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COPYRIGHT 2004 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
EVER SINCE EDGAR ALLAN POE REFERRED TO HAWTHORNE AS AN imitator of Ludwig Tieck's tales in a review of the Twice-Told Tales in Godey's Lady's Book in 1847, generations of scholars have attempted to prove and disprove his statement. (1) Among these studies are numerous articles on Hawthorne's reading knowledge of German, compilations of translations of Tieck's works in America (see Matenko), and Poe's own reliability as a scholar of German literature (see Belden; Alsen). In Hawthorne's letters and journals, there are a few scattered references to Tieck that suggest an acquaintance with the German novelist, (2) and Hawthorne was indirectly connected to Germany through his participation at Brook Farm and through his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller in Concord, Massachusetts. Hawthorne possibly could have come across translations of Tieck's tales in journals or in Thomas Carlyle's German Romance. (3) Although evidence to support a direct influence of Tieck on the works of Hawthorne is speculative, the use of the fairy tale and the popular legend as a means of creating the supernatural in their stories provides a strong affinity between these two authors. The most prominent similarities can be found in Tieck's early collection of fairy tales, Phantasus, (4) and Hawthorne's Puritan tales. (5)
An important way that Tieck and Hawthorne create the supernatural in their stories is through the genres of the fairy tale (Kunstmarchen) and the popular legend. For the German Romantics, the fairy tale was the ideal literary form to depict the boundaries between the real and the supernatural because the genre already embodied the concept of the fantastic from its folk tradition. (6) Romantics such as Tieck and Friedrich von Hardenberg (pseudonym: Novalis) employed the real and the supernatural in the fairy tale to show the "destructive nocturnal side of nature" (Hoffmeister 231) and its relationship to the human mind. To elevate the fairy tale from its popular tradition to the genre of Gothic literature, the folk tale (Volksmarchen) itself was forced to undergo tremendous change in terms of structure and content. (7) Historically, this genre embodied simple fictional elements such as a direct storyline, lack of character development, and the constant repetition of themes. Most important, the folk tale was one-dimensional. That is to say, no distinction was made between the real and the supernatural in these stories; the fairy tale characters and those with magical powers (witches, fairies, sorcerers, and mythical creatures) interacted with one another on the same plane of reality. Max Luthi writes that "the fairy tale character on this side of reality does not have the feeling of encountering another dimension in the beyond" (12). In Grimm's tales, characters regard the supernatural as a common...
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