, Johanna adopts a male guise following a demonic pact, later returning to her female form. Her quest to recover the dismembered and dispersed body parts of her demon companion sealed away by the Inquisition - operates both as a literal journey and as an allegorical reckoning with trauma, identity, and embodiment. As an immortal whose injuries cause her to physically regress in age, Johanna queers normative understandings of time, gender, and selfhood. These themes are further complicated by her mentorship of a young boy, Marion, whose relationship with Johanna foregrounds fluid dynamics of desire, care, and becoming. The manga ultimately constructs a narrative space where identity is neither fixed nor binary, but persistently in flux. This study approaches Frau Faust through a queer theoretical lens in order to move beyond conventional feminist readings focused primarily on female empowerment or resistance to patriarchal structures. Queer theory offers a more nuanced approach to interrogating essentialist binaries and opens up possibilities for understanding gender as performative, contingent, and unstable. Drawing especially on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s critique of binary thinking in sexuality and gender, this study foregrounds the ways in which the visual grammar of manga - through panel composition, visual metaphor, and the serialized rhythm of storytelling - renders gender fluidity not only visible but experientially present (Sedgwick 1990). 2 Johanna’s mutable appearance, layered relationships, and emotional ambiguity present a character whose identity resists stable categorization and invites multiple readings. Through a queer theoretical analysis of Yamazaki’s reimagined Faust within the symbolic and cyclical framework of the fairy tale, this study argues that Frau Faust destabilizes normative gender constructs and offers a compelling meditation on the fluidity of selfhood, desire, and power. Ultimately, the manga emerges as a transmodern fairy tale that reinterprets a canonical Western myth through a cross-cultural and queer Faustine in a Fairy Tale 307 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 lens, contributing to broader conversations on identity and representation in contemporary graphic literature. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust mobilizes the fairy tale genre to interrogate the instability of identity, the queerness of transformation, and the performative nature of selfhood through a narrative structure that resists closure and embraces perpetual becoming. Yamazaki explicitly frames Frau Faust as a fairy tale - a genre that, as scholars such as Jack Zipes, Kay Turner, and Pauline Greenhill argue, is inherently “queer” in its structure, themes, and refusal of stability (Turner and Greenhill 3). This queerness is embodied in Johanna Faust, whose shifting gender, age, and identity reflect the genre’s transformative potential. The opening scene introduces a male Faust in doll form, narrated by Johanna with the quintessential fairy tale phrase, “A long time ago, in a far-off place, there was a man named Faust” (Yamazaki 1: 3). This familiar trope immediately situates the narrative within fairy tale conventions. At the same time, Johanna’s dual role as both narrator and character destabilizes clear distinctions - not only between storyteller and subject, but also between fiction and self. As she tells Faust’s story while existing within it, Johanna becomes both creator and creation. In doing so, the narrative suggests that storytelling is not merely an act of crafting fiction but also a mode of self-construction. Fiction and self-become intertwined, as Johanna’s identity is both revealed and shaped through the tale she tells. Within the fairy tale framework of the manga, the Faust doll serves a dual purpose. First, it anchors the story’s magical realm, marking the tale’s entry into a fantastical mode. Second, it foreshadows the arrival of magic and transformation. This dual function deepens the narrative’s cohesion, allowing Yamazaki to embed symbolic elements early on that resonate throughout the text. The doll becomes more than an object - it is a liminal figure that mediates between narrative layers, gender identities, and visual codes. Yamazaki’s integration of fairy tale motifs strengthens this commitment to queerness. By embedding the Faustian narrative within a timeless, placeless fairy tale world, Yamazaki creates space for transformation without destination, for becoming without conclusion. The tale’s opening and closing frames mirror one another, suggesting cyclical structure rather than linear progression - a visual echo of Johanna’s unsettled identity. Yamazaki deepens this framing by titling the first chapter “The Man from the Fairy Tale,” an explicit gesture that positions the story within tradition while also signaling subversion. As Turner and Greenhill note, “Fairy tales are queer […] odd, strange-making, eccentric, different, and yet attractive” (4). Frau Faust inhabits this space of difference, using fairy tale logic not to affirm moral order but to explore ambiguity, instability, and fluidity. Johanna’s representa- 308 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 tion evolves throughout the narrative. She is initially introduced as a female traveling scholar, later revealed through retrospective sequences to have previously lived as an aging male alchemist, and ultimately returns to a youthful female form that regresses in age with each instance of physical damage. These transformations are not merely isolated narrative devices but function as visual and symbolic articulations of identity as inherently unstable and mutable. This progression signals a conceptual shift in the narrative’s treatment of embodiment and selfhood. Johanna’s continual metamorphosis resonates with queer theory’s critique of fixed identity categories, particularly in its subversion of binary gender norms. By rendering Johanna’s form as fluid and in constant flux, Yamazaki not only queers the character but also reconfigures the genre itself, positioning the fairy tale as a space for ongoing processes of becoming rather than resolution or fixity. Framing Frau Faust within the mutable logic of the fairy tale allows Yamazaki to enact a profound reimagining of mythic authority through queered narrative structures and character embodiment. Johanna’s presence within this structure offers a radical intervention in mythic authority. She is not a female Faust cast in the mold of Goethe’s male scholar, nor is she a Gretchen figure redeemed through suffering. She is neither heroine nor martyr but a liminal, self-authored subject who occupies and exceeds both roles. Like the shape-shifting figures of folklore and fairy tale, Johanna inhabits a narrative space defined by transformation and ambiguity. As Julie Nagoshi argues, feminizing the male subject disrupts the binary logic of male superiority and female inferiority - not by inverting it, but by dissolving it (Nagoshi and Brzuzy, “Transgender” 439). Yamazaki does precisely that: she does not merely reverse Faust’s gender but dismantles the ideological scaffolding that made his power intelligible in the first place. Rather than reimagining Johanna as a “female Faust,” Yamazaki constructs a protagonist whose identity resists the very binaries - of gender, power, and genre - that underpin the original narrative. This alignment is particularly powerful within the cultural logic of fairy tales, which traditionally accommodate magical or uncanny transformations. Yet Yamazaki uses these tropes not to reinforce heteronormative resolutions, but rather to question them. Johanna’s changing embodiment is never framed as disguise or deception but instead as an honest expression of her complex self. Her identity is not revealed but constantly rewritten - an embodiment of the queer fairy tale as theorized by Turner and Greenhill: a space where nothing is fixed, and everything is subject to reinterpretation. By framing Frau Faust within this genre, Yamazaki invites readers to engage with fairy tale motifs while recognizing their potential for subversion. Johanna’s queerness is not just thematic but structural woven into the logic of the tale itself, which resists Faustine in a Fairy Tale 309 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 resolution, embraces transformation, and positions identity as performative, mutable, and deeply political. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust exemplifies how the manga form can serve as a powerful medium for exploring queerness, transformation, and identity through visual and emotional grammar rather than linear narrative or philosophical exposition. Yamazaki’s use of manga allows Frau Faust to interrogate embodiment and subjectivity through a medium uniquely attuned to visual nuance and affective resonance. Unlike Goethe’s Faust , which relies on philosophical dialogue and theatrical structure, Yamazaki’s adaptation unfolds through symbolic imagery, paneling, and pacing that invite nonlinear, emotionally charged engagement. This shift from text-based to image-driven storytelling enables Johanna’s transformations to be rendered not merely as narrative developments but as embodied visual facts - immediate, mutable, and deeply expressive. Through the grammar of manga - close-ups, fragmented panel layouts, and dramatic shifts in visual tone - Johanna’s identity is presented as unstable and performative. Her character design fluctuates: masculine in flashbacks, feminine in the present, and often androgynous or ambiguous. These changes are not merely illustrative but function as visual metaphors for the fluidity of selfhood. Rather than relying on exposition, Yamazaki conveys emotional states and identity transitions through symbolic detail such as lighting, posture, and background contrast. As Scott McCloud notes, manga’s power lies in its ability to slow time, deepen interiority, and prioritize affect over continuity - affordances Yamazaki harnesses to dramatize Johanna’s queerness (80). This performativity is not limited to character design but extends to the structure of storytelling itself. In the manga’s opening, Johanna narrates a fairy tale to a young girl, her identity initially obscured - her face partially hidden, her features androgynous. The reader, like the listener, assumes she speaks of someone else. Only later is it revealed that Johanna is herself the Faust of legend. Yamazaki stages this delayed revelation with visual precision, using silhouette, camera angle, and the presence of a crude male doll as a decoy. As Will Eisner explains, surprise in comics must be visually engineered, since readers can control pacing and skip ahead (24—30). Yamazaki meets this challenge through the strategic use of partial visibility and symbolic misdirection, queering not only the character but also the narrative voice. Johanna is both narrator and mythic subject - author and artifact - assuming the feminized role of oral storyteller while occupying the masculine position of intellectual authority. Her androgynous appearance complicates this duality, positioning her between maternal, scholarly, and mythic registers. Her young listener’s question - “What happened to Faust after that? ” (Yamazaki 1: 3) - becomes not only narrative curiosity but also a medita- 310 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 tion on authorship and legacy, as Johanna inserts herself into a canon that has historically excluded figures like her. This critique of narrative and gender authority is also embedded in the manga’s formal structure. Yamazaki disrupts conventional paneling during pivotal moments - such as Johanna’s first encounter with the demon - where two rectangular panels collapse into a single expansive frame. This compositional pause enacts a kind of “slow cinematic movement,” suspending time to convey mythic and emotional weight (McCloud 94—98). As McCloud notes, the manipulation of panel size and sequence directly shapes a reader’s experience of time, and Yamazaki leverages this affordance to heighten emotional and symbolic intensity. The disruption of visual rhythm mirrors the manga’s resistance to binary categories: of good and evil, male and female, salvation and damnation. The queering of resolution is thus rendered both thematically and formally, reflecting