Search

The late 19th century, and especially the turn of the century, was marked by artistic, literary, and pedagogic reform movements in almost all European countries. Ideas about reform surfaced in the field of children’s literature as well, though, admittedly, without influencing the greater majority of publications. The common thread of these reform movements was a rediscovery of childhood, given voice

"The fairy tale," said Walter A. Berendsohn in 1921, "is a love story with obstacles, which ends up in the final unification of the couple."1 In its complete form, Berendsohn adds, the fairy tale consists of two parts. The first part deals with "the obstacles before the first unification" of the couple.2 For the young protagonists it is usually their first love. This kind of tale has often been designated as initiation or maturity narrative. In the following I want to restrict myself to love narratives with male protagonists, that is, to lad stories, and take examples from the late-eighteenth up to the middle of the nineteenth century During this period the procedures of growing up, especially adolescence, succumbed to a significant change, and one may expect that these cultural changes were reflected in the stories. Of particular interest are those narratives in which the young man has to choose between two women. In this kind of fairy tale the obstacle consists of a difficult choice. For the male hero the major task is to choose the right bride. The pivotal characters' trial consists of withstanding the temptations of the wrong woman. Because of the highly moral quality of the conflict, this pattern of action is more likely to occur in the courtly literature of the absolutistic era than in folktales. Fenelon's mythological educational novel Aventure de Telemaque represents the classical form of the conflict. The same