SOURCE: Rankin, Jamie. “Spider in a Frame: The Didactic Structure of ‘Die schwarze Spinne.’” German Quarterly 61 (summer 1988): 403-18.

In the following essay, Rankin considers how the frame-story structure of “The Black Spider” facilitates the author's didactic aims.

I

Most readers of Jeremias Gotthelf will agree (if on nothing else) that he is primarily a didactic writer: according to his admirers one of great genius, in the eyes of his detractors hopelessly provincial; but in any case didactic. He provides an almost flawless example of what Susan Suleiman has termed “authoritarian fiction”—narrative prose that has at its core the goal of proclaiming a “right” course of action or belief.¹ To those familiar with Gotthelf's oeuvre, Suleiman's genre distinction calls to mind a parade of examples: the authorial plea for diligence and sobriety in Uli der Knecht (1841); for parental responsibility in Geld und Geist (1843/44); and the impassioned warning against...