[The Transformation of Humans into Animals: A Motif History with Special Emphasis on the German Fairytale in the First Half of the 19th Century]. - book review

By Gabriela Brunner Ungricht. (European University Studies, Series I, vol. 1676.) Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, Paris, and Vienna: Peter Lang, 1998. 337 pp. Bibliography, index. No price information available (Flexiband). ISBN 3-906760-29-4

Wordsworth's poetic dictum that "the child is father of the man" sometimes takes on very personal significance. This reviewer, for example, still looks with amazement on the fact that his keen boyhood interest in marchen (fairytales) has led to an adult scholarly interest in the study of folk-narrative; similarly, the central theme of the book under review, the magic transformation of humans into animals (and vice versa) in those marchen, strikes a personal note since a recurrent nightmare of that marchen-reading boy had him drop into an open manhole, from the bottom of which he was able to see, against the sky, his parents or other helpers searching for him, without their being able to identify him since he had been transformed into some strange, indefinable, unrecognisable creature. Naturally, he always awakened finding, to his relief, that his experience had been only a dream. It has therefore to be admitted that the reviewer approached his task with considerable personal anticipation.

Mingled with this expectation was the, as it turned out, wrong assumption that the "motif history" of the subtitle would concern itself in detail and in a comparative and contrasting manner with that large cluster of folk-narrative motifs classified in the Motif Index of Folk Literature under D 0-699 "Transformation" and D 700-99 "Disenchantment," within the wider context of D "Magic," and closely associated with Tale Types 400-59 "Supernatural or Enchanted Husband (Wife) or other relative" in The Types of the Folktale. It has to be made clear at the beginning of this evaluation, however, that Gabriela Brunner Ungricht's monograph is, on the whole, not about the processes and products of oral tradition and therefore not about the evidence categorised in these two fundamental compendia of folk-narrative research. Indeed, neither the Motif Index nor the Type Index is listed in the bibliography under "Reference Works."

While references to orally transmitted narratives in the folk-cultural register are not completely excluded, this monograph is centrally concerned with the history of the transformation motif within the context of literary fairytales in German in the first half of the nineteenth century and any fair assessment will have to take this particular orientation into account, rather than complain about the lack of a focus that it was never intended to have. It is nevertheless not unreasonable to point out, in general terms, how language-bound scholarship in our field apparently still is. More specifically, it is surprising--indeed disappointing--that relevant writings of Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Bruno Bettelheim and Ruth Bottigheimer are ignored; a fate that they share, oddly enough, with the publications of the "Gottingen School" of (folk)narrative research.

Within the more limited objectives of this monograph, the author is impressively successful. After a general introduction, she briefly sketches the presence and function of the transformation motif in the history of human culture, touching on primitive belief systems (including totemism, magic, and animistic thought processes), the classical period (with particular emphasis on Ovid's Metamorphoses), and on German folk belief regarding gods, demons, the devil, witches and wizards, night hags, werewolves, and the dead. In the chapter that follows, she traces and, to an extent, attempts to define the differences between marchen, sagen, and myths in their particular German terminological and conceptual configurations, before devoting the main portion of her book to her chosen topic: the literary marchen and its most influential manifestation on German Romanticism. Special emphasis is given to the writings of Wieland, Musaus, Brentano, the Grimms, Hoffmann, Hauff, Bechstein, Gotthelf and, somewhat later, Kafka. Of these, Gotthelf's "Die schwarze Spinne" ("The Black Spider") and "Kurt von Koppigen," Hoffmann's "Der goldne Topf" ("The Golden Pot") and "Klein Zaches" ("Little Zaches"), and Hauff's "Das kalte Herz" ("The Cold Heart") are singled out for detailed analysis as examples of various treatments of the transformation motif within the genre. Most frequent reference is, however, made to the fairytale collections of the Brothers Grimm, serving as sources for relevant narratives, background coloration and supporting evidence. The abbreviation KHM, for the Kinder-und Hausmarchen, is consequently the most frequently encountered, as is the numerical order adopted by the Grimms, rather than the type designations of the international Tale Type Index.

In this literary context, the author makes a helpful distinction between Selbstverwandlung (transformation actively initiated by the numinous being that is the subject of the transformation) and Fremdverwandlung (transformation initiated by another and passively endured by the transformed being). The former is only possible for non-humans who also have the power to retract it, while the latter is usually suffered by humans who are turned by outside forces mostly into animals and sometimes into other non-human shapes. Of particular fascination in the tales of magic are the sequential transformations, often as part of a magic flight or some magic contest. The author convincingly presents and illustrates their essential function in the German literary fairytale, for the popularity of which in nineteenth-century Germany, she argues, there is no equal in other literary cultures. At the same time, she never loses sight of the wider implications of the concept of transformation in human belief systems and of the role of "metamorphosis" at the heart of this-worldly encounters with other-worldly creatures and their magic powers.