Contradiction Leads to a Miracle: A Rethinking of Hans Christian Anderson and His Fairy Tales

Hans Christian Anderson is the most renowned fairy tale masters throughout the history. His works have been translated into different languages and spread all over the world. This paper intends to discuss Anderson’s works via a review of newly obtained literature relevant to his works. There is contradiction between Anderson’s actual life and dreams; both the natural revelation of children’s spirit and the profound expression of adults’ thinking contrastively exist in his works; not only the casual style in folk writing but also the poetic creation of literature are simultaneously employed in his works. These three aspects are contradictory but also uniform as well in Anderson. It is just in this contradiction and unity that Andersen’s works can be so splendid and simple, so bright and profound. Based on the above reason, the author points out that Anderson’s success is by no means an accidental phenomenon and his works can not be interpreted in a narrow sense as just fairy tales only for children, they have a profound influence on the adult literature.