Happy Endings in a World of Misery: A Literary Convention between Social Constraints and Utopia in Children's and Adult Literature

Abstract

A book, lying unopened, is but a bound, sleeping, innocuous little animal that will do no one any harm. Whoever does not arouse it, will not be yawned at; whoever does not poke his nose between its jaws, will not be bitten (Eduards Traum [Busch 1959 {1891}: IV, 201]). This was Wilhelm Busch's provocative description of the dangerous adventure of reading. We learn to read in childhood, and adults have always taken it for granted that the is satisfactory: Adventures in generally turn out well because the outcome of ... is always knowledge, says Jonathan Culler (1982: 78-79), referring not to children's stories of reading but to traditional ways of and interpreting texts. Thus itself would seem to have a structure parallel to that of traditional children's books, which end happily, however badly they might bite. From the very beginning