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Paper short abstract

This paper investigates selected Grimm’s fairy tales that decentre human characters through essential encounters with nonhuman beings. These narratives critique anthropocentrism and reimagine an ecological order where all beings possess independent yet interconnected agencies.

Paper long abstract

In an anthropocentric fashion of literature (and fables), the ‘more-than-human’ is often reduced to allegorical or metaphorical functions in the literary text. The multispecies world of Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) has challenged this anthropocentricity of narratives and has decentralised the humans not only through the plots but also through the narrative structure. This decentralisation as an active criticism of anthropocentrism is staged through essential encounter with nonhuman beings, who are integral parts of many narratives in KHM. Numerous tales defy anthropocentric human agency and re-establish a new ecological order, where the nonhuman animals too, have independent agencies. This shift happens through the unexpected encounters with nonhuman animals, who play decisive roles in the humans’ pursuit of their goals. Based on Wolfgang Iser’s and Hubert Zapf’s triadic model of literature, this paper argues, that the selected Grimm’s tales unfolds a threefold dynamic of human-nonhuman encounters, where the existing human-centeredness is staged and criticised; the alternative ecological world-order is imagined; and through the reintegrative function, the harmony is restored. Through the analysis of selected Grimm tales i.e., Hansel and Gretel (KHM 15), The Bremen Town Musician (KHM 27), The Queen Bee (KHM 62), The Two Travelers (KHM 107), I argue that the human and nonhuman encounters in selected KHM significantly decentralise humans in these tales while emphasising the centrality of more-than-human world by establishing an ecological order, where all beings have independent agencies yet are interconnected and interdependent.