Grimms' Fairy Tales

"One doesn't know the sorts of things one has in one's house," says the servant girl in Kafka's "A Country Doctor," as a stranger, who will soon act violently towards her, emerges on all fours from an unused sty. The precarious moment of finding more than one seeks in one's midst is among the key motifs of Grimms' "Household Tales" that we will trace, following the way they move writers of literature, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Reading the Grimms among others, we will find: what was "once upon a time" is not finished, nor can these uncanny tales be domesticated.