Johanna’s refusal to be contained within a single identity or genre. The broader structure of Frau Faust furthers this resistance. Eschewing Goethe’s linear, teleological arc, Yamazaki adopts a cyclical, episodic format rooted in shōjo manga. She draws on its conventions not to reproduce familiar tropes, but to subvert them: using sentimentality and fantasy as tools to explore gender nonconformity, moral ambiguity, and intellectual defiance. In reframing Faust through manga, Yamazaki demonstrates how medium shapes meaning. Johanna’s story becomes not simply a retelling, but a radical reconfiguration—of character, genre, and canon. This queering of form enables Frau Faust to destabilize binaries - gendered, cultural, aesthetic - and to affirm the multiplicity of identity and storytelling. Ultimately, Yamazaki shows that in manga, identity can be not only represented but also performed, deconstructed, and reimagined. In Frau Faust , Yamazaki reimagines the Faustian myth through a gendered and visually performative lens, foregrounding the interplay between embodiment, identity, and scholarly agency. In Yamazaki’s depiction of the Faust figure, the relationship between gender, embodiment, and visual performance is central to the manga’s critique of normative identity. A female protagonist achieves scholarly advancement through her travels, transcending the limitations imposed by both her gender and lack of financial resources. In a society where intellectual pursuits are traditionally reserved for men, Frau Faust critiques patriarchal constraints, using Johanna’s journey to underscore themes of self-determination and resistance to systemic norms. This narrative challenges both class and gender hierarchies, presenting scholarship as a space of potential liberation and reconfiguration. Johanna’s identity is subversive not only in narrative terms but also in visual and performative ones. Her gender is not merely described in dialogue but Faustine in a Fairy Tale 311 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 enacted through the visual grammar of manga: she appears male in flashbacks, female in the present, and androgynous throughout. These shifts are rendered through changes in hair length, clothing, posture, and facial expression, making gender a mutable and context-dependent construct. Yamazaki manipulates manga’s visual syntax - layered paneling, symbolic objects, and shifts in style and framing - to stage moments of revelation and transformation that destabilize normative gender expectations. These formal techniques resist traditional exposition, instead inviting the reader to experience identity as dynamic and performed. As Judith Butler argues, gender is not a stable identity, but a repeated performance shaped by cultural expectations (519). This performativity extends into the narrative apparatus itself, where storytelling becomes a mode of identity construction. The opening image of the manmade doll - a crude male figure with round glasses - functions as both narrative mask and symbolic commentary on gender. As an object that simultaneously mirrors and displaces Johanna, the doll externalizes the masculine role she once inhabited, now reduced to a stitched, silent figure. Its resemblance to Johanna - through the glasses - reinforces its status not as an “other,” but as a version: a performed masculinity she has discarded. The doll evokes Butler’s theory of performativity and Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg as a constructed identity that reveals the artificial boundaries of the self (149—181). Through this interplay of image and form, Yamazaki queers not only the character of Faust but also the narrative structure that supports him. Johanna’s pursuit of knowledge is similarly reframed. Unlike Goethe’s Faust, whose ambition is metaphysical and driven by existential ennui, Johanna’s quest is rooted in material scarcity and structural exclusion. She trades goods for books, barters labor for access, and risks exile for intellectual freedom. Her marginal status as a woman and outsider marks her as transgressive, and her pact with the demon offers not just power but entry into the forbidden realms of scholarly and esoteric knowledge. In this sense, Yamazaki’s critique moves beyond gender to include class, illustrating how economic and social barriers shape access to intellectual life. Johanna’s metamorphosis from male-presenting scholar to ageless female immortal destabilizes fixed categories of identity and aligns with queer theories of survival and reinvention (Halberstam). This thematic concern with knowledge and transformation is further reinforced through visual symbolism. The doll, then, returns as symbolic reinforcement: a visual artifact that encapsulates the story’s broader interrogation of power, performance, and knowledge. By eschewing intricate detail, its minimalist design evokes innocence and invites projection, amplifying its emotional and symbolic resonance. It is a relic of a former self and a marker of constructed identity, positioned between concealment and revelation. Ultimately, Johanna becomes 312 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 both narrator and subject - simultaneously telling and embodying the Faustian myth. Through her, Yamazaki reclaims the tale not as a story of masculine genius and moral failure, but as a narrative of subversion, endurance, and the radical potential of marginalized knowledge. Johanna’s intellectual journey in Frau Faust - marked by the acquisition of outdated books, anatomical dissection, and scholarly defiance - is consistently framed by society as deviant, gender nonconforming, and socially transgressive. 3 Her community labels her as “creepy” and “unnatural,” and her mother’s remark - “She’s too smart to be my daughter” (Yamazaki 2: 12—13) - exemplifies a deeply internalized discomfort with female intellect. These reactions reflect a broader societal policing of women’s intellectual and bodily autonomy. Yamazaki critiques this gendered gatekeeping by presenting Johanna’s curiosity not as deviance but as a form of epistemic agency - an intentional reclaiming of knowledge and autonomy in defiance of patriarchal norms. This critique is most pointed when Johanna, recognizing shared structural exclusion, advises an adolescent boy denied formal education due to poverty: “Books are the fortune of our forebears. But don’t take their words at face value. Don’t fixate on them. Take a multifaceted view of things” (Yamazaki 1: 15). By offering to teach him herself, Johanna steps into the authoritative role of educator - a role historically reserved for men - and advocates for critical inquiry over passive reception. Her methods, including dissection, are not merely practical but philosophical: she seeks knowledge through embodied experience. This rejection of passive learning parallels the historical realities that feminist scholars such as Simone de Beauvoir (2011) and Virginia Woolf (1929) have critiqued. In A Room of One’s Own , Woolf argues that intellectual freedom requires both space and societal recognition - resources Johanna is categorically denied. Like the women Woolf and de Beauvoir describe, Johanna develops her intellect without institutional support and often at great personal risk, echoing the legacy of women writers who published under male pseudonyms or had their work misattributed. Johanna’s gendered metamorphosis - male-presenting in flashbacks and returning to a female immortal form - further disrupts binary logic. These visual transformations embody what Joan Gould describes as the fairy tale’s capacity to trace “shifts in consciousness as well as biology that propel women from one level of being to another” (3). Johanna’s journey maps these shifts not only metaphorically but literally: her body becomes a visual site of narrative and ideological transformation. This aligns with Yamazaki’s broader reframing of the Faustian myth, where Johanna’s intellectual hunger is not cosmic or metaphysical but grounded in systemic exclusion. Her thirst for knowledge - dismissed as pathological - emerges from material deprivation and social marginalization. Faustine in a Fairy Tale 313 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 In doing so, Frau Faust exceeds the boundaries of escapist fantasy. It uses the flexibility of fairy tale and manga conventions to interrogate who has access to knowledge, how power is distributed, and the cost of defiance. Johanna’s pact with the demon is not romanticized; it is framed as a coerced choice made under duress, in the absence of legitimate alternatives. “Sounds like extortion to me,” she mutters (Yamazaki 2: 28), a remark that starkly contrasts Goethe’s Faust , who seeks his pact from a position of masculine autonomy. Johanna’s decision reflects not sovereign agency but epistemological survival. Her learning stems from lived experience - bargaining for books, concealing her identity, and dissecting bodies in secret. Her knowledge is not abstract or transcendent but embodied, contextual, and profoundly political. In contrast to the masculinized ideal of detached, universal knowledge, Johanna’s epistemology is situated and queer - rooted in affect, risk, and the refusal to be erased. As Michel Foucault argues, knowledge is never neutral but entangled with power; it is produced within regimes that determine who may speak, what counts as truth, and whose bodies are legible within systems of control (131). Frau Faust dramatizes these regimes through the Inquisition and the university system - institutions that surveil, punish, and gatekeep intellectual authority. Johanna’s marginalization as a woman, a scholar, and an alchemist positions her outside sanctioned channels of knowledge, forcing her to invent her own methods and epistemic space. Her work becomes an act of resistance not just to political oppression but to the discursive order itself. Through her, Yamazaki reframes knowledge not as conquest or control, but as a mode of resistance and self-making under conditions of constraint. Yamazaki’s critique extends to narrative form itself. By resisting rigid roles like those outlined in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale , Johanna refuses to become the passive heroine, monstrous villain, or sacrificial victim. 4 Propp’s structural model, as Jack Zipes argues in Breaking the Magic Spell , often reinforces patriarchal norms through reductive character functions and moral binaries. Marina Warner likewise critiques the fairy tale tradition in From the Beast to the Blonde for encoding female intellect as dangerous or grotesque. Yamazaki subverts this legacy by creating a heroine whose pursuit of knowledge reclaims the fairy tale as a feminist space of transformation. Johanna’s position as a culturally and intellectually marginalized figure also invites transnational reflection: Yamazaki’s use of a Japanese manga format to reinterpret a Western canonical myth subtly destabilizes Eurocentric assumptions about genius, knowledge, and cultural legitimacy. Ultimately, Johanna is not Goethe’s sovereign seeker of transcendental truth. She is a woman denied even the right to be curious—rendered monstrous for thinking. Her story is not one of romantic longing but of resistance. Through 314 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 her, Yamazaki offers a feminist, intersectional, and transnational intervention into the Faust mythos, one that insists knowledge is not a neutral pursuit, but a contested terrain shaped by gender, class, and cultural power. While Goethe’s Mephistopheles operates as a sardonic guide through moral ambiguity and existential longing, Yamazaki’s demon in Frau Faust reframes the pact not as seduction, but as a recognition of intellectual agency - disrupting traditional associations between temptation, gender, and knowledge. In Goethe’s version, Mephistopheles plays a complex, ironic role, guiding Faust through earthly pleasures and eventual damnation or salvation, depending on the reading. In Frau Faust , the demon remains unnamed, referred to only as “the demon,” and his interactions with Johanna foreground not corruption but recognition. He refers to her simply as “Faust the curious” (Yamazaki 2: 9), omitting her gendered first name and thereby emphasizing her intellect over her identity. “Demons are drawn to brilliance” (2: 