Playing with Canon in Walter Moers’s Ensel und Krete

Abstract

The German writer Walter Moers uses two main ways to play with literary canon in his work Ensel und Krete: on the one hand, by intertextually referring to older texts, and on the other, by ironically parodying the image of the canonised poet as an important person. The paper uses Genette’s theory of intertextuality to analyse the intertextual relationships that define the novel, identifying the main works that the text refers to. The source for Ensel und Krete is the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel by Grimm brothers. However, it serves only as the source for the main plot, which is then transformed in order to self-referentially play with literary conventions as well as to quote and allude to other works of German and world literature. The other main element of playing with the literary canon is playing with the image of the artist. To analyse the latter, the paper uses the model of canonisation advocated by Dović in order to outline the representation of the fictional author of the novel, who presents an ironic reflection of the classical poet. The classical poet is supposed to convey aesthetic values to his readers through his text and represent the basis for a cult which brings together a community. In Moers’s text, however, the fictional author is presented as an arrogant, conceited person, and his cultural activity is represented as banal. The intertextual references as well as the play with the writer’s image are the basis for the ironic humour that permeates the text.