Refashioning the “Marsk Stig” Ballads: B.S. Ingemann's The Childhood of King Erik Menved and Carsten Hauch's Marsk Stig

Abstract

This article addresses generic re-fashionings of the medieval popular ballad in Danish romantic-era literature. Focusing on two different adaptations of one particular series of historical ballads known as the “Marsk Stig” ballads, B.S. Ingemann's historical novel The Childhood of King Erik Menved and Carsten Hauch's tragedy Marsk Stig, the article utilizes Gérard Genette's theory of transtextuality to explore the ways in which the romantic adaptations re-inscribe their medieval source. The evocation of Danish medieval history places Ingemann's novel and Hauch's play as instances of national romanticism. Both works, however, display the hybridity, the mixing and blending of different texts, forms, and genres, which according to Schlegel's famous definition characterizes universal romanticism. The article suggests that Ingemann's and Hauch's adaptations of the Marsk Stig ballads straddle the line between universal and national romanticism.