2.6: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's "The Shroud"

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Directions

Here, you will find the reading "The Shroud" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

The story is a docx. file. I recommend either printing it our or annotating the digital copy on your computer, or taking notes on the story on a separate piece of paper.

Author's Bio:

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, were both expert philologists and avid collectors of German folk tales. The Brothers Grimm collected dozens of folk (“fairy”) tales and published them in the first definitive collection in German. Many of those tales, from Sleeping Beauty to Cinderella, are best known in American culture thanks to their adaptation as animated films by Walt Disney in the twentieth century, but they were famous already by the mid-nineteenth. The Brothers Grimm also undertook an enormous project to compile a comprehensive German dictionary, not only containing every German word but detailed etymologies (they did not live to see its completion; the third volume E – Forsche was published shortly before Jacob’s death).

The Grimm brothers were the quintessential Romantic nationalists. Many Romantics like them believed that nations had spirits, which were invested with the core identity of their “people.” The point of the Grimm brothers' work was reaching back into the remote past to grasp the "essence" of what it meant to be "German." At the time, there was no country called Germany, and yet romantic nationalists like the Grimms believed that there was a kind of German soul that lived in old folk songs, the German language, and German traditions. They worked to preserve those things before they were further "corrupted" by the modern world.

While reading the story, keep these questions/ideas in mind:

While reading this story, please pay close attention to the author's use of mystery or enigma.
Do you see enigma being used?
What kinds of enigma are being used?
Does it enhance/detract from your enjoyment of the text?
What about the story do you like?
What about the story do you dislike?
- What did the boy die from?
- Was this real?
- What does this story "teach" us? What's the lesson here?

Essay Topic

As a reminder, your essay topic is: "Does the use of enigma enhance or detract from your enjoyment of a text?"

"The Shroud" by Grimm.doc

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Video Lecture- "The Shroud"- 00:03:40

Berke, Bleil, & Cofer

Professors (English) at Middle Georgia State University, College of Coastal Georgia, & Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College

Sourced from University of North Georgia Press (Links to an external site.)