New versions of the fantastic: children’s books by the Danish author Louis Jensen

This article conducts a textual analysis of selected examples of contemporary Danish children's literature with a focus on the continued inspiration and influence from H.C. Andersen's fairy tales. The main examples in the article are texts written by the internationally awarded author Louis Jensen (b. 1943). The article begins with a brief description of Jensen's rich oeuvre and then continues to analyze the genre patterns in one of his first fantastic tales, Skelettet på hjul (1992) [The Skeleton on Wheels]. This particular tale is selected because of its remarkable combination of realistic and magical elements, which can also be understood as a clash between different levels and messages. The structure in Jensen's fantastic tales corresponds well with the concepts developed in Tzvetan Todorov's 1970 theory about the fantastic in literature, so this theory is the theoretical framework in this section. To conclude, the article, selected examples of Jensens's poetry, the so-called square stories, will be analyzed with a focus on the intertextual references to H.C. Andersen (1805-1875). Although they contain recognizable features and motifs, the square stories represent a new genre in children's poetry and thereby a development of the concept of children's literature.