THIS CLASS WILL BE RECORDED.  if you register on or after 11/5, contact the Registrar for the Zoom class link.

Building on the fairy tale traditions presented by Charles Perrault, the pioneering women of the French salons, and the monumental work of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen took the folk/fairy tale in new and astonishing directions. Andersen began from the archetypal starting point, the traditional folk/fairy tales he heard from his paternal grandmother who worked as a spinster in a lunatic asylum (Perrault’s Mother Goose?!). Andersen’s earliest tales retell some of the traditional narratives of the Danish folk, but he soon begins to explore some of the more daring fictive possibilities of the fairy tale genre, negotiating the delicate balances between consolation and despair, dream and nightmare, and altruism and narcissism. In the process, Andersen explores and manifests the possibilities of narrative by making the art of storytelling part of his tales. Remarkably, Andersen’s sensitivity to matters of soul and spirit anticipate the work of Freud and Jung by a generation. Discover, among other things, Andersen’s original versions of The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen. Text: Hans Cristian Andersen Fairy Tales Trans. Tiina Nunnally, Penguin, 2005