Course Syllabus

H.C. Andersen: The Devii

"About 5 or 6 years ago I also walked down there, I didn't know a single person in town and now I can enjoy my Schakspear with a dear and respected family up there — Oh God is good, a drop of the honey of joy makes me forget all bitterness, oh God will not forsake me — he has made me so happy. —"

H.C. Andersen: Diary, December 19th, 1825

 

Course Description

Hans Christian Andersen is internationally known as the writer of fairy tales. Children all over the world know The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Princess and the Pea and other tales. But Andersen also wrote plays, novels, poems, travelogues and songs – and his tales are not just for children. His stories work on many levels providing not only entertainment, but also reflections on society, technical advancement, and values.

The course will provide an understanding of the Romantic Age and the Danish Golden Age, and of the societal and economic changes that affected life in mid-19th century Europe. Andersen’s works will be analysed and interpreted through a variety of different literary approaches.

In his fairytales, Andersen has an eye for the existential problems related to modernity. His protagonists are isolated, suffer from social and sexually related discomfort and urban anonymity and anxiety – and they constantly find themselves at the mercy of chance more than free will. Often the question Who am I? Where do I belong? is asked, raising the problem of the instability of identity, which the quote above from his Diary 1825 clearly shows. So, in a way: I is another - Je est un autre - Ich ist Einander

The course will begin with a discussion of Andersen’s starting point in the Danish and German Romanticism in the 1830s and 40s. We will then move on to the ambivalences in Andersen’s later works and discover how Hans Christian Andersen’s literary tales are still pertinent in the 21st century.

 

Course Objectives

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Examine and critically evaluate the works by Hans Christian Andersen
• Identify themes, narration strategies, and literary style in the works by Hans Christian Andersen
• Analyse the interrelation between text, time and context  
• Be able to use different literary approaches and methods to analyse and comprehend the works by Hans Christian Andersen

Approach to teaching

Close reading and deep analysis will be the core method of the course. How a story is told is as important as what is told, so we need to pay attention to both content and form.

In combination with close reading of the works by Hans Christian Andersen, this course will include  a visit to Andersen's childhood home in Odense. Furthermore visual material, i.e. TV-shows, visual arts, film in class will be included.

It is a participation-discussion oriented course and it is expected that students come to class having done all assignments, fully prepared to engage in discussions and activities. 

Faculty: Jan Aage Rasmussen

Cand.phil. (Scandinavian Philology). assistant professor (Literary Theory and Literary Analysis, Philosophy of Science and Methodology, Metaphors, Semiotics and Cognition, Phenomenology of the Mind) 1993 - 2023 at Institut for Nordiske Studier og Sprogvidenskab, Departement of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. Teacher of Danish to foreigners

Office Hours will be scheduled with students individually

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to Birgitte Duelund Pallesen, MA, who kindly has allowed me to use and abuse her rich material for this course.

Course expectations and Requirements 

This course is discussion‐based and requires your active participation and engagement. Students are expected to have read the materials for each class and actively participate in discussions. Students should come to class prepared with questions and points for discussion. When posing questions or participating in discussions, students should, as much as possible, refer to the readings to support the points they are making. If you are shy about speaking up in class, you are welcome to email me your questions or ideas for class discussions.

Furthermore, in groups all students will be asked to lead the class discussion around a piece of designated literature once during the semester. Sign up will be available from the beginning of the semester.

Last but not least:  Essential is also a sense of humour and irony, since that is what H.C. Andersen and I both  suffer from.

Literature

The following titles are examples of readings, not a complete list. Readings include (excerpts from):

Ann Rowland, Romanticism and Childhood

Aldona Zanko, "In Memory of the Snow Queen - Hans Christian Andersen  Recalled and Retold"

Bente Scavenius. The Golden Age Revisited: Art and Culture in Denmark 1800-1850, Copenhagen, 1996

Bruno Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment, London, 1978

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Elias Bredsdorff. Hans Christian Andersen. The Story of his Life and Work 1805-1875, London, 1975

Edgar Allan Poe. "The Shadow - A Parable"

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman

Grimm Brothers, The Blue Light & The Six Swans

Hans Christian Andersen. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories, translated from Danish by Erik Christian Haugaard, New York, 1974

Hans Christian Andersen. The Fairy Tale of My Life – An Autobiography, translated from the Danish by Naomi Lewis, First Cooper Square Press, New York, 2000

Hans Christian Andersen. A Poet's Bazaar

Hans Christian Andersen. The Diaries of Hans Christian Andersen, trans. Conroy and Rossel

Jackie Wullschlager, The Life of a Storyteller

Jens Andersen. Hans Christian Andersen, Overlook Duckworth, New York, 2003, translated from Danish by Tiina Nunnally

Johan de Mylius. The Voice of Nature in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Odense, 1989

Kjeld Heltoft, Hans Christian Andersen as an Artist, translated by David Hohnen, Christian Ejlers’ Forlag, 2005

Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland

Maria Tatar, "What is  Fairytale?"

Nicolai Gogol, "The Nose"

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray & ‘The Fisherman and his Soul’

Paul de Man, "Autobiography as Defacement"

Søren Kierkegaard, From the Papers of One Still Living

Torsten Bøgh Thomsen, "Denmark my Native Land: Hans Christian Andersen as a Happiness Object"

Ursula Le Guin, "The Child and the Shadow"

Vladimir Propp. Morphology of the Folk Tale

Wolfgang Lederer. The Kiss of the Snow Queen. Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s Redemption by Women, Berkeley, 1986