H.C.Andersen And German Romantic Fairy Tales

Hans Christian Andersen(1805-1875)is known throughout the world for his fairy tales and ranks among the world’s most iconic writers.Andersen’s fairy tales often tell adult stories with childlike narratives,thus most researchers often consider Andersen’s fairy tales children’s literature,overlooking the more mature undertones.This thesis begins with the relationship between Andersen’s fairy tales and German romantic ones,paying particular attention to their central themes,such as nature and city,the ego,death,and more.It explores the expansion and unique expression of these themes in Andersen’s fairy tales.This thesis is divided into three parts.The first part introduces the thesis by summarizing its source and significance,domestic and international literature,and the implications of such literature on modern themes and modernist theories.The second part contains the second to fifth chapters.The second chapter clarifies the influence and acceptance of German Romantic fairy tales and Andersen’s works from a literary historical perspective.The third chapter mainly discusses the theme about nature and city prevalent in Andersen’s fairy tales.Andersen presents the poetical nature and artistic cities and integrates nature and city through imagination,which are different from presentation in German romantic fairy tales.The fourth chapter aims at the self—namely Andersen is different from the ego in German Romantic fairy tales—and constantly searches for the self-recognition,especially showing the irreconcilable contradiction between the inner self and the external self.The fifth chapter emphasizes on the theme of death in his works,showing that death in Andersen’s fairy tales is more serious than that in German Romantic fairy tales.Andersen describes the death by the "poetic imagination",which is adopted to eliminate the fear of death.The sixth chapter is the conclusion that Andersen has debt to German romantic fairy tales and performs on these themes that is different from and more modern than German Romantic fairy tales.So,Andersen’s fairy tale is on the basis of romantic fairy tales,and makes a step closer to modernism.