The Soldier’s Tale: Part 2

I continue my exploration of soldiers’ storytelling commenced in Folklore volume 137, issue 1, and especially their penchant for fairy tales. This practice gave expression to a rank-and-file understanding of the army’s role and the characteristics of the archetypal soldier, not as a citizen-soldier fighting for his country but as a professional whose skills might be hired by any employer. Soldiers incorporated language and motifs of fairy tales into their memoirs, because soldier-tale poetics provided a matrix through which they could make sense of their own experiences and communicate them to others. Finally, I argue that exposure to this barracks and camp tradition helped put the Romantic authors of the early nineteenth century on the road towards a realist aesthetic.