Male Adolescence in German Fairy-Tale Novellas of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Biedermeier

Abstract

fairy tale, said Walter A. Berendsohn in 1921, a love story with obstacles, which ends up in final of couple.1 In its complete form, Berendsohn adds, fairy tale consists of two parts. The first part deals with the obstacles before first unification of couple.2 For young protagonists it is usually their first love. This kind of tale has often been designated as initiation or maturity narrative. In following I want to restrict myself to love narratives with male protagonists, that is, to lad stories, and take examples from late-eighteenth up to middle of nineteenth century During this period procedures of growing up, especially adolescence, succumbed to a significant change, and one may expect that these cultural changes were reflected in stories. Of particular interest are those narratives in which young man has to choose between two women. In this kind of fairy tale obstacle consists of a difficult choice. For male hero major task is to choose right bride. The pivotal characters' trial consists of withstanding temptations of wrong woman. Because of highly moral quality of conflict, this pattern of action is more likely to occur in courtly literature of absolutistic era than in folktales. Fenelon's mythological educational novel Aventure de Telemaque represents classical form of conflict. The same