«Le Roi grenouille ou Henri-de-fer» des Grimm: un texte à fantômes, un texte fantôme

Abstract

In Brothers Grimm’s tale, «The Frog King», around the little girl appear / disappear / reappear phantom characters. Their perturbing relations interrogate and disturb. The analysis of the tale, the discovery of its zones of shadow and of its scandals, is based on Anne Sexton’s retelling in her poem «The Frog Prince». One wonders then how such a tale could become one of the most rewritten (especially for an audience of children), to discover that the source-tale (forgotten, never re-read or never read, but presumedly known) is not the reference of the rewrites. The reference is a “phantom text”, inaccessible to reading but inscribed in the collective memory, which is taken for the true one and which is perpetuated from rewriting to rewriting.
Key words :
«The Frog King »: analysis – characters, places and objects as phantoms – reference of the rewrites for children, a « phantom text » that cannot be found