‘Aunty Toothache’ as Andersen’s literary polemic and poetological program

Abstract

"In this paper, I suggest reading "Tante Tandpine" ('Aunty Toothache') as a literary program and - as Jacob Boggild terms it - a literary testament. The tale's structure and its play with literary modes invite us to read it as a dialogue with two major literary events of that time: the death of the famous colleague Charles Dickens in 1870 and the proclamation of the Naturalist doctrine by Georg Brandes at the University of Copenhagen in 1871."

Keywords

• Hans Christian Andersen
• Charles Dickens
• Tante Tandpine
• poetics
• tales