17), he declares, collapsing the traditional moral judgment surrounding the pursuit of knowledge and instead aligning himself with Johanna’s intellectual longing. This stands in sharp contrast to the ways in which human characters in the manga address her. A trader calls her “little Fräulein” (2: 8), a term that diminishes her by invoking her gender, age, and marital status. The English translation offers a parenthetical gloss - “Fräulein = German title for young, unmarried women (Miss)” - but stops short of acknowledging the term’s patronizing or infantilizing connotations, especially when paired with “little.” The disparity between how the demon and society refer to Johanna reflects a deeper gendered hierarchy: where the demon names her through intellectual recognition, human society labels her through gendered constraints and social expectations. This linguistic divide exposes the epistemic exclusion Johanna faces. Her desire to dissect animals, trade furs for books, and pursue forbidden knowledge is labeled “creepy” and unnatural by male peers and townspeople alike. The tension between how she is named by others and how she understands herself becomes a central conflict. Her pact with the demon is therefore not a fall from grace but an assertion of agency - a refusal to accept the limitations imposed on her intellect by a patriarchal and classist society. Johanna’s metamorphosis in Frau Faust functions not merely as a visual or narrative device but as a sustained critique of binary gender logics and the epistemic structures that enforce them. Her transitions across gendered embodiments - and her eventual return to what the text codes as a female-presenting form - reinforce this resistance. Importantly, her shifting appearance is not framed as disguise but as transformation, mirroring the fluid and unstable nature of identi- Faustine in a Fairy Tale 315 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 ty itself. Rather than assigning Johanna a fixed gender identity, the manga resists rigid categorization, offering instead a dynamic portrayal of subjectivity in flux. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity (179), Yamazaki’s depiction of Johanna does not illustrate essential gender traits but visually enacts gender as a contextual, social, and aesthetic process. Her gender is performed, negotiated, and visualized - never biologically fixed, but constructed within relational and narrative frameworks. These metamorphoses echo Joan Gould’s observation that fairy tales often trace “shifts in consciousness as well as biology that propel women from one level of being to another” (xvi). Johanna’s transformation, then, is not just about passing or survival - it becomes a metaphor for the intellectual, emotional, and political transitions that mark female and queer development. Her mutable identity reflects a rejection of essentialist gender categories and instead affirms fluidity, liminality, and self-authorship. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust queers Goethe’s narrative not through simple substitution but through structural, ideological, and visual transformation. Johanna’s refusal to settle into any singular role - woman, man, scholar, sinner, or savior - disrupts the traditional logic of redemptive or punitive narrative arcs. Unlike Gretchen, whose suffering exists to redeem Goethe’s male protagonist, Johanna exists for herself. Her narrative is not one of allegorical punishment but one of resistance. She is neither destroyed nor saved - she simply continues. In this, Yamazaki constructs a subject not defined by her relationship to male figures or by moral archetypes, but by her insistence on self-authorship. This act of narrative continuation places her in alignment with Hélène Cixous’s notion of the “subject-in-process,” a woman writing herself into being in defiance of tradition (“The Laugh” 875—893). Johanna’s temporary adoption of a male scholarly identity further enacts Butler’s theory of performativity but also resonates with Luce Irigaray’s concept of mimicry, which posits that women may strategically imitate masculine forms to expose and critique the patriarchal systems that exclude them ( This Sex Which is Not One ). Johanna’s mimicry gains her temporary access to intellectual authority, but her eventual return to a female form - while retaining that authority - undermines the assumption that power must be gendered male. Her rejection of masculine coding after mastering it exposes the arbitrary foundations of patriarchal legitimacy and affirms a redefinition of power on feminist terms. This redefinition also answers Adrienne Rich’s call for feminist “re-vision” - the imperative to reinterpret and rewrite dominant narratives from the perspective of those historically excluded from them (35). Yamazaki enacts this re-visioning through both content and form. The cyclical nature of Johanna’s journey - seeking fragmented remnants of her demon companion while contending with the consequences of her knowledge - resists the teleological structures typical of 316 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 canonical myths. Her story is not a moral lesson but a challenge to closure itself. It refuses the familiar trajectories of sin and salvation, instead centering the tension, strength, and ambiguity of a woman who dares to know. In doing so, Yamazaki not only queers the Faustian myth, but offers a blueprint for narrative futures shaped by fluidity, complexity, and self-authored resistance. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust is not merely a retelling of Goethe’s myth but a radical rewriting that reconfigures the ideological core of the original, using feminist, queer, and visual strategies to interrogate narrative authority and reclaim intellectual agency. This feminist reworking of Faust thus serves multiple critical functions. It interrogates the historical exclusion of women from intellectual life, critiques the gendered foundations of narrative power, and reclaims knowledge-seeking as a feminist act. The visual grammar of manga - its emphasis on emotional expression, symbolic layering, and narrative fragmentation - further enhances this feminist vision. Through Johanna’s story, Yamazaki shows that the pursuit of knowledge, far from being a masculine ambition, can serve as a site of gender resistance and queer self-creation. Building on its role as a feminist and queer rewriting, Frau Faust exemplifies how rewriting functions not simply to retell, but to deconstruct and reconfigure the ideological and narrative foundations of canonical texts. While a retelling typically preserves the narrative structure and ideological core of the original text, a rewriting actively reconfigures those foundations, often to critique or subvert them (Zipes Breaking the Magic ). In Yamazaki’s adaptation of Goethe’s Faust , the familiar architecture of the Faustian pact remains, but its meaning is fundamentally transformed. By merging feminist theory, fairy tale logic, and the formal expressiveness of manga, Yamazaki reshapes one of Western literature’s most canonical texts into a narrative of fluidity, refusal, and ongoing transformation. Fairy tale motifs - long associated with instability and symbolic excess - play a key role in this disruption. As Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Matrix note, fairy tales resist closure and often destabilize fixed identity categories (82). Johanna does not seek salvation, nor is her journey framed around redemption or moral judgment. Instead, her power lies in her refusal to be defined by patriarchal expectations of resolution, sacrifice, or closure. The story she inhabits resists the teleological arc of the original Faust - there is no tragic downfall, no triumphant transcendence, but rather an enduring process of questioning, becoming, and resisting. This open-endedness aligns closely with Hélène Cixous’ theory of écriture féminine , which values fragmentation, multiplicity, and nonlinear expression as forms of resistance to patriarchal narrative structures (“Medusa” 875—893). Through this, Frau Faust functions as a feminist rewriting: Faustine in a Fairy Tale 317 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 not simply inserting a female protagonist into a male narrative, but fundamentally altering the terms of knowledge, agency, and narrative logic itself. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust reimagines the legendary Faust figure as a gender-fluid protagonist, offering a distinctly queer intervention into one of Western literature’s most canonical myths. By incorporating fairy tale characteristics and reversing Faust’s traditionally male gender, Yamazaki opens a space to deconstruct the essentialist male-female binary. The decision to gender-swap the Faust figure disrupts conventional gender roles typically associated with the narrative, allowing Frau Faust to challenge and expose the performative nature of gender itself. As Johanna shifts between male and female embodiments - never fully occupying either category in a stable or final form - she becomes a polyvalent subject whose identity unfolds through transformation, ambiguity, and relational becoming. This resistance to fixed identity invites further analysis through the lens of queer theory, which emphasizes mobility, ambiguity, and the disruption of normative categories. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust explores gender not as a fixed identity but as a site of fluid possibility, aligning closely with queer theoretical frameworks that resist categorization. These fluid gender possibilities are best understood through queer theory, particularly as articulated by Diane Richard, who defines queer theory as “a fluid, mobile, non-specific zone of inquiry that is resistant to being ‘fixed’” (20). Yamazaki’s portrayal of Johanna - sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine, often androgynous - resists easy classification and instead aligns with Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative: not an innate essence, but a series of stylized acts, repeated and adapted in response to cultural pressures. Johanna’s body and behavior become sites of symbolic resistance, foregrounding ambiguity over stability and emphasizing performance over essence. Julie Nagoshi and Stephan Brzuzy similarly argue that feminizing the male sex disrupts the cultural hierarchy that privileges masculinity, destabilizing the authority traditionally granted to male bodies and roles (“Transgender” 431—43). Yamazaki extends this logic: by presenting a female Faust who once passed as male—and who ultimately refuses both redemption and punishment - the text collapses not only gendered binaries but also the binary structures of narrative resolution. Johanna is neither Goethe’s Faust, who seeks transcendence through intellectual striving, nor Gretchen, who redeems him through moral virtue. Instead, she exists outside these archetypes entirely, queering not only gender identity but the very structure and moral logic of the Faustian myth. Yamazaki’s Frau Faust concludes not by resolving the Faustian myth, but by radically reimagining its narrative and ideological possibilities through a queer and feminist lens. Fairy tale motifs amplify this queerness. These stories, as Zipes ( Breaking the Spell ) and Greenhill/ Matrix ( Fairy Tale Films ) argue, are inherently 318 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 transformative and often resistant to fixity. Yamazaki draws on this inherent instability by embedding Frau Faust within a fairy tale framework, activating the genre’s capacity for metamorphosis, contradiction, and symbolic excess. Turner and Greenhill describe fairy tales as “queer” in their refusal of stability - an idea Yamazaki takes up to construct a narrative that resists closure, coherence, and binary logic (3). Johanna’s immortality, the result of a demonic pact, is not portrayed as reward or punishment but as an ongoing condition of becoming, displacement, and transformation. Her journey does not follow the redemptive arc of Goethe’s Faust, who is ultimately saved through divine grace or feminine intercession; instead, Johanna remains unredeemed and uncontained, suspended in an unresolved pursuit of fragmented identity. This open-endedness aligns with Hélène Cixous’ concept of écriture féminine , a mode of expression that embraces fragmentation, multiplicity, and nonlinear movement (“Medusa” 875—893). Johanna’s story unfolds through ruptures, reversals, and deferrals, rejecting patriarchal expectations of narrative resolution and gender fixity. Her refusal to conform to gendered roles, and her destabilizing presence, echoes what Nagoshi and Brzuzy (2010) argue about feminizing the male subject: it does not invert the gender hierarchy but dissolves the binary altogether (“Transgender” 431—43). In this way, Frau Faust resists the ideological structures that underpin both gender and narrative form, embodying Cixous’s vision of writing that privileges the unresolved, the fluid, and the radically multiple. In this sense, Yamazaki’s Frau Faust is not simply a gender-swapped iteration of the legendary male scholar, nor a rewritten Gretchen reimagined to redeem or resolve the original narrative. Johanna emerges instead as a subject formed through and against the very binaries - male/ female, sinner/ saved, reason/ emotion - that the Faust myth traditionally reinforces. Her journey offers not closure, but disruption: a refusal to be categorized, resolved, or morally stabilized. In doing so, she exemplifies queer theory’s radical potential to expose the constructedness of identity, resist disciplinary containment, and imagine alternative narratives of subjectivity and power beyond binary logics. Simultaneously, Yamazaki continues the legacy of manga artists like Osamu Tezuka, who reworked Western literary canons to assert manga’s intellectual and aesthetic legitimacy. Yet while Tezuka emphasized universalist humanism 5 , Yamazaki leans into cultural specificity and ideological subversion. By fusing fairy tale motifs, the expressive visual grammar of manga, and the disruptive energies of feminist and queer theory, she creates a narrative that is both global and local - rooted in Japanese visual culture yet in dialogue with Western literary traditions. In Frau Faust , Yamazaki does not merely reinterpret a canonical Western myth; she reclaims and reorients it, transforming it into a dynamic site of feminist critique, queer possibility, and transnational reimagination. Faustine in a Fairy Tale 319 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 Notes 1 See Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles (1972—73), Chiho Saito’s Revolutionary Girl Utena (1996—97), and Bisco Hatori’s Ouran High School Host Club (2002—10) for prominent examples of gender-bending narratives in shōjo manga. These works have been widely discussed in queer manga studies for their treatment of gender performativity and subversion of heteronormative expectations. 2 See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet . 3 In Frau Faust , vol. 2, Yamazaki reveals in Afterword 2 that she based Frau Faust loosely on medieval Europe, particularly the German region. (2: 156). 4 For more, see Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. 5 For more, see Yuki Tanaka, “War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The Humanism of His Epic Manga.” Works Cited Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity . New York: Routledge, 2006. Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs , 1: 4 (1976): 875—893. —. White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text and Politics . Edited by Susan Sellers, Columbia UP, 2008. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex . Translated by H. M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1949. —. The Second Sex . Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage Books, 2011. Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist . New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Foucault, Michel. Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 . Ed. Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust . Translated by W. Kaufman. Anchor Books, 1962. Gould, Joan. Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman’s Life . New York: Random House, 2005. Greenhill, Pauline and Sidney Eve Matrix, eds. Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity . Salt Lake City: Utah State UP, 2010. Grey, Ronald. Goethe: Faust Part II . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018. Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure . Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Hatori, Bisco. Ouran High School Host Club . Translated by Kenichiro Yagi. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2003—2010. 320 Kyung Lee Gagum DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0019 Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature . New York: Routledge, 1991. Ikeda, Riyoko. The Rose of Versailles . Translated by Mari Morimoto. Ontario: Udon Entertainment, 2020-2021. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One . Translated by Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art . New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Nagoshi, Julie and Stephanie Brzuzy. “Transgender Theory: Embodying Research and Practice.” Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work , 25: 4 (2010): 431—4 43. Nagoshi, Julie L., Stephan J. Brzuzy, and Heather K. Terrell. “Gender Differences and Similarities in the Perception of Transgender Individuals.” Sex Roles , 62: 3-4 (2010): 276—287. Napier, Susan J. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation . Ontario: Palgrave, 2001. Năstase, Florina. “Queering the Fairy-Tale in Anne Sexton’s Transformations .” Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai. Philologia , 64: 1 (2019): 143—158. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale . Translated by Laurence Scott. Austin: U of Texas P, 1968. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 . New York: W. W. Norton, 1979: 33—49. Saito, Chiho. Revolutionary Girl Utena . Story concept by Be-Papas. Translated by Lillian Olsen. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2000—2004. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Tanaka, Yuki. “War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The Humanism of His Epic Manga.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus , 8: 1 (2010): 1—15. Tezuka, Osamu. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga . Translated by Frederik L. Schodt, New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2009. Turner, Kay and Pauline Greenhill, eds. Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012. Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers . New York: Vintage, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own . Hogarth Press, 1929. Yamazaki, Kore. Frau Faust . Vols. 1-5. Translated by Stephen Kohler. New York: Kodansha Comics, 2017. Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization . New York: Routledge, 1991. —. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales . Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2012. —. Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre . New York: Routledge, 2006. Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women321 DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women Melissa Sheedy University of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract: The folkloric tradition linking women to water spirits is well attested among the work of German women writers of the long 19 th century. Their characterizations challenge conventional stock portrayals in tales made famous by the Brothers Grimm and they critique patriarchal structures that assert dominance over feminized nature. The mermaid-like figures in Ricarda Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” (1896) and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “Die Nymphe des Rheins” (1812) mobilize dishonesty as a discursive tool that I read as queer to negotiate patriarchal life on land. Whether as recipients or tellers of falsehoods, these protagonists thrive in a world in which their male interlocutors brandish untruths to suppress and control nature. These depictions of transgressive bodies inextricably linked to the natural world challenge conventional notions of sex, identity, and biology to pose a uniquely queer potential. Drawing on queer and feminist ecocritical theories, this paper proposes a queer ecocritical framework that examines these figures as feminized harbingers of the natural world. From the celebration of identity to the denial of heterosexual marriage as a happy ending, these figures transgress bodily and sociocultural norms to resist patriarchal suppression and control. Keywords: Fairytales, mermaids, 19 th century, ecocriticism, queer theory You’ll have your looks! Your pretty face! And don’t underestimate the importance of body language! - “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid 1 From Melusine to Ariel, the long tradition linking women to water spirits such as nixies, mermaids, and Rhine-dwelling maidens is well-attested in folklore 322 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 from the Middle Ages to the present, and it is often predicated on the relationship between ambiguous sexuality, femininity, and the non-human natural world. 2 A remarkably rich corpus exploring these gendered connections - one particularly ripe for a literary queering - can be found among the work of German women writers of the long 19 th century, whose tales reframe the familiar nixie figure not as cold-hearted villain or naïve, star-crossed ingénue, but rather as a complex, agentive protagonist both aware of and able to employ her own transgressive sexuality. Not only do these characterizations challenge the conventional stock portrayals in the tales made famous by the Brothers Grimm, but they also deliver a sharp critique of patriarchal structures that assert male dominance over a natural world conceptualized as inherently feminine. 3 In Ricarda Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” (1896; “Pack of Lies,” 2001) 4 and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “Die Nymphe des Rheins” (1812; The Nymph of the Rhine), both narratives mobilize dishonesty as a way to negotiate life on land. Wielding trickery as a discursive tool that I read as queer, their protagonists are able to navigate and indeed thrive in a world of deceptive discourses, one in which their male interlocutors brandish untruths to suppress and control feminine-coded nature and sexuality. In their mutual deconstruction of the heteropatriarchal systems privileging and sustaining binaries such as culture/ nature and masculine/ feminine, strains of material feminism and queer theory 5 intersect with and inform each other. Drawing on both theoretical currents, this article proposes a queer ecocritical framework that examines these figures as both monstrous and sexualized harbingers of a natural world that is beyond human understanding. From the celebration of ontological oddities to the denial of heterosexual marriage as a happy ending, these fairytale figures transgress both bodily and sociocultural norms to resist patriarchal suppression and control. From their modern appearances at Pride parades and episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” 6 to the deeper symbolism linking them to contemporary transgender identity discourses, mermaids and their depictions are undoubtedly queer. Half human, half sea creature, these figures represent a realm of im/ possibility, evoking an atavistic response fueled by both fear and desire. An early literary example can be found in Thüring von Ringoltingen’s 15 th -century Melusine , whose titular protagonist forbids her husband from seeing her while she enjoys her weekly bathing ritual. Reymundt cannot help but peep: “[H]e had discovered his wife Melusine in the midst of a dishonorable deed and unfaithful affair” (von Ringoltingen 72). 