s7. Angela Carter's The Erl-King

ANGELA CARTER’S “THE ERL-KING”
1st Year
2022-2023
PRESENTATION OUTLINE
1.About the Author
2.“The Erl-King”: Analysis
3.“The Erl-King”: Characters
4.Class Assignment
5.Symbolism in Literature
6.Class Assignment
1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born: May 7, 1940 Eastbourne England
Died: February 16, 1992 (aged 51) London
England
Occupation: Novelist, short story writer,
poet, journalist
Nationality: British
Education: University of Bristol
Notable Works: The Bloody Chamber and
Other Stories (1979); Black Venus (1985);
Nights at the Circus (1984); Wise Children
(1991)
2. “THE ERL-KING”: ANALYSIS
OVERVIEW
• The short story is found in the collection The Bloody Chamber and
Other Stories (1979).
• Based loosely on The Erl-King (1782), a ballad by 18th-century
German poet and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–
1832), Angela Carter's story features a female protagonist rather than
the father in the original.
• Both speak to the dangerous, seductive quality of the deep forest.
While the Erl-King in the original steals the soul of the father's son, the
Erl-King in Carter's version enchants women with his sexuality and
captures them in cages, where they transform into birds.
• In “The Erl-King”, the narrator fully recognizes the Erl-King's hold over
her, but she also knows she can kill him at any time to take back her
power. She longs for his erotic touch as much as she fears being
forever entrapped by him. In this way, she is like many of Carter's
feminist protagonists who actively embrace their sexuality while
resisting the symbolic cage of the patriarchy.
GOETHE’S THE ERL-KING
• The Erl-King, also called The Elf-King, dramatic ballad by J.W. von Goethe, written
in 1782 and published as Der Erlkönig. The poem is based on the Germanic legend of
a malevolent elf who haunts the Black Forest, luring children to destruction. It was
translated into English by Sir Walter Scott and set to music in a famous song by Franz
Schubert.
• In the ballad a father and son are journeying homeward on horseback at night. The
son is ill with a fever and believes he sees and hears the erl-king. The father tells him
that the form he sees is only the fog and the sound he hears is only the rustling
leaves. Nonetheless, the erl-king wheedles, trying to tempt the boy to come with him.
But when the boy again expresses his fear, the erl-king says that if the boy does not
come of his own accord, he will be taken forcibly. The father, feeling his son’s fear,
spurs his horse on, but when they arrive home, the boy is dead.
• Goethe masterfully re-creates in the poem’s cadence the galloping of the horse’s
hooves. The poem is one of several of Goethe’s early works expressing the
poet’s conviction that the powers of nature are filled with unconscious elements
capable of overwhelming humans.
NARRATION
• Carter mirrors the disorientation of the forest with her slippery use of point of
view, switching between third, second, and first person.
• When in first person, the narrator appears to be a young woman who keeps
returning to the Erl-King even though she knows he will do her "grievous
harm."
• Her narration holds a dreamlike quality, evoking a dangerously enticing gothic
tone. Carter alludes to "Little Red Riding Hood" in the line "What big eyes you
have." She also alludes to 19th-century English poet Christina Rossetti's
(1830–94) poem "Goblin Market" (1862) in the line "He spreads out a goblin
feast of fruit for me." In Rossetti's poem, one of two sisters eats the fruit sold
by goblin merchants and almost starves to death because she craves only the
goblin fruit, while the other sister goes to great lengths to save her.
• In Carter's story the narrator seems to embody both sisters, as she is
conflicted between continuing to indulge her sexual desires with her toxic lover
and putting an end to their affair by strangling him with "two huge handfuls of
his rustling hair."
3. “THE ERL-KING”: CHARACTERS
• The she-narrator: A young woman whom the Erl-King
enchants and plans to cage. At the story's end, she
plots to kill him and release all his birds.
• The Erl-King: A creature who lives in harmony with the

