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TIECK'S 'MARCHEN' AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT: THE INFLUENCE OF WIELAND AND MUSAUS (ROMANTICISM, FAIRY TALE (GERMAN))

SUSAN STICKNEY-BAILEY, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Abstract

The Marchen of Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Karl August Musaus are particularly suited to provide the context for a study of what Ludwig Tieck inherited from the Marchen of the Enlightenment. Between them these two authors reflect the major literary influences upon the development of the Marchen in Germany. They are also the authors against which Tieck defined himself, for the violence of his rejection of Wieland's works and the oft-repeated criticism of Musaus' tales betray the context of shared assumptions. Wieland represents in his Marchen the contribution of the French fairy tale literature, the loosening of normative aesthetics as well as the distanced attitude typical of the Rococo period toward the Enlightenment's view of the perfectibility of mankind. Musaus' tales mark a pivotal point in the adaptation of folk material to the requirements of high literature, particularly that moment when the Marchen's adoption of novelistic techniques moved it into the mainstream of popular literature. Between Wieland and Musaus we also have representatives of the debate on the role of the marvelous in literature, a debate, which was crucial in the rise of the Marchen. Their Marchen apply and illustrate the theories of Gottsched and Breitinger concerning the marvelous. Musaus, concerned to link the imagination to the intellectual faculties, grounds the marvelous as much as possible in reality by using processes of association, and logical progression. Wieland anchored the marvelous in the individual's subjective view of the world and human sensuality. Thus both authors limited the marvelous to a few "episodes" or moments of a story. Musaus' grounding of the marvelous showed Tieck the possibility of creating the peculiar ambiguous quality that he gives to the depictions of the real world in his Marchen. Wieland's grounding of the marvelous in human nature, particularly in sensuality, has many repercussions throughout Tieck's Marchen. Though it is possible to see in the turn to the Marchen a disaffection with the assumptions of the Aufklarung on the part of all three authors, Tieck's scepticism is deeper and finds a more radical expression in the Marchen.

Subject Area

Germanic literature

Recommended Citation

STICKNEY-BAILEY, SUSAN, "TIECK'S 'MARCHEN' AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT: THE INFLUENCE OF WIELAND AND MUSAUS (ROMANTICISM, FAIRY TALE (GERMAN))" (1985). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8602695.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8602695

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