7 The reveal of Melusine’s true fishy form is seen as an act of betrayal, even though it was Reymundt himself who first broke his promise not to intrude on her baths, and her appearance verges on the grotesque as it both draws and repels his - and the readers’ - attention. Melusine’s monstrous serpent-like tail is a damning indication of her true form, revealing a cultur- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 323 al pathologization and deep-rooted fear of female sexuality and transgressive identity that potently manifests in the figure of the mermaid. Melusine is only a small fry in a veritable sea of powerful female water spirits in the Germanic fairytale tradition: From the trickster-like nixies in the Grimm tales, who always have an eye for a bargain, to the myth of the siren-like Lorelei, who is unfairly blamed for the deaths of the sailors who cannot keep their eyes on the horizon, these figures are deeply embedded in cultural mythologies. Their stories are awash in transgression: from deviant bodies that disrupt the boundaries of the normative human or non-human animal form to their amoral actions and desires, mermaids pose an ontological dilemma, resisting conventional taxonomies of biology and morality. Their connections to mystical nature speak to age-old associations linking women with the environment: “Women were seen as closer to nature than men, subordinate in the social hierarchy to the men of their class, and imbued with a far greater sexual passion. […] Like wild chaotic nature, women needed to be subdued and controlled” (Merchant 132). Like witches, these mermaid figures are transgressors, representing nature’s unpredictable and destructive side. Beautiful but deadly, they are creatures to be controlled - and are themselves ultimately uncontrollable. Building on Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands’s proposal of an ecosystemic “‘queer’ ecocultural studies” that works to challenge “intersections of power, beginning with heteronormativity, and ecological relations” (455), this article focuses on material nature, which spills over the discursive binary depicting it as a feminized realm at odds with “masculine” culture. In its acknowledgement of non-human agency, the recent “material turn” 8 in ecocritical scholarship provides fresh conceptualizations of matter and material nature. An interdisciplinary set of approaches toward nature-as-matter, feminist material ecocriticism in particular works to deconstruct harmful binary structures such as those between civilization and nature, reason and emotion, discourse and matter, and heteronormative and queer, all of which have been mapped onto the underlying dichotomy of male and female. The recognition of the more-than-human natural world as an omnipresent, agentive subject existing “in bodily forms and in discursive formulations” (Iovino and Oppermann 1) challenges these binaries by decentering the human actor and making space for a network of interlocking material relationships. 9 As “in-between” fictional figures bridging the discursive and material gap between the human and more-than-human realms, mermaids are an enticing focus for such a framework. Moreover, these depictions of deviant, transgressive bodies inextricably linked to the natural world also pose a uniquely queer potential. In challenging conventional notions of sex, identity, and even biology, these tales of love, vengeance, and slippery sexuality are teeming with queer possibilities. 324 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 A queer lens does not presuppose unequivocal portrayals of same-gender attraction, but invites instead curiosity and a sense of possibility: What textual implications, regardless of author intention, lie submerged beneath the surface structure of a narrative? 10 What counternormative identities, desires, and performances are alluded to between the lines? In its challenge to heteropatriarchy, “queering” goes beyond identity, constituting a mode of interrogating intersections of power (Mortimer-Sandilands 458), and therefore has much in common with ecocritical studies. A queer ecocritical approach looks beyond the idea of a natural world whose only purpose is to reproduce via normative sexual practices (458). It also acknowledges “a natural world with a range of enacted identities and bodies that do not fit into the patriarchal world order” (Sheedy 156). In their book Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms , Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill explore “queering” as an analytical tool for examining fairytales in particular, a genre that specifically features figures who are socially marginalized or who behave or appear aberrantly (4). Turner and Greenhill write that queerness “embraces more than sex/ gender/ sexuality to deal with the problematics of those who for various reasons find themselves outside conventional practices” (4). Their use of a queer lens to approach the Grimms, for instance, “shifts focus from normative sexual dynamics […] to the tales’ internal struggles, suggestive of multiple and more complex desires and their perversely performative nature” (3). These “internal struggles” and transgressive desires manifest clearly in many mermaid tales of the 19 th century, couched within somewhat simplified depictions of desires for vengeance or immortality. Among these 19 th -century mermaid tales by women writers 11 are Ricarda Huch’s “Pack of Lies” and Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “The Nymph of the Rhine.” Huch’s dark love story, “Pack of Lies,” centers on - and is focalized through - a bored young man who comes across tales of the so-called “water sprites” (353), 12 women famous for their beauty as well as for their ability to lure the souls out of the living with their song. This song grants access to all earthly and unearthly truths - a tantalizing gift indeed - and when he himself is eventually lured to the seaside one evening by just such a mermaid, the youth wastes no time in asking her for the secret of her talents. They strike a bargain: she will teach him the art of her song in exchange for the heart from his chest. The nix herself has her own agenda, namely, the desire for an immortal soul, the lack of which is a folkloric hallmark of mermaids. When the young man returns the next evening with a calf ’s heart instead of his own, she devours it greedily, seemingly unaware of its origins. It is only then that the young man learns that the key to controlling nature lies in the very lack of a heart - it is his own connection to life that renders him incapable of controlling it. The nixie, meanwhile, is left with the contented belief that she is in possession of an immortal soul as well as an immortal lover DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 325 (or so the reader might think - perhaps the nixie is cannier than we realize and knows more than she lets on). The tale ends on a bittersweet note with the youth’s ironic declaration that “[k]nowing and loving one another is the essence of eternal bliss” (Huch 317), 13 for of course, neither truly knows the other. Charlotte von Ahlefeld’s “The Nymph of the Rhine” is a much less ambiguous tale of vengeance. A young fisherman is in love, but too poor to marry. His beautiful singing voice draws a nymph, Libella, 14 out of the water. She promises to reward the young man with riches if he will grant her a boon. We learn that Libella once long ago saved the count Raimund 15 from drowning. The two fell in love, but she hid her identity from him until he gave her a ring and a promise to love no one but her. This oath falls flat when she tells him that she is a nymph: in fear of her supernatural power, he abandons his former love and announces his intentions to marry the human girl Bertha. Back in the present day, Libella convinces the angler to lure Raimund to the water, under the pretense of wishing to return his ring to him. Unsurprisingly for the reader, she instead drowns Raimund and returns to the depths of the Rhine. The fisher, however, finds a net filled with gold and a warning to be “more constant than Raimund,” 16 and he lives happily ever after - the promised reward for his fulfilled oath. For these figures, the key to their survival lies in deception: from their secrets to their human appearance to their shrewd bargaining, these mermaids wield misdirection to help them negotiate a world ruled by patriarchal order. Ahlefeld’s Rhenish ruse in “The Nymph of the Rhine” assures the nymph her vengeance against a man who wronged her, and it also keeps her safe. Libella hides both her name and her identity in order to survive in a world on land. Born with the knowledge that her destiny would encompass both love and suffering, and in acknowledgement of the frailty and fear of humankind, she resolves to enjoy her first love for as long as she can: A nervous foreboding held me back from confessing to him that I belonged to the mighty lineage of the Undines, for I, who would have so gladly and lovingly submitted the very best of myself to him, quietly feared that the superiority given to me over the limitations of humankind would lead him further from me, rather than bring him closer. 17 Convinced, however, by her lover’s ardent words and promises, she eventually tells him who she really is, which leads to the betrayal of his oath. The inconstant count is punished for his falsehood, while the nymph - violent though she may be - ultimately keeps her promise. The question of promises kept also underlies Huch’s “Pack of Lies.” The tale focuses broadly on the lies of the youth who desires not merely control over the natural world, but also understanding of its inner workings: 326 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 This enormous magic charmed each thing to reveal in its own way what its essence was. To the young man this seemed the most curious and glorious thing in the world, and he daydreamed incessantly about how the stars in the heavens would heed his command, and pebbles on the path and the greenish gold beetles that crawled before him on the sand would make themselves known to him. […] In short, he imagined it would be as if every speck of them would become completely transparent in body and soul before him. (353) 18 For the young man, this enticing combination of knowledge and power seems well worth a broken promise: “The more he thought about it, the more firm became his decision not to relinquish his heart, which he believed he could not spare in this lifetime; nonetheless, he was certainly not willing to do without the siren song of the nix” (355). 19 The irony of his desires is not lost on the reader: embedded within his wish for transparency is the potential of a foresworn oath, a betrayal that in the end denies him that very transparency of the world around him. The youth is of course not the only one with a secret: his nixie lover is also driven by her own desire to obtain a human soul. Notes of deception pervade the narrative: when the young man first meets the nixie, he ignores his sense of foreboding, finding himself irresistibly drawn to her “restless smile on sly lips” (354). 20 Shawn Jarvis’s translation of the story renders the original German adjective “falsch” ( wrong, fake ) as “sly,” which transforms the idea of innate falsehood into something more playful. Despite this apparent guile, the youth disregards his intuition and throws “caution to the winds” (354) 21 just to get close to her - and, of course, her secret. There is also, perhaps, a deceptive element to the bargain they strike. The nixie desires a human heart more than anything, but she claims the gift to be a “small token” (355) 22 that he would not miss (an easy promise to make, for she herself has lived her whole life quite comfortably without a heart.) Despite these devious undertones, Huch’s narrative, however, does not allow us to simply chalk this all up to a case of mutual fault: as the narrative’s focalizer, the young man brings a perspective to the tale colored by his own deception, so the nixie’s perceived half-truths must be taken with a drop of saltwater. We must also consider the possibility that the seemingly naïve nixie is in fact operating in full awareness of her lover’s lies - she could indeed know that the heart he brings her belongs to a calf, and that the ticking inside his chest that he explains away as a clever mechanical device is nothing other than the living muscle under discussion. Indeed, the nix’s song is said to be so powerful that it coaxes the essence of all things: “as the soul listened, it strained so longingly toward the singing force that it laid itself bare and revealed itself without resistance” (353). 