Das eigensinnige Kind : Schrecken in pädagogischen Warnmärchen der Aufklärung und der Romantik

This dissertation deals with how didactic fiction and writers of child literature of the 18th and 19th centuries tried to strike terror into their young listeners to make them obedient to the social and moral norms of adults. Particular attention is devoted to texts where children themselves function as protagonists. Fairy-tales by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm but also by Ludwig Bechstein and Charles Perrault are taken into consideration as are examples of child literature by Johann Baptist Strobl, a less famous didactic philanthropist at the end of the Enlightenment. The theme of horror and intimidation is followed and analyzed with special regard to narrative techniques, but also to objectives of educational and socialisation processes. The dissertation argues that many of the recurring stereotypes and topoi in these horror stories for children can be traced back to popular superstition and other notions of an early preliterary and oral society