ABSTRACT
Folk tales and regional literature are among the most distinctive and popular genres to emerge in nineteenth-century Europe. This chapter explains how the proliferation of those related genres resulted from a paradoxical combination of factors: the rise of nationalism on the one hand, and the development of transnational exchanges that resulted from translation, commodification and increasing opportunities for authors to travel on the other hand. Its discussion of the folk tale analyses both the usefulness of the genre to Romantic nationalist ideology and the problems that arise in attempts to tie folk tales to specific nations. Likewise, regional literature is shown to contribute to a sense of cohesion within the nation, and simultaneously to meet a growing international demand for exotic material. The chapter further analyses how regional writing and collections of folk tales were caught between an urge to preserve the presumed purity and authenticity of pre-literate societies, and technological developments that integrated print culture into global, standardizing circuits of commercial exchange. The chapter discusses those issues by drawing on a wide range of texts from different European cultures, and illustrates them through a close reading of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”.