23 Could she be denying him control over nature DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 327 by exerting her own control over his web of lies? In either case, Huch’s ending may seem hopeless - we leave the tale as the nixie, seemingly unaware of her lover’s betrayal, gently kisses his eyes in a falsely contented happy ending. And yet we can read this another way: the nixie’s “failure” to achieve mortality through the deception of another helps her avoid the fate of so many other merwomen, who are destined to lose their goddess-given immortality for the sake of mediocre men. In both tales, “nature,” represented by watery realms of the unknown, is a space associated with unruly femininity in opposition to “masculine,” “rational” culture. Both fairytales construct a binary opposition between “water” as nature, and “land” as civilization, but only the mermaid figure can safely negotiate both spaces. The entanglements between these figures and water can be seen for instance in Ahlefeld’s heroine Libella, who shares her name with a formidable predator: the dragonfly ( die Libelle ). Dragonflies spend the first part of their lives underwater as larvae (known as nymphs! ), who hunt voraciously until they reach maturity. Their final transformation into adulthood, when they emerge from the water, is a time of extreme vulnerability. 24 Libella’s own emergence into life on land is similarly precarious, as she risks both her safety and her secrecy. The transformative nature of these insects is mirrored in her own ability to navigate both land and water, and Libella also encapsulates their predatory drive beneath the water. As a harbinger herself of the natural world, the mermaid figure exerts the kind of control over it that is denied to the tales’ human male actors. Huch’s nixie, for instance, possesses a song powerful enough to tease the soul from the material bodies of humans, animals, plants, and even objects (311), an ability that the youth is unwilling - or unable - to obtain for himself. Ahlefeld’s Libella, on the other hand, applies a more violent influence when she brings the waters of the Rhine to life to punish Raimund: “The water began to bluster and to seethe, as if it wanted to exceed its borders. The boat wobbled. How terrible are the elements in their turmoil! As if gripped by an unseen maelstrom, the boat capsized, and Raimund went under in the raging torrent” (75). 25 At Libella’s command, the anthropomorphized natural world overflows its boundaries, a roiling upheaval that transgresses the conventional nature-culture boundary. Libella herself seems to embody the force of chaotic nature as she prepares to drown Raimund: “Libella’s eyes flashed like lightning in a dark tempestuous sky.” 26 This stormy imagery brings to mind Carolyn Merchant, who reminds us of the close ties between the unpredictability of nature - particularly weather and natural disasters - and the patriarchal conceptions of witches (27). Like witches, these mermaid figures exercise both power and knowledge that are inaccessible to the texts’ male humans, and it is this capacity that renders them 328 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 a threat. The nix’s power to know and summon the spirits of the land in “Pack of Lies,” for instance, directly correlates to witches’ presumed control over the natural world: “Every natural object, every animal, every tree contained a spirit whom the witch could summon, utilize, or commune with at will” (Merchant 140). Both merfigures’ control over the violence of nature places them directly at odds with the polite restraint of civilization, and yet they, unlike their male counterparts, do in fact fulfill their promises. While mermaid tales frequently render these characters as wily and deceptive precisely because they threaten the social order through queerly transgressive appearance and desires, the envoys of the natural world nevertheless adhere to the laws of humankind more closely than do the humans with whom they interact - perceived lies are found in precise language and meticulous promises, but these figures do honor their arrangements. Like the Grimms’ “Nixie of the Mill-Pond,” who strikes and keeps a bargain with a miller too careless to question the stakes, both nix and nymph keep their promises. Thus, it is merely the implied threat of difference, the fear of transgression or deviation, that, together with their ambiguous sexuality, drives the villainous narrative behind many mermaid tales and the watery witches within them. The relationship between these figures and the feminized wilderness also implicates material nature as a distinctly queer space, resistant to heteronormative discourses and interference. By challenging rigid boundaries of biology, identity, and even gender, depictions of nature such as those found in these tales reveal a wild and thriving realm beyond conventional human understanding. Drawing on Jack Halberstam, Mortimer-Sandilands observes that queerness “is not so much a question of sexual identity as it is a practice of space” in opposition to the rigors of heteronormative institutions of family and reproduction (459). 27 For Mortimer-Sandilands, a queer nature “suggests an active practice of interrogating the heteronormative and homophobic relations through which ideas and institutions of nature […] have been organized to shape both homosexual and heterosexual practices” (459). As a site that actively produces living, embodied evidence that contradicts established notions linking “natural” with “heterosexual” (Mortimer-Sandilands 459), 28 material nature in both tales functions as a dynamic, self-determined, agentive space that allows for and nurtures transgressive, ill-understood identities beyond the axes of sexual expression. As Mortimer-Sandilands suggests, “[b]oth historically and intimately, sexuality is organized in articulation with race, class, and gender; it is also embodied and lived, taking shape in fleshy particularity rather than idealized universality” (460—61). In both tales, this environmental resistance to heteronormative and patriarchal power structures manifests in the independent female figures in possession of power and expertise that are inaccessible via conventional modes DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 329 of knowledge production: in “Pack of Lies,” for example, the youth’s desires for immortal comprehension are rooted in timeworn pages and in his own endless brooding, neither of which equip him for the reality of the nix’s gifts. In “The Nymph of the Rhine,” the count’s fear of the unknown results in a failure to recognize Libella’s humanity and thus leads him directly into the path of her monstrosity. Both authors’ mobilization of the mermaid figure is embedded in frameworks of ecological space and autonomy. These mermaids are entangled with the morethan-human natural world that harbors them, and it is the specifically masculine intrusion into this space - invited or otherwise - that catalyzes the tales’ tragedies. In “Pack of Lies,” the youth’s collision with the paranormal is the result of the nix’s siren-like song that lures him out of bed. It is his dishonest fulfillment of their bargain, however, that constitutes the true violation of a world of which he has little understanding. In Ahlefeld’s text, it is the count’s cheeky dive into the waves of the Rhine, an intrusion into Libella’s realm, that betrays his lack of preparation: He leapt boldly and joyfully into the river and played, swimming, with the lisping waves, who, proud of their fine burden, surrounded him and carried him along on glittering swells, as if he were Neptune in the plentiful seas. But suddenly a cramp hampered the graceful routine of his vigor. A deathly paleness replaced the rosiness of his face, and with terrible capriciousness, the floods tore him away. (66) 29 The anthropomorphized waters of the Rhine in Ahlefeld’s text play with the mortal novelty among them and discard him at their own whim, a reminder of the dangers of a natural world both unpredictable and impulsive. Both tales end in broken bonds as a result of (male) human intrusion, and thus can both be read as a critique of patriarchal interference in feminine and feminized spaces, both in terms of individual material bodies and in the ecosystemic whole of a natural world viewed as the inert site of civilization’s conquest. 30 These repeated textual constellations reveal both the authors’ awareness of and perhaps empathy for a natural realm at odds with masculinized social norms - a discursive space ripe for queer interrogation. As agents of nature whose bodies operate outside of conventional parameters, the figures of the nixie and the nymph further raise questions of biology and biological uncertainty. The idea of “biology as destiny” has long functioned as a convenient justification for the perpetuation of exclusionary structures, which Stacy Alaimo indicts in her call for a feminist intervention in the discipline: “Since biology, like nature, has long been drafted to serve as the armory for racist, sexist, and heterosexist norms, it is crucial that feminists recast the […] values and assumptions that permeate this field” (5). Like many fairytale 330 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 figures who transform into other species or who seem to exist on the ontological cusp, mermaids in possession of bodies that resist heteropatriarchal norms further bring to mind the concept of trans biology. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s conception of transas a means of describing fluid identities at odds with essentialist notions of gender, 31 Sarah Franklin proposes the term as “a biology that is not only born and bred, or born and made, but made and born ” (“The Cyborg Embryo” 171). While Franklin’s treatment focuses on issues of cloning, embryology, and stem cell research, transbiology also possesses a rich potential within folklore: The fairy tale, like myth, imaginatively anticipates the transbiological wonders and worries of today. Transbiology here includes animals or humans who masquerade as or transform into another species (in whole or in part) and/ or who otherwise mess with hard-and-fast distinctions between species, including between human and non-human. (Turner and Greenhill 6) The Grimms’ œuvre alone features plentiful examples of human and morethan-human figures who transform into or perform other identities, such as the plucky heroine of “Fitcher’s Bird” who dons an avian disguise, or the numerous transformations that take place between animals and humans in stories such as “The Frog King” and “Hans My Hedgehog.” These frequent transbiological expressions in tales reveal the “awkward knottiness/ naughtiness” (Turner and Greenhill 12) that distorts the conventional human/ non-human binary, uncovering a web of connections and intersections that undermine strict categories. In mermaid tales, these transformations are often predicated by a transgressive desire to cross known boundaries, a queering of the social and biological order that frequently renders these figures villainous. This pattern of transformation, change, and implied deception associated with mermaid figures has vital implications for trans discourses and queer theory. There exists a long-standing connection between trans and queer identities and perceived dishonesty: 32 while “passing” as cisgender promises a safer negotiation of cis-dominated spaces, anti-trans and homophobic discourses rely on harmful accusations of “pretending” or masquerading to deny a transgender or queer person’s experiences and identity. 33 In “Nymph of the Rhine,” the form Libella takes on land protects her in a world of humans, but it also renders her both trickster and threat. The liminality of the mermaid form that allows for and indeed seems to demand transformation defies heteronormative structures of gender and biological stability, as does the figure’s ability to traverse multiple spaces and worlds. Connected to this capacity is the strong desire to change form or gain specifically human attributes, such as an immortal soul or a human heart. In Leland G. Spencer’s article “Performing Transgender Identity in The DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 331 Little Mermaid : From Andersen to Disney,” the author suggests that mermaid tales in the vein of “The Little Mermaid” are essentially coming-out narratives that thematize transgender identity performance. Viewers of the 1989 classic have long interpreted Ariel’s loss of voice as an analogue to the silencing of queerness specifically, or otherness in general. 