Fairy-tale Realism. Hans Christian Andersen and the Modern World of Things (original) (raw)
2013, Sociologia Y Tecnociencia Revista Digital De Sociologia Del Sistema Tecnocientifico
Literature has a specific knowledge about things. My contribution supports this thesis by analyzing the world of things in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Exemplary readings reveal how Andersen's texts acknowledge the power of things in modern life and how these texts thus question scientific and philosophical concepts of subjectivity that dominated in the nineteenth century. The agency of things in Andersen's texts challenges the ideal of a rational subject that acts autonomously. Actor-Network-Theory allow understanding the realism of Andersen's acting things. The marvelous, which is prevalently used to define the genre Fairy Tale in literary studies, is inherent to modernity. The relationship between the magic and the modern is different than expected: modernity consists of an interplay between enchantment and disentchantment.
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