Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller (review)

"I am worthy of you. . . . I am truly popular, truly appreciated abroad, I am famous," wrote Hans Christian Andersen in 1845 to his patron, revealing his deepest anxieties to receive recognition. Indeed, the Danish writer Andersen became one of the most beloved storytellers in the whole world. With the commemoration of his bicentennial birthday in 2005, a book with a new, provocative approach about Andersen has appeared. Its author, the renowned fairy-tale researcher Jack Zipes, claims to reconsider Andersen's reception in English-speaking countries and to discuss cinematic adaptations of his tales. The subtitle of the book, The Misunderstood Storyteller, shows his intentions: with this study, based on a sociohistorical critique, Zipes aims to reappraise Andersen and "reveal some new aspects of this pathetically great artist" (xvi).

The book consists of four chapters. The first two are revised and expanded essays from previous articles, while the other two are entirely new. Each chapter functions also as an autonomous survey, something that explains the repetitions of some references and thoughts in different parts of the book.

The first essay, with the title "In Pursuit of Fame: An Introduction to the Life and Works of Hans Christian Andersen," reveals Andersen's personal, uninterrupted struggle to achieve popularity and the acceptance of the upper class. Zipes draws a biographical picture of Andersen's family, his education, his friends, and his patrons. Furthermore, he refers briefly to the whole of Andersen's oeuvre, including his dramatic works, librettos, novels, poems, and travel books. While Andersen's significance as an author is based on his contribution to the development and revitalization of the genre Kunstmärchen and these fairy tales gave Andersen the fame he sought, he wrote 156 fairy tales, but only a small part of them have been reprinted and widely circulated. Zipes accurately describes a number of them and identifies their common features: "The major ideas concern the recognition of artistic genius, nobility of mind versus nobility of blood, the exposure of class injustice and hypocrisy, the master-servant relationship, the immortality of the soul, and the omnipotence and omnipresence of God" (32). He also investigates Andersen's position in the literary development in Denmark and esteems him "as a significant precursor of surrealist and existentialist literature" (40).

In the second chapter, "The Discourse of the Dominated," Zipes, whose previous works have opened up discussions among scholars about the ideological uses of tales, undertakes once again the project of reading Andersen's tales for their ideological point of view "and to analyze their function in the acculturation process" (48). Zipes argues that "Andersen created a canon of literary fairy tales in praise of essentialist ideology for children and adults" (47). He also demonstrates that Andersen's tales were encapsulated by the dominant middle-class ethic and, through a thorough analysis of some fairy-tale paradigms, comes to the conclusion that Andersen was not "rebellious": "Rather, he placed safety before idealism, choosing moral compromise over moral outrage and individual comfort and achievement over collective struggle and united goals" (75). Zipes maintains that these "defects in Andersen's ideological perspective . . . are the telling marks in the historical reception of his tales" (75).

The third essay, "The Discourse of Rage and Revenge: Controlling Children," is an exploration of the complex nature of Andersen's identity. According to Zipes, Andersen "used the fairy-tale form to sublimate fomenting anxieties, disturbing desires, and furious rage: the fairy tale became his compensation for feelings of misrecognition and lack. Andersen . . . employed the figures of children and childhood as tropes to speak out against the abuse he felt—often in sympathy with children and, at the same time, to put the child in his proper 'Christian' place" (78). Working with psychoanalytical methods, Zipes analyzes some "child-centered" texts in an aim to reveal "Andersen's concept of childhood." He registers two types of children in Andersen's tales: "the good girl, who is mainly self-sacrificial, and the good boy, whose zeal...