34 Spencer observes: a transgender reading of [Andersen’s] story recognizes that to find love and hence immortality, the mermaid must successfully perform an identity that others do not recognize as natural for her, including making decisions about whether to undergo painful changes to her body. (117) While Andersen’s heroine ultimately fails in her endeavor and chooses to become a spray of sea foam rather than harm her lover, a tragic finale that Spencer reads as emblematic of the real existing struggles of transgender people (118), Disney unsurprisingly offers its protagonist a cheerier conclusion in the body that feels most authentically hers. We must note, however, that any queer or transgender reading of the film’s happy ending is undermined by its safely heteronormative packaging via marriage to a hunky male prince and a sequel featuring their biological offspring; nevertheless, a lens informed by these discourses offers a way of reading between the lines toward a potently queer subtext. While tales like Andersen’s and other mermaid stories from the 19 th century deal more concretely with themes of transformation than either Huch’s or Ahlefeld’s texts, both nixie and nymph in their stories negotiate the boundaries between human and more-than-human in ways that, for them, promise a measure of safety, but which also are seen to threaten the patriarchal world order. Closely intertwined with the themes of deception and transgression, sexuality plays a central role in these tales, both of which can be characterized as “19 th -century steamy”: from a breast “stormed with wonderful impulses” 35 to the “blissful […] caresses” (Huch 355) 36 and “exquisite skill in unfurling love and lust” (Huch 354) 37 of an alluring water sprite, there are plenty of heaving sea-shell-decked bosoms to make modern readers blush. The beauty that draws in the mortal love interests has strong ties to nature, both nurturing and threatening, and it possesses a power that simultaneously lures and repels. Desire and revulsion are thus closely entangled through the authors’ exploration of othered bodies: in the eyes of the human male partners, these female forms - much like Melusine - border on the grotesque as they cross boundaries of femininity and even humanity. In contrast to “the soft, human charm” 38 of Raimund’s new betrothed, for instance, Libella becomes for him a “miscarriage of hell,” 39 a demonic “elemental spirit” 40 rather than the mortal girl he thought she was. The dehumanizing connections among seduction, deception, and fear have their roots in 332 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Renaissance conceptions of female sexuality as a source of male debasement: “The blame for the bodily corruption of the male was attributed directly to lust and temptation by the female” (Merchant 133). Overt depictions of desire among the mermaid figures in these tales are thus perceived as transgressive, even dangerous, and the close relationship between fear and compulsion plays a central role in how they interact with mortals. Huch’s nixie, for instance, offers the youth a knife with which he might cut out his heart to fulfill their bargain: “[She appeared] with a pointed, transparent little blade, saying her mother had fashioned it out of fish teeth. It would glide into flesh with an agreeable ease, more pleasure than pain” (Huch 355). 41 The young man’s hesitation to allow the nixie to complete the operation herself is unsurprising; one can indeed read the supposedly pleasant act as a symbolic inversion of masculine penetration, a transgression of the presumed inviolate male body. While the young man in “Pack of Lies” is compelled more by greed than by fear and stays with his nixie lover in spite of her disturbing offer, both he and the reader are treated to frightening visions of the monstrous form underneath when she bites into “his” heart: [S]he replied, however, that she would prefer to eat it raw and immediately bit off a large piece with her sharp, barbed teeth. […The] color of her eyes danced from a limpid light green to a smoky dark green and then back again, as if they were not eyes at all but rather waves reflected in a delicate crystal. (Huch 356) 42 This suggestion of the ocean’s depths rendered in the nix’s eyes reminds the reader of her connections to and origins within the non-human natural world, a hint of her true identity within a pleasingly feminine form. As emissary of the wild unpredictability of the ocean, the nixie herself seems a piece of the sublime, both enchanting and dangerous. Her transformation from tender lover to monstrous predator and back reinforces the connections linking women to a nature to be both feared and controlled, and it reveals a transgressive identity that cannot be categorized as one or the other. It is this challenge to the enduring nature/ culture duality, a dichotomy which Merchant indicts as a “key factor in Western civilization’s advance at the expense of nature” (143), that presents a particularly queer potential in these texts, as the merfigures at the heart of these tales seem to exist outside of a patriarchally prescribed social order. Simultaneously predator and target, monster and maiden, human and more-than-human, the nix is a queerly vibrant figure who forges and crosses her own borders at will. Within a broader fairytale canon largely molded by men, the work of 19 th -century women - despite increased scholarly attention since the 1980s - is too often disregarded, even in recent engagements with the genre. 43 The lack of DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 333 acknowledgement for their part in writing, creating, and shaping the fairytale tradition remains a glaring lacuna. And yet the subversion of gender norms and intrinsically political content of these stories continue to inform our understanding of fairytales and their creators in new ways, helping readers to look beyond the normative (male) editorial practices of the day. Mermaid tales created by Ricarda Huch, Charlotte von Ahlefeld, and many other nineteenth-century women 44 seem to anticipate modern subversive fairytale discourses by showcasing a feminized natural world teeming with powerful, unruly women. Contemporary German author Kerstin Hensel, for instance, has recently published a stunning new children’s book, Rusalko (2022). Hensel’s play on words in her title transforms the traditionally feminine “rusalka,” a water-dwelling figure from Slavic mythology, into the grammatically neutral “rusalk o .” Hensel is no stranger to incorporating transgressive witchy women and magical waters into her texts, 45 and the titular merperson in this tale grapples with - and eventually embraces - their own non-binary gender identity as the “Meerjungsfrau Prinzesserich” (36) Rusalko: “The name sounded both girly and boyish, and seemed extraordinarily elegant.” 46 Inspired by her granddaughter’s adorable mix-up of the word “Meerjungfrau” (mermaid) with “Meer jungs frau” (an untranslatable neologism approximating the idea of a “sea-boys-woman), 47 Hensel’s gentle tale is both a wholesome addition to the wealth of mermaid stories that have charmed audiences for centuries, and - in classic Hensel style - a politically charged fairytale with much-needed representation for trans and non-binary kids. It not only showcases the rich possibility in queering familiar tales and figures by women writers such as Huch and Ahlefeld, but it also channels the latent queer potential in these stories to render the unspoken explicit. While Huch and Ahlefeld’s texts center outwardly heterosexual relationships, both stories resist the conventional fairytale wedding that concludes so many tales, instead featuring darkly ambiguous conclusions that hint at other realities and desires rife with queer potential. Lacking both the traditional matrimonial ending and the expected demise or exile that often awaits those female fairytale figures who do not fulfill domestic roles, both tales upend expectations and present a new path for their heroines. If we look at these mermaid characters as harbingers of nature, we uncover a queerly agentive natural world that actively resists both control and comprehension, challenging conventional binaries and subverting patriarchal norms. These slippery figures represent an exuberant transition from water to earth, fish to woman, and back. Whether on land or sea, whether practicing love or war, there is far more to these briny beings than meets the (fish)eye. 334 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Notes 1 This infamous line sung by sea-witch Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) - herself something of an icon, inspired by legendary drag queen, singer, and actor Divine - is an attempt to coax protagonist Ariel into trading her voice for a spell to make her human. 2 I am immensely grateful for the feedback and support provided by Sabine Gross, Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge, Mary Hennessy, Marcus Bullock, and colleagues in the German+ Unit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful engagement with my work. 3 For more on the long-standing connections linking women to nature, see Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (1989) and Stacy Alaimo’s Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010). 4 A note on translations: all quotes from Huch’s “Lügenmärchen” are translated by Shawn C. Jarvis, and unless otherwise indicated, all other translations are my own. 5 First coined in 1991 by Teresa de Lauretis, the term “queer theory” describes a set of approaches that aim to interrogate and problematize discursive conventions that label and marginalize positionalities expressed not only through sexuality, but also through race, gender, age, and disability. See De Lauretis, “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction” (1991). According to Sue-Ellen Case, queer theory “works not at the site of gender, but at the site of ontology, to shift the ground of being itself ” (3). 6 Season 10, Episode 7 (“Snatch Game”) of RuPaul’s Drag Race famously features a “Mermaid Fantasy” runway challenge. 7 “er hette sein Weib Melusinam an was unehrlicher That und ungetreuwen Sachen funden” (Ringoltingen 72). 8 The nonanthropocentric “material turn” in ecocriticism foregrounds matter and the corporeal body as central actors in discussions of the more-thanhuman natural world. See Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s volume Material Ecocriticism (2014). 9 For more, see Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter” in their volume Material Ecocriticism (2014). 10 See, for instance, Alexander Doty’s definition of queer criticism in the book Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (1993) . According to Doty, a queer lens is dependent on “a range or network of nonstraight ideas. The queerness in these cases might combine the lesbian, the gay, and DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 335 the bisexual, or it might be textual queerness not accurately described even by a combination of these labels” (xviii). 11 For more on the tradition of female creative writing storytelling in the 19 th century, see Julie L. J. Koehler’s chapter “Women Writers and the Märchenoma : Foremother, Identity, and Legacy” in Elisabeth Krimmer and Lauren Nossett’s Writing the Self, Creating Community: German Women Writers and the Literary Sphere, 1750-1850 (2020). For the subversive potential of fairytales by women writers, see also the volume Women Writing Wonder: An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales (2021), edited by Julie L. J. Koehler, Shandi Lynne Wagner, Anne E. Duggan, and Adrion Dula. 12 “Wasserweiber” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 13 “Einander erkennen und lieben ist ja das Wesen der Seligkeit” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 317). 14 The character of Libella/ Libelle is also the protagonist of Benedikte Naubert’s 1817 fairytale “Libelle. Romantische Erzählung” (“Libelle: A Romantic Tale”). Appearing five years after “The Nymph of the Rhein,” Naubert’s story takes direct inspiration from Ahlefeld’s text. 15 Note the similarity to Melusine’s husband Reymundt. 16 “beständiger wie Raimund” (Ahlefeld 76). 