The Double Construction Of The "Other"in Hauff’s Tales

Wilhelm Hauff is a novelist and literary fairy tale writer with the most striking character and greatest importance in German Swabian romanticism. Hauff’s tales are as beautiful as the ones by Andersen and Grimm and popular only next to Grimm fairy tales in countries where German is spoken and are read widely around the world. In late18th century and early19th, Germany was influenced by French Revolution and British Industry Revolution, and was gradually turned from a traditional agricultural society into an industrial one, leading to dramatic changes in all fields in society. Literary fairy tales are used to express the bourgeoisie’s interests and requirements by absorbing folk stories and traditional tales and adding social realistic elements at the same time. And Hauff’s tales just reflect the times when huge changes happened in German society. In these tales, the contradictions between individuals and society, men and women, tradition and modernity are displayed in their competing and battling against each other, and their compromising, which gives the tales social and political meaning. This thesis explores Wilhelm Hauff s A Complete Edition of Hauff s Tales and takes "the Other" as point of penetration. By the double construction of personalistic Other, sexual Other and national Other, the thesis analyzes the contradictions and mediation, and thus reveals the social and political meanings in Hauff’s fairy tales.The thesis is divided into three parts. By using the Lacan’s mirror image theory and Bakhtin’s conversation theory, the first part analyzes dual relationship between Other and selfness shown in the personality establishment of youngsters and even adults in the tales. On the one hand, the confrontation relationship between the Other and selfness in tales is revealed. Heroes were finally forced to struggled outside social main stream and were even destroyed because of the other’s solipsism or the confrontation between the Other and selfness resulting from factors of society. On the other hand, the conversation relationship between the Other and selfness is explored. Heroes established selfness because of Other’s certainty, or recognize selfness in the difference with the Other, or reflected selfness in experiences shared with the Other. Finally, it is induced that the confronting or dialoging dual relationship between the Other and selfness is essentially the reflection of the contradiction and mediation between individuals and society in German society.The second part analyzes the dual construction of the sexual Other in the tales by exploring the female images in them. On the one hand, it reveals that some women are the Other that maintains man’s subject position. They are "angels" of patriarchy or the weak waiting for saving or the ones who lose their voices in man’s world. On the other hand, it is explored that the writer Hauff made men become the object of women’s staring and overturned man’s subject position. Finally, it explains that the dual construction of sexual other essentially reflects the contradiction and mediation between male chauvinism and women.The third part studies the dual construction of nation’s Other in tales by using imagological studies. On the one hand, this part analyzes the images of national Other in Europe, such as the mean French, insulted Jews and greedy Greek, and identifies the reasons to construct different national images. On the other, it explores the Oriental Utopia conception constructed in the fairy tales by Hauff. At the end, it is discussed that the different construction between the east and the west results from the fact that the clashing between tradition and modern social values was happening in the western society at that time and that this shows the efforts made by Hauff to construct Oriental Utopia to reflect and save western modern society.In the part of conclusion, the literal achievement and position are concluded briefly. Combined with the historical causes of romantic literary fairy tales creation, the reflection of Hauff’s tales on social history and the impulse in Hauff to solve social, political contradiction through literature are summarized, and Hauff’s tales’ social function is emphasized.