What is the Erlking by Angela Carter based off?
“The Erl-King” is a short story by Angela Carter based on an old ballad by Goethe, one of the most famous ballads ever told. Carter’s re-visioning doesn’t use the plot from Goethe’s ballad, but borrows some of the atmosphere.
What fairy tale is the Erlking based on?
Johann Gottfried von Herder introduced this character into German literature in “Erlkönigs Tochter”, a ballad published in his 1778 volume Stimmen der Völker in Liedern. It was based on the Danish folk ballad “Hr.
How does the Erlking lure the birds and the narrator to his home?
Most significantly, he draws the birds to him with the beautiful songs of his pipe playing; then he traps them in cages, which he keeps in his house. Like the natural environment around him, the Erlking is both alluring and menacing.
What happens in the Lady of the House of Love?
One summer a young British soldier decides to travel through Romania on his bicycle, thinking humorously of “the land of vampires.” He has “the special quality of virginity,” and he is very much a historical person – part of the generation that will later die in World War I – but he is about to meet the “timeless …
What is the story behind erlkonig?
Goethe’s poem tells the story of a boy riding home on horseback in his father’s arms. He is frightened when he is courted by the Erl-King, a powerful and creepy supernatural being. When the Erl-King eventually seizes the boy, the father spurs on his horse, but when he arrives home his son is dead.
How does the Erlking end?
The tale ends with a vision of the future: the woman will liberate the trapped ‘young girls’ and enable the ‘old fiddle’ to play music once again (p. 104). But the hope of harmony is replaced by ‘discordant’ cries of a male voice.
How old is the Erlking?
Erlkönig, also called Erl-King or Elf-King, song setting by Franz Schubert, written in 1815 and based on a 1782 poem of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
What is the story behind the Erlking?