Laughing their Heads off

The Blaubartmärchen rewards study because it encodes key notions about gender, order, and the nature of fairy tale. In contrast to comic French and English traditions, the canonical German Blaubartmärchen is serious and tragic. However, a rich, forgotten nineteenth–century tradition of popular German Bluebeard comedies exists. Franz von Pocci’s Kasperliade (1859) seems to promote conservative authority structures but subtextually evokes carnivalesque subversion. Alexander von Sternberg’s Märchen (1850) involves transgressive gender roles, indeed an (albeit very limited) deconstruction of gender, before resorting to defensive reinscription of conservative gender roles. F.W. Hackländer’s realist novella (1863) seems to lack subversive moments in its denial that Bluebeard is evil, but a closer reading shows up its uneasy moments; and Roderich Benedix’s play (1861) is unique in challenging the Märchen plot and established gender roles. Laughter here restores order and ridicules characters who transgress; but it is also used in complex ways as an inoculation against fear. Despite seeming to share cultural and political values with texts in the canon, these comedies are nonetheless excluded because they deviate formally from the Grimmian Märchen and question the canonical view that Märchen must be ancient and serious. Given that these texts were more popular than the Grimms’, a review of notions of the Märchen , folk and popular culture is required. Some of the texts also undermine canonical values in dangerous ways by using laughter to rob Bluebeard of his terror and power

Art · Comedy · Comics · Eroticism · German · Human sexuality · Laughter · Linguistics · Literature · Novella · Order (exchange · Plot (graphics · Politics · Sociology · Subversion · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · Gender Studies in Language · History · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Philosophy