Framing the Frame of H.C. Andersen’sAuntie Toothache

Abstract

The article focuses upon the questions of the frame, the plotting and the genre of H.C. Andersen’s last tale Auntie Toothache. The way the device of the frame is employed in the tale is linked to the European tradition of the Novelle. But it is also shown how the tale plays on and subverts the conventions associated with the frame in this tradition as well as the modes of literary subgenres like the fantastic tale. Another playful aspect of the tale pointed out in the article is that it is polyphonic in more ways than one. At the same time it is a highly allegorical text. It is argued that playfulness and allegory go hand in hand in embracing the otherness that great literature will always have to engage with.