Little Red Cap & Imagined Communities
1 Comment Published by peanutbuttercup October 8th, 2007 in UncategorizedIt looks like I am the only one so far planning to write about “Little Red Cap.” I found the interactions between the characters really interesting. Little Red Cap, her grandmother, and the wolf can be interpreted as belonging to an imagined social community, in the same way that Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The wolf acts as a threat to their community, and by watching out for each other and responding together they build a kind of mini-nation. Obviously, Anderson’s Imagined Communities is going to be a key part of my research, and I also plan on using Wende’s A History of Germany for information on how unification against outsiders can create nationalist feeling.
The one thing that threw me off was the second, shorter Grimm version of “Little Red Cap.” I think I’ll just look at the first one, unless anyone has ideas about what to make of it?
I think that JYL is writing on “Little Red Cap,” too — go back into the previous entries to check. She’s also working with Anderson, but in different ways, so the two of you should have a lot to talk about!