Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777–1843)

This is a very odd book. The author calls it a Ritterroman, a novel of knights, but it is not a novel in the 19th century sense of the word. Instead it takes its inspiration from the romances of chivalry so popular in the late Middle Ages, and it is obvious that Fouqué has read a lot of them, loves them and tries to shape his own effort in their image.
The result is a tale full of magic and coincidences, incredibly noble knightly heroes and unbelievably beautiful chaste maidens, set in the year Richard the Lionheart escaped from captivity. Everyone blushes, weeps, sighs and faints with reckless abandon, and the plot reminded me at every turn of operas like Rinaldo and Orlando furioso, no doubt because Fouqué knew the poems they are based on.
Of course, these romances have nothing to do with the Middle Ages as they actually happened. They describe chivalry as an ideal, elevate it to a level where it becomes a fairy tale (and can easily be satirised by the likes of Cervantes). Fouqué wants to return to the originals, but recreating their innocence and devoutness doesn’t really work. There are a lot of anachronisms, and the prose is so quaint it is eye-watering, not only to a modern reader, but already to his contemporaries.
I do not regret the time I spent reading it, but this is very much an acquired taste.… (meer)

Sadly, the mermaids here are far and few between, like most mermaid stories I read. She's a human for about all of the book. She's some sort of orphaned water-nymph taken in by parents, and she never betrays a non-human nature. She marries a wandering knight, and then there's some strife and betrayal. To be honest, I tuned out the last quarter of the book once I realized the mermaids were not happening.

The nice thing about it was that it was classic romance genre, so there was nothing complex about it. It smacked of Ivanhoe -- wandering knight, torn between two women, and I think there was a joust. But it was much shorter so that was good. I can also see where Hans Christian Andersen got some of his influences for The Little Mermaid. If you want to say you've read some classic romantic literature, this is a good place to start.… (meer)

Undine Okay, I feel like one of those people who go, "omg, the Glee cover was WAY better than the original", but...
 
I read Jean Giraudoux's Ondine when I was a child, and re-read it a thousand times since, plus I watched the wonderful comédie-française production, starring a young Isabelle Adjani, so it's fair to say I'm a little bit obsessed with Giraudoux's take on the story.
 
I guess since that story is practically set in stone in my mind, when I got to the original by Motte Fouqué, every page of it my brain would go, "No! That's not how it goes!"
...which is absurd because Giraudoux's work is an adaptation of this!
 
That being said, it's still a delightful fairytale, well worth reading (you can find it for free at Project Gutenberg!) And Arthur Rackham's illustrations are AMAZING! Look!
 

 
You can see all of his illustrations for this book at the site Rackham Fairy and Fairy Tale Art.… (meer)