forest and is able to control its creatures. He lures
young women with a birdcall, and then transforms them
into birds, whom he keeps in cages. The narrator plots
to kill him at the story's end.
CLASS ASSIGNMENT
• Analyze the characters of
Angela Carter’s “The Erl-King”.
5. SYMBOLISM IN LITERATURE
WHAT IS SYMBOLISM?
• Symbolism is a literary device that uses symbols, be they
words, people, marks, locations, or abstract ideas to
represent something beyond the literal meaning.
• The concept of symbolism is not confined to works of
literature: symbols inhabit every corner of our daily life.
• For instance, the colors red, white, and blue typically
symbolize patriotism (in America at least), which is why
they’re the favored hues of political yard signs. Colors like
orange and brown connote fall, which is why they adorn so
many Thanksgiving decorations. Road signs, logos, and
emojis are other examples of symbolism—the visuals
correspond to ideas, companies, or moods.
SYMBOLISM: A HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• In literature, authors have long favored the use of symbols among a wide range of
literary devices.
• The earliest recorded forms of human storytelling—cave paintings and
hieroglyphics—are quite literally symbols representing more complex narratives or
beliefs.
• Ancient Greek theater, which is the basis for much of today’s narrative artforms,
used symbolic props including phallic objects to represent Dionysus, the god of
fertility. Symbolism remained in wide use throughout the Middle Ages (almost always
with religious connotations) and then, from the Renaissance forward, returned in full
force to represent human desires ranging from lust to ambition to heartbreak.
• William Shakespeare used symbols to represent inner conscience (think of blood
in Macbeth); Edgar Allen Poe used it to convey dread and mortality (think of the
eponymous bird in “The Raven”); and William Blake used religious symbols
(including Jesus himself) to represent human emotion and desire (as in “The
Everlasting Gospel”).
5 USES OF SYMBOLISM
Symbolism can be used to:
1. Add emotion: Symbols add emotional resonance to a story, which can create a lasting impression
on a reader. For example, in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth is
tortured by a spot of blood on her hands that will not wash clean after she kills King Duncan.
2. Add imagery: Symbols add a visual element to complex themes. In Seamus Heaney’s 1995 poem
“A Dog Was Crying To-Night in Wicklow Also,” the author uses the image of “burnt wood
disappearing into smoke” to describe the concept of dead humans drifting out of other people’s
consciousness.
3. Connect themes: The color green used throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a
marker for the money and materialism that defines life on the North Shore of Long Island.
4. Define characters: Symbols can express character attributes. For example, the Harry Potter series
of books, Harry’s lightning bolt-shaped scar symbolizes the attempt on his life by Lord Voldemort
and the love that saved him.
5. Conceal darker meaning: In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester’s seemingly feral
daughter Pearl symbolizes the sin that led to her conception. Her difficult demeanor represents the
secret at the heart of her existence—that her father is the prominent reverend Arthur Dimmesdale.
Only when Dimmesdale’s paternity is revealed does Pearl transition into a positive symbol: the
freeing spirit of the natural world.
SYMBOLS IN “THE ERL-KING”
• The Old Fiddle
• The Cage
• The Red Color
CLASS ASSIGNMENT
• Analyze the symbols in Angela
Carter’s “The Erl-King”.
SYMBOLS IN “THE ERL-KING”
The Old Fiddle: The symbol at the center of this story is the old fiddle. It hangs "on the wall beside
the birds" but it will not make music "because all its strings are broken." The narrator tells the Erl-
King that if she "strung the old fiddle with [his] hair," they could dance to "better music" than the shrill
birdcalls coming from his "pretty cages." The Erl-King's long hair is a symbol of the feminine, the part
of himself he needs to embrace to be whole. The narrator understands that her lover does not mean
to hurt her, but in his brokenness he cannot help it. But because he will not voluntarily string his
fiddle, the narrator imagines scalping him and stringing it herself. The Erl-King and the patriarchy will
then call out, "Mother, mother, you have murdered me!" And with the toxic parts of the patriarchy
subdued, the empowered matriarchy will thrive
The Cage: While "The Erl-King" contains literal birdcages that house the spirits of seduced women
in the form of birds, the woods in the same story also act as a type of cage. The narrator describes
the "vertical bars of light" in the forest and compares the enclosing of the woods to "a system of
Chinese boxes opening one into another." She acknowledges "it is easy to lose yourself in these
woods." Here, Angela Carter points to how pervasive the patriarchy is and how difficult it is for
women to assert themselves within it.
The Red Color: In "The Erl-King," the birds the narrator imagines freeing from her lover each bear
"the crimson imprint of his love-bite on their throats" when they become women again.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

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ANGELA CARTER’S “THE ERL-KING”

• The Erl-King: A creature who lives in harmony with the

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