MUSÄUS, Johann Karl August.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Volksmährchen der Deutschen. First edition of vol. V, second edition of vols. I to IV; a very attractive set of Musäus's influential collection of German fairy tales, first published between 1782 and 1787, and almost unobtainable on the market as a full run of first editions."Musäus cashed in on the growing popularity of tales of the marvellous, a trend that had been apparent in Germany since the beginning of the eighteenth century... Musäus has no interest in trying to retain the folk tone of the material. On the contrary, he created rococo masterpieces of wit and erudition, with a slyly knowing narrator and many topical allusions to the contemporary literary world... in his fourteen tales Musäus may well have kept some stories and traditions from falling into obscurity. Among his most popular tales are the ones about the mountain spirit Rübezahl, the bigamist Graf von Gleichen, and the Czech amazon Libussa" (Haase, pp. 647-8).Musäus's collection paved the way for the Brothers Grimm. "The legendary world of the Middle Ages comes alive in them and their plots are decked out in the brightest colours, such as were never seen in the stories of Perrault nor would be in the stories of Grimm. Their images already foreshadow Romanticism, but at the same time the stories are extraordinarily compelling" (Hürlimann, p. 32).

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