Plus ça change? Struwwelpeter's 21st Century Cousins

Following in the tradition of the hugely popular cautionary tales of Dr Heinrich Hoffmann, and most notably Shock-Headed Peter or Slovenly Peter, the English-speaking world continues to produce stories where children who dare to contravene societal norms suffer calamitous consequences. This chapter offers a contrastive analysis between the tales from Hoffmann’s collection and the ten stories in the first volume of David Walliams’ trilogy The World’s Worst Children (2016) – with particular reference to the woes of Nigel, Nit-Boy, who collects a fantastic quantity of lice in his hair. In both cases, humour is born from the juxtaposition of moralizing attitudes and grotesque flouting of the rules but the “lesson”imparted in the two texts appears very different. Although remarkably similar in some respects, this chapter will argue that the two collections of cautionary tales are each very much the product of their respective periods and that each author addresses their fiction to very different audiences.