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The genres of ballad and tale, which originate in the
distant past, have often been scorned by the literary establishment,
but the fact that they survived through centuries of oral
transmission until they were finally recorded in the fairly
recent past testifies to their lasting existential appeal.
The stories these texts tell are dashingly entertaining
and often deeply disturbing: they may offer a profoundly
fatalistic view of existence, but they may also voice an
angry and, at the same time, humorous protest against oppression.
When this literature was rediscovered about 1800, it inspired
many first-rank authors, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen,
Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf; and in this century
it has cast its spell over Isak Dinesen, Villy Sørensen,
and Pär Lagerkvist. The course examines both the original
literature and its modern "imitations" as well
as gives an introduction to the critical methodologies
that have recently been developed to deal with this seemingly
simple, but in reality highly sophisticated, literature.
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The instructor for this course this semester is