What is it about?
Contemporary German author Kerstin Hensel has drawn on fairy tale motifs since she started to publish in the 1980s. In this article I examine a selection of poetry and short stories that parody, rewrite, or reference fairy tale motifs, especially the story of Cinderella (Aschenputtel in German) which inspires a number of poems in the recent collection Cinderella räumt auf.
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Why is it important?
Examining fairy tale motifs in contemporary literature shows the continuing influence of these story forms in the modern world, but also their increasingly globalised form. In Hensel's work in particular, fairy tales become a source of discrete motifs rather than inspiring new narratives as such.
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This page is a summary of: “Wir aber gehen das Schöne / Entlang ans Ende / Der Märchen”: Fairy Tales and Form in Hensel’s Shorter Work, February 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004725010_007.
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