17 “Eine schüchterne Ahnung hielt mich ab, ihm zu bekennen, dass ich zu dem mächtigen Geschlecht der Ondinen gehörte, denn ich, die ich so gern mein ganzes besseres Selbst liebend ihm unterworfen hätte, fürchtete leise, dass die mir über die Beschränkung der Menschen verliehene Überlegenheit ihn weit eher von mir entfernen als ihn mir nähern werde” (Ahlefeld 67). 18 “[A]lles reize der unerhörte Zauber, auf seine Weise mitzuteilen, was in ihm sei. Dies schien dem jungen Manne das Merkwürdigste und Schönste auf der Welt zu sein, und er träumte sich beständig aus, wie auf seine Lockung die Sterne vom Himmel kämen und die Kieselsteine am Wege und die grüngoldigen Käfer, die vor ihm über den Sand krochen, und ihm verkündeten […] er stellte sich vor, es wäre, wie wenn sie an Leib und Seele in allen Teilen vollkommen durchsichtig vor ihm würden“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 19 “Je mehr er es sich überlegte, desto fester wurde sein Entschluss, sich des Herzens, ohne das er nun einmal im Leben nicht auskommen zu können glaubte, nicht zu entäußern, weswegen er aber andererseits doch keineswegs auf den Singezauber der Nixe verzichten wollte“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen“ 314). 20 “das unstete Lächeln ihres falschen Mundes” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 312). 336 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 21 “er [stellte] alle Zweifel und innerlichen Warnungen zurück […]” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 312). 22 “geringfügige Gabe” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 314). 23 “Die lauschende Seele walle der singenden Macht so sehnlich entgegen, dass sie sich ihr ohne Widerstand enthülle und offenbare“ (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 311). 24 This information is presented with gratitude to the website of the Minnesota Dragonfly Society, whose members are largely citizen scientist volunteers. https: / / www.mndragonfly.org/ index.html. 25 “Da fing [das Wasser] an zu brausen und emporzuwallen, als wollte es seine Grenzen übersteigen. Der Kahn schwankte. […] [F]urchtbar sind die Elemente in ihrem Aufruhr! Wie von einem unsichtbaren Wirbel ergriffen, schlug es um, und Raimund ging unter im wütenden Strome“ (Ahlefeld 75). 26 “Libellas Augen funkelten, wie Blitze am finsteren Gewitterhimmel” (Ahlefeld 75). 27 See also Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005). 28 Mortimer-Sandilands further points out the problematic practice of invoking nature as a way of normalizing (or, ‘naturalizing’) queerness. Instead, the author calls for a critical engagement with sex, culture, nature, and power (459—60.) 29 “[Er] sprang kühn und freudig in den Fluss und spielte schwimmend mit den lispelnden Wogen, die, stolz auf ihre schöne Last, ihn umfingen und auf blinkendem Saume ihn einhertrugen, als sei er Neptun in der Fülle des Meeres. Doch plötzlich hemmte ein Krampf die anmutsvolle Übung seiner Kräfte. Todesblässe verdrängte die Rosen seines Angesichts, und in grässlicher Willkür rissen ihn die Fluten mit sich fort“ (Ahlefeld 66). 30 Consider, for instance, 19 th -century attempts to “tame” the Rhine and to control other waterways in central Europe, enterprises whose unintended consequences have shaped Germany’s relationship with its own topology. See for example David Blackbourn’s The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (Norton, 2006). I argue that these physical interventions are symbolically mirrored in the plentiful mermaid tales written by 19 th -century women, who implicitly connect the fates of these folkloric figures with that of the land itself. 31 See Donna Haraway’s Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience (1997). New York: Routledge. 32 For more, see Thomas J. Billard’s “’Passing’ and the Politics of Deception: Transgender Bodies, Cisgender Aesthetics, and the Policing of Inconspicu- DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 337 ous Marginal Identities” in The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication, edited by Tony Docan-Morgan (2019). In the chapter, Billard analyzes the paradoxical reception of transgender individuals who “successfully” pass as cisgender; passing renders them on the one hand more legitimate in heteropatriarchal spaces, but it also feeds discourses of malicious deception. In her analysis of the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” Catherine Tosenberger identifies a connection between deception and survival: for the protagonist, dishonesty offers a means by which to beat an unfair system not for the sake of a happy ending, but merely for continued existence. See Tosenberger, “The True (False) Bride and the False (True) Bridegroom: ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ and Gendered Virtue and Villainy” (212—13). 33 These discourses endure even when the person in question is not trans: see, for example, the false accusations against Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif, whose appearance in the 2024 summer Olympics was marred by vicious disinformation campaigns that, relying on racist, sexist, and transphobic stereotypes, falsely labeled her as transgender and/ or as a man. 34 A quick search on Reddit reveals countless threads that invite fans to discuss analyses such as these, share ideas and artwork, and explore subversive readings of familiar films and tales. 35 “[…] von wunderbaren Regungen bestürmt ward” (Ahlefeld 66). 36 “wonniglich[e] Liebkosungen” (Huch 314). 37 “ausgesuchteste[] Künste[] in Entfaltung von Liebe und Laune” (Huch 313). 38 “[der] sanfte, menschliche Reiz” (Ahlefeld 71). 39 “Nachtgeburt der Hölle” (Ahlefeld 75). 40 “Elementargeist” (Ahlefeld 71). 41 “[Sie erschien] mit einem spitzen, durchsichtigen Messerlein […], von dem sie sagte, ihre Mutter habe es aus Fischzähnen gemacht und es werde mit angenehmer Geschmeidigkeit in das Fleisch gleiten, mehr Lust als Wehgefühl erregend” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 314). 42 “[S]ie sagte aber, sie esse es lieber roh, und biss sogleich ein großes Stück ab mit ihren scharfen, stacheligen Zähnen. [… Die] Farbe ihrer Augen [wogte hin und her] beständig zwischen einem klaren Hellgrün und schwärzlichem Dunkelgrün […], als ob es gar keine Augen, sondern in einem zarten Kristall spielende Wellen wären” (Huch, “Lügenmärchen” 315). 43 See for example my Review Article that examines recent book-length interventions into the genre. Of the seven monographs and edited volumes I reviewed, women creators are mentioned scarcely a handful of times (“Beyond the Seven Hills” 721—22). 338 Melissa Sheedy DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 44 For example, see Marie Timme’s selkie tale “The King’s Child” (1867), Marie von Olfers’s sweetly wholesome “The Little Princess” (1862), and Benedikte Naubert’s “Libelle” (1817). 45 See for instance her version of the Mittagsfrau (Lady Midday) figure associated with a magical lake in Gipshut (Cap Rock, 1999). 46 “Dieser Name klang sowohl mädchenals auch jungenhaft und außerordentlich elegant” (Hensel 13). 47 Based on personal conversations in June 2023. Works Cited von Ahlefeld, Charlotte. “Die Nymphe des Rheins.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. 61—76. Alaimo, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Ashman, Howard and Alan Menken. “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” The Little Mermaid . Dir. John Musker and Ron Clements. Perf. Pat Carroll. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 1989. Billard, Thomas J. “’Passing’ and the Politics of Deception: Transgender Bodies, Cisgender Aesthetics, and the Policing of Inconspicuous Marginal Identities.” The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication . Ed. Tony Docan-Morgan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 463—77. Case, Sue-Ellen. “Tracking the Vampire.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): 1—20. De Lauretis, Teresa. “Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. 2 (1991): iii—vxiii. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. Franklin, Sarah. “The Cyborg Embryo: Our Path to Transbiology.” Theory, Culture and Society 23, no. 7—8 (2006): 167—87. Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives . New York, New York UP, 2005. Haraway, Donna. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_Onco- MouseTM: Feminism and Technoscience . New York: Routledge, 1997. Hensel, Kerstin. Rusalko. Ein Unterwassermärchen . Berlin: Eulenspiegel, 2022. Huch, Ricarda. “Lügenmärchen.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. 311—317. Huch, Ricarda. “Pack of Lies.” The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780- 1900. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis and Jeannine Blackwell. U of Nebraska P, 2001. 353—357. Iovino, Serenella and Serpil Oppermann. “Introduction: Stories Come to Matter.” Material Ecocriticism . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2014. 1—17. DOI 10.24053/ CG-58-0020 Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women 339 Jarvis, Shawn C., ed. Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012. Jarvis, Shawn C. and Jeannine Blackwell, eds. The Queen’s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780-1900. U of Nebraska P, 2001. Koehler, Julie L. J. “Women Writers and the Märchenoma : Foremother, Identity, and Legacy . Writing the Self, Creating Community: German Women Authors and the Literary Sphere, 1750-1850. Ed. Elisabeth Krimmer and Lauren Nossett. Rochester: Camden House, 2020. 182—203. Koehler, Julie L. J., et al., eds. Women Writing Wonder. An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2021. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution . New York: Harper & Rowe, 1989. Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona. “Queering Ecocultural Studies.” Cultural Studies Vol. 22 (2008): 455—75. Naubert, Benedikte. “Libelle. Romantische Erzählung.” Im Reich der Wünsche. Die schönsten Märchen deutscher Dichterinnen. Ed. Shawn C. Jarvis. München: C.H. Beck, 2012. 105—141. von Ringoltingen, Thüring. Melusine. Nach den Handschriften kritisch hrsg. von Karin Schneider. Berlin, 1958. Sheedy, Melissa. “Beyond the Seven Hills: Fairytales and Folklore in Recent Scholarship and Pedagogy.” Monatshefte 116.4 (2024): 705—26. —. “Queering Material Nature: Bewitched Bodies and the Limits of the Enlightenment.” Goethe Yearbook 30 (2023): 155—59. Spencer, Leland G. “Performing Transgender Identity in The Little Mermaid : From Andersen to Disney.” Communication Studies 65.1 (2014): 112—27. Tosenberger, “The True (False) Bride and the False (True) Bridegroom: ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ and Gendered Virtue and Villainy” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms . Ed. Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012. 207—21. Turner, Kay and Pauline Greenhill. “Introduction: Once Upon a Queer Time.” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms . Ed. Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2012. 1—24. Verzeichnis der Autor: innen Dr. Matthew O. Anderson Furman University Modern Languages and Literatures Furman Hall 235-U Greenville, SC 29613 matthew.anderson0@furman.edu Dr. Rebeccah Dawson University of Kentucky Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Patterson Office Tower 1005 Lexington, Kentucky, 40506 bessdawson@uky.edu Dr. Kyung Lee Gagum Midwestern State University Texas Department of World Languages and Cultures 3410 Taft Boulevard Wichita Falls, TX 76308 lee.gagum@msutexas.edu Dr. Melissa Sheedy University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ 806 Van Hise Hall Madison, WI 53706 melissa.sheedy@wisc.edu Dr. Fred Yaniga Hillsdale College Department of German 33 East College Street Hillsdale, MI 49242 fyaniga@hillsdale.edu ISSN 0010-1338 Themenheft: Fairy Tales - New Ways of Reading, New Ways of Teaching Gastherausgeber: innen: Rebeccah Dawson und Melissa Sheedy Rebeccah Dawson and Melissa Sheedy: Introduction: There and Back Again. New Perspectives on Fairytales and Adaptations Matthew O. Anderson: From Sights Unseen to Must-See Sights: Reviewing Grimm Iconography in the Fairy Tale Classroom Fred Yaniga: Triumph of the Stump: German Stories of Amputations and Prosthetics Marking Victories in the Midst of Physical Loss Kyung Lee Gagum: Faustine in a Fairy Tale Melissa Sheedy: Sex, Lies, and Mermaids: Queer Nature and Deviant Sexuality in Fairytales by German Women narr.digital