Romantic Fairy Tales

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The German Romantic movement arose in response to the turmoil of the French Revolution and to the Enlightenment's emphasis on science and reason. Nostalgia for the past and a fascination with mysticism and medivialism caused a group of writers to adopt the foremost form of the Kunstmar or "literary fairy tales". This collection, vividly illustrating the development of German Romanticism, presents four of the genre's key texts that still have the power to enchant and disturb. Goethe's The Fairy Tale (1795) -- an ethereal story of prophecy and resurrection -- helped establish of the genre. Ludwig Tieck's Eckbert the Fair (1792) is a dark story of incest and murder. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque describes the unhappy fate of a wood nymph with the soul of a woman in Undine (1811). In The Tale of Honest Casper and Fair Annie (1817), Clemens Brentano tells the tale of young couple destroyed by a false sense of honor.