Suchergebnisse

"H.C. Andersen er et verdenskendt kulturelt ikon. Mennesker spejler sig i ham og hans værk og knytter den danske digter til steder, forestillinger og værdisæt. Både i og uden for Danmark begyndte de første mytedannelser om H.C. Andersens person og værk allerede i hans egen tid, og de er taget til i styrke og omfang gennem årene. H.C. Andersens samlede eventyr er i dag hos mange stadig en obligatorisk dåbsgave og en del af det, danskere forstår som en fælles kulturel identitet. Processerne, der har ført til Andersens enorme kulturelle indflydelse, er genstand for analyserne i denne bog, der viser, hvordan et kulturelt ikon skabes og forvaltes."--Back cover

The Danish fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen is cultural heritage in Denmark, and his authorship is a part of The Canon of Danish Literature that contains 14 obligatory authorships in the Danish educational system. In this article, we examine how the cultural policy of the ideologically rooted and highly political canon affects current teaching materials on Andersen's fairy tales. Our examples show how fixed readings of the fairy tales are reproduced in Danish classrooms. We suggest that dialogic teaching approaches to the fairy tales have potential to counter such readings and offer teachers and students the opportunity to engage with canonical literature in new ways. However, based on examples from existing dialogic teaching materials for Andersen's fairy tales, we also conclude that the task of countering the inexpedient influence of cultural policy in teaching materials should not be underestimated.

Hans Christian Andersen is staged as a national icon in contemporary Danish political and cultural contexts, where certain affective perceptions of the Danish community are attached to him and his authorship. In this article, we discuss the content and function of some of these constructions by use of cultural studies scholar Sara Ahmed's term killjoy (The Promise of Happiness). It is our main argument that while Andersen's oeuvre represents a complexity of meanings, this complexity is sometimes lost when certain interpretations are extracted from his texts. Our analytical focus is on such polarized receptions and readings of Andersen and his authorship, and it is our aim to accentuate the complexity of the intermediate layer where different values are negotiated. Thus, we argue that Andersen's own texts contain a killjoy-potential that can be brought to the fore through analysis of his texts and different stagings of him.