'Gypsies' in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Books

Jean Kommers (Radboud University Nijmegen) is an anthropologist, participating in a research project on the history of "Gypsies": Paradojas de la ciudadanía (University of Seville). He specializes in ethnography and image formation about ‘exotic’ peoples. His Ph.D. thesis is about the Dutch Colonial Administration in the former East Indies, 1800-1830, with special attention to the ethnographic knowledge that officials pretended to possess.

• List of illustrationsA Book about Tales, Tales That Do ThingsIntroduction1 Subject, Sources and Approach2 Representation and Symbolism: An Analysis Referring toDutch Narratives1Introduction2The Beginning: Some Translations3Stealing Children or Stealing Gypsies?3.1 Crossing the Border3.2 Who May Cross the Border?3.3 The Border3.4 Differences in Social Status and the ‘Intermediate Period’3.5 The Character of the Intermediary3.6 The Temptation4 Why are Gypsies in Juvenile Literature Thieves of Children?5 Xenophobia and Compassion6 Conclusion3 Intermezzo: How an Enduring German Religious Tale Changed into a ‘gypsy-tale’: Translation and Enculturation of Von Schmid’s Heinrich von Eichenfels (1817)4 Gypsies in English Juvenile Literature1 Introduction2 Gypsies and “Englishness”2.1 Introduction3 Early Representations of gypsies (1787–1849)3.1 Tales from the Late Eighteenth Century3.2 The Early Nineteenth Century: Illustrated Moral andInstructive Texts3.3 The Early Nineteenth Century: Literary Tales4 The Victorian Age4.1 Some Approaches4.2 Textual gypsies as Presented in Victorian Children’sLiterature5 Conclusion5 German Juvenile gypsy-Literature1 Introduction2 Early Nineteenth-Century German gypsy-tales3 Some Post-1860 Tales4 Conclusion6 French Juvenile Literature1 Introduction2 Some Pre-1860 Texts3 After 18604 Conclusion7 Concluding Observations1 Some Initial Reflections2 Some Thoughts on Contemporary Interpretation3 Analysis and Evaluation/Interpretation of Texts (andAuthors)4 A Literary Approach: Some Recurrent Themes5 The Literary TraditionsBibliographyIndex