The Irascible Heroine in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Fairy Tale, “Princess Brambilla: A Capriccio in the Style of Jacques Callot”

Val Scullion,Marion Treby

doi:10.5539/res.v9n1p60

Abstract

This socio-linguistic study of a selection of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s literary fairy tales, particularly “Princess Brambilla: A capriccio in the style of Jacques Callot” (1820), focuses on his revisioning of contemporary social discourses on gender. Conventionally, these discourses depicted men as dominating and women as subservient, whereas Hoffmann’s wide range of fairy-tale characters subverts a strict gender differentiation. The authors’ use of a Bakhtinian method to disentangle interdependent narrative strands in this carnivalesque fairy tale reveals its lack of a single patriarchal ideology. By exploring the relationship between “Brambilla”’s unconventional heroine Giacinta-Brambilla, and unheroic hero Giglio-Chiapperi, their argument demonstrates how Giacinta’s dominance facilitates Giglio’s developing self-knowledge. Through examining differing critical interpretations of Hoffmann’s presentation of women, the authors argue that, set against the normative values of his time, “Princess Brambilla” takes a subversive position. In short, Hoffmann’s fairy tales, in their historical context, offered a new way to interpret gender.

Highlights

Using Bakhtinian theory, we focus on carnival in the stylistic as well as the thematic sense, namely, in terms of its convoluted, capriccio-like structure, and its literal description of a Roman carnival
Bakhtin maintains that the collapsing of hierarchies of authority during carnival time gives licence to the populace to ridicule those in power, and to make fools of self and others (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 68)
In “Signor Formica” (1821), Hoffmann ridicules a carnivalesque trio of male rogues: Signor Pasquale Capuzzi, a lascivious uncle who has locked up his niece, Marianna, and intends to marry her; Signor Splendiano Accoramboni, a charlatan of a doctor, and Pitichinaccio, a dwarf dressed as a lady’s maid who attends Marianna

Summary

Introduction

During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, a period coterminous with the span of Hoffmann’s musical compositions and publications (1803-1822), French invasion, occupation and defeat in 1815, and the establishment of a reactionary German government in the post-Napoleonic period materially affected the lives of thousands of Germans. His whole life was a repeating pattern of progress and extreme setbacks, which sometimes brought him to the point of starvation, as he attempted to carve out his way in the world He is perhaps best remembered for his children’s fairy tale, “The Nutcracker” (1816), his novella “The Sandman” (1816), and for his influence on the composers Wagner and Tchaikovsky, and the writers Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire and Angela Carter

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion