The princess and the leprechaun

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Cover picture by Jessie Willcox Smith for the 1920 edition

The Princess and the Goblin (Original title: The Princess and the Goblin ), in older translations The Princess and the Goblins is a fantasy - novel of the Scottish author George MacDonald from 1872. With its diverse symbolism and representation of subterranean goblins was the children's book became an important source of inspiration for later fantasy literature, especially the works of JRR Tolkien . In 1883 a sequel appeared under the title The Princess and Curdie .

action

Eight-year-old Princess Irene lives in a castle in the mountains and spends the days in the company of her nanny Lootie. Her father, the king, is on the road most of the time due to government obligations, and her mother has already passed away. One rainy day Irene gets lost in the vast expanse of the castle and meets a beautiful, mysterious woman with long white hair in the highest tower. The lady, surrounded by white pigeons, sits at a spinning wheel and reveals herself to her as her great-great-grandmother and namesake, Irene.

Princess Irene and Lootie spend the next day outdoors, where a group of goblins (in the original version goblins ) chase them after dark . The miner's boy Curdie rushes to the aid of the two and drives the creatures to flight with his song. The next morning Curdie accompanied his father into the mines and witnessed a conversation between two goblins whose feet were proving to be a sore point. He sneaks after them and learns of their plan to subdue the "sun people" and flood the mines. Soon after, Irene is attacked by a monstrous, long-legged cat creature, whereupon she flees into the mountains and is led home by the light of her great-great-grandmother. She hands her a magical ring that spins a thread that is only visible to her.

Meanwhile, Curdie does further research in the goblin caves. When he is discovered, he steps the attackers on the feet until he fails on the queen, who wears stone shoes. He tries to defend himself by singing, but is thrown into a dungeon where he is supposed to starve. The magical thread leads the princess to her friend's hiding place and the two escape from the interior of the mountain. When she wanted to introduce Curdie to her great-great-grandmother, it became clear that she was obviously only visible to her.

The boy finds out that the goblins are building a tunnel to the castle and the goblin prince wants to kidnap Irene. When he tries to sound the alarm in the castle, he injures himself and is locked up by the guards. Irene's great-great-grandmother appears to him and heals his wound. Curdie escapes and defends himself against the goblins who have meanwhile advanced into the castle by stepping on their feet. After she has withdrawn, he believes the princess is in her clutches, follows the magic thread and finds her safe in his parents' house. In frustration, the goblins flood the mines and the castle, but fall victim to the water themselves. As a reward, the king offers Curdie a post as a bodyguard , but the latter refuses and instead demands a red petticoat for his mother.

Illustrations

Over the years various editions of the book have been illustrated by well-known artists . The illustrations by Arthur Hughes (JB Lippincott Company, 1907), Helen Stratton (Blackie & Son, 1911), Jessie Willcox Smith (David McKay Publishers, 1920) and Charles Folkard (JM Dent & Sons, 1949) achieved lasting fame . The following is an excerpt from the ten color illustrations by Willcox Smith:

  • Jessie Willcox Smith (1920)

  • Cover of the edition illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith (1920)

  • Princess Irene gets lost in the vast expanse of the castle walls

  • Curdie says goodbye to the princess in front of the castle door

  • Her great, great, great grandmother receives Princess Irene in the tower of the castle

  • Curdie intimidates the goblins with song and grimaces

  • Princess Irene and Curdie flee from the goblins' den

symbolism

Goblin from Dungeons & Dragons , again inspired by the work of JRR Tolkien

The main motifs of the story are courage and honor. As a protest against the materialism he noted, author George MacDonald forced a return to Christian virtues and the simple life in the Middle Ages , which in The Princess and the Goblin, however, is portrayed as transfigured. Its symbolism reveals influences from the romantic fairy tales by ETA Hoffmann and Novalis as well as ideas from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emanuel Swedenborg .

The mine and the underground structures of the goblins stand - as in German Romanticism - for the “ unconscious , instinctual” or the body. In contrast, the great-great-grandmother in the highest tower of the castle represents the superego or the spirit. Princess Irene, symbol for the I or the mind, moves between the two worlds. She has been chosen to unite the opposites of day and night, reality and dream, youth and old age, etc., with the help of Curdie. In this way, she mediates between the supernatural and subterranean world or between fairy tale and shadowy world. Her affection for Curdie begins a process of maturation through which she gains increasing self-confidence and actively intervenes in the action. With a kiss at the end of the novel, she confesses her unsuitable love. Her status as a princess expresses not only her aristocratic origin, but also a certain " nobility of soul". The name Irene, which comes from the Greek , means something like "peace" and was probably chosen as a programmatic announcement by MacDonald . Curdie can be read as an analogy to Apostle Peter , because despite the professional proximity to subterranean existence, he does not succumb to temptation and can achieve a higher level of consciousness through his “nobility of spirit”.

Particular attention is paid to the literary reception of the work of the grandmother figure. The great-great-grandmother Irenes appears multifaceted and embodies sometimes an old sorceress and sometimes feminine beauty. In the figure, MacDonald processed his non- dogmatic views of the relationship between the inner and outer essence of man as well as his understanding of belief and knowledge. So it is only possible for selected people to perceive the great-great-grandmother at all, for example Curdie does not succeed immediately because he lacks faith at first ("Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing"). It was deliberately left open by the author whether the encounters are a dream or reality. For the princess she also embodies a mother substitute and acts as a “priestess” at the initiation into adulthood. A series of feminine and spiritual symbols are associated with her magical-mystical presence, including a moon-like silver ball that she uses to guide Irene and Curdie through the night. Since the moon does not have its own light source and changes its shape for the observer, it stands for dependency, transformation and growth - qualities that are traditionally understood as feminine.

The evil counterpart to the loving, helpful grandmother are the goblins , whose low character MacDonald emphasizes with a detailed description and his own genealogy . He depicts the cave dwellers as selfish beasts with rock-hard heads, crippled bodies, sensitive feet without toes and a panic fear of musical sounds. Originally they were ordinary people who degenerated into inferior beings through life underground. Dieter Petzold wrote in 1981 that George MacDonald had written a parody of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through the detailed use of biological and sociological categories . His rich symbolism earned MacDonald the reputation of a "mythmaker" among later authors.

reception

In the epitaph to his novel Phantastes (1858), George MacDonald explained his concept of fairy tales as " dream work without coherence , a collection of wonderful things and events, such as a musical fantasy, the harmony of an Aeolian harp , nature itself." In the opinion of many critics comes The Princess and the goblin closest to this ideal, but on the other hand does not correspond to the average fairy tale idea, since no traditional love story is told. The novel, which first appeared in 1870/71 as a serial in MacDonald's magazine Good Words for the Young , is now widely regarded as a classic of children's and young people's literature . However, because of the difficult symbolism, some contemporary reviews have reservations about children's book status.

The princess and the goblin had a significant influence on children's literature at the end of the 19th century. WH Auden named it in 1954 the only English children's book in the same league as Lewis Carroll's Alice books. In addition to JRR Tolkien , who was inspired by the goblins and their dwellings in The Hobbit , Frances Hodgson Burnett , CS Lewis , Edith Nesbit , Philippa Pearce and Maurice Sendak are among the admirers of the work. Still, MacDonald's religious themes lost relevance in the 20th century, placing the Scots in a marginal literary position.

The sequel, The Princess and Curdie , was first published five years later in Good Things magazine and was published in book form in 1883. In contrast to the original, there is clear civilization pessimism . MacDonald designs - inspired by William Blake - a gloomy image of society, the end of which looks like the biblical apocalypse . Curdie marries Princess Irene after discovering a plot against the king and succeeds him. The marriage remains childless and Curdie is succeeded by a greedy tyrant who destroys the achievements of his predecessor. The two books are collectively referred to as Princess Books or Curdie Books in English-language literature .

Adaptations

Numerous adaptations of the book have been made since the middle of the 20th century . In 1961 Robert Ellis Miller filmed the material under the title The Princess and the Goblins with Shirley Temple , Jack Ging , Irene Hervey and Alice Pearce in the leading roles. The one hour long, mostly comic film was broadcast on March 19 as episode 24 of the second season of the NBC series Shirley Temple's Storybook . In contrast to the novel, Irene and Curdie, played by Temple and Ging, are portrayed as young adults with romantic feelings for one another.

The world-famous US poet Sylvia Plath was inspired by the novel to write a poem with several stanzas, an excerpt of which is given below.

Initiated by the lunar lamp,
Kindling her within a steepled flame,
The princess hears the thunder and the pomp
Of squadrons underground abducting him
Who is the destination of the cord
Now bound around her wrist till she redeem
This miner's boy from goblin bodyguard.
Sylvia Plath signature.svg

Led by the moonlamp, kindled
in a towering flame,
the princess hears the thunder and the pomp
Of subterranean squadrons that kidnap him,
Who is the target of the thread,
Now tied around her wrist until she frees the
miner's boy from goblin hands.

The first animation was made in 1960 for the series Fractured Fairy Tales within the humorous NBC animation series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends . Although George MacDonald is not named as the author in the DVD version and some symbolic elements are dispensed with, the plot of the episode The Princess and the Goblins can unmistakably be traced back to his work. A full-length cartoon by director József Gémes in British - Hungarian - Japanese co-production was released in 1991. In Germany , it was released in 1993 under the title Princess Aline and the Groblins . In the USA, where the film opened a year later, it suffered from strong summer competition and received mostly negative reviews.

Twyla Tharp adapted the story for a ballet of the same name, which premiered in Cumberland, Georgia , in 2012 .

literature

  • Humphrey Carpenter : George MacDonald and the Tender Grandmother. In: Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature , London 1985, ISBN 978-0571249145 , pp. 70-85 (English).
  • Maria Gonzalez Davies: A Spiritual Presence in Fairyland: The Great-Great Grandmother in the Princess Books. In: North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies Volume 12 (1993), pp. 60-65. Online , accessed March 31, 2019.
  • Mary Kirkpatrick: An Introduction to the Curdie Books by George MacDonald including Parallels between Them and the Narnia Chronicles. In: CSL: The Bulletin of the New York CS Lewis Society 5 (1974), pp. 1-6.
  • Michael C. Kotzin: CS Lewis and George MacDonald: The Silver Chair and the Princess Books. In: Mythlore 8 (1981), pp. 5-15 (English).
  • Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer: Classics of children's and youth literature. An international lexicon. JB Metzler , Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 978-3-476-01235-7 , pp. 669-671.
  • Roderick McGillis: George MacDonald's "Princess" Books: High Seriousness. In: Perry Nodelman (Ed.): Touchstones. Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature. Volume 1, West Lafayette 1985, ISBN, pp. 146-162 (English).
  • Nancy-Lou Patterson: Kore Motifs in "The Princess and the Goblin". In: Roderick McGillis (Ed.): For the Childlike. George MacDonald's Fantasies for Children. Metuchen 1992, ISBN 978-0810824591 , pp. 169-182 (English).
  • Joseph Sigman: The Diamond in the Ashes: A Jungian Reading of the Princess Books. In: Roderick McGillis (Ed.): For the Childlike. George MacDonald's Fantasies for Children. Metuchen 1992, ISBN 978-0810824591 , pp. 161-168 (English).
  • E. Sparks: "The Princess and the Goblin" and "The Princess and Curdie". In: FN Magill (Ed.): Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature. Volume 3, Englewood Cliffs 1983, pp. 1280-1285 (English).
  • Lesley Willis: Born Again: The Metamorphosis of Irene in George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin". In: Scottish Literary Journal 12 (1985), pp. 24-39 (English).
  • Jules Zanger: Goblins, Morlocks and Weasles: Classic Fantasy and the Industrial Revolution. In: CLE 27 (1977), pp. 154-162 (English).

Web links

Commons : The Princess and the Leprechaun  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: The Princess and the Goblin  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelia Meigs (Ed.): A Critical History of Children's Literature. A Survey of Children's Books in English from Earliest Times to the Present. 2nd edition, The MacMillan Company, New York 1953, pp. 216-217 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer: Classics of children's and youth literature. An international lexicon. JB Metzler , Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 978-3-476-01235-7 , pp. 669-671. Google preview , accessed March 23, 2019.
  3. ^ Richard H. Reis: George MacDonald. Twayne, New York 1972 (English).
  4. ^ Lesley Willis: Born Again: The Metamorphosis of Irene in George MacDonald's "The Princess and the Goblin". In: Scottish Literary Journal 12 (1985), pp. 24-39 (English).
  5. ^ Roderick F. McGillis: Phantastes and Lillith. Femininity and Freedom. In: The Gold Thread. Essays on George MacDonald. Wipf & Stock, Eugene 1990, ISBN 978-1-4982-8314-4 , pp. 31-55 (English).
  6. ^ A b Maria Gonzalez Davies: A Spiritual Presence in Fairyland: The Great-Great-Grandmother in the Princess Books. In: North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies Volume 12 (1993), pp. 60-65. Online , accessed March 23, 2019.
  7. ^ Dieter Petzold : The English art fairy tale in the nineteenth century. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1981, ISBN 978-3484420229 .
  8. ^ A b c Ginger place: Fracturing MacDonald: The Princess and the Goblin and "Fractured Fairy Tales". In: North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies Volume 26 (2007), pp. 120-125. Online , accessed March 23, 2019.
  9. ^ The Princess and the Goblins. Internet Movie Database , accessed March 23, 2019 .
  10. ^ Sylvia Plath : The Collected Poems. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-155889-4 , p. 333 (English).
  11. ↑ Jerry Beck: The Princess and the Goblin. In: The Animated Movie Guide. A Cappella Books 2005, ISBN 978-1556525919 , pp. 213-214 (English).
  12. ^ Brian Seibert: Toe Shoes That Carry a Princess to Victory. The New York Times , February 12, 2012, accessed March 23, 2019 .