“My Shadow Has Gone Mad”:Irony and Self-Consciousness in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Shadow

Hans Christian Andersen’s international breakthrough as the author of fairytales came during the 1840s.In 1846,Andersen arrived in Italy after a hugely successful but exhausting book tour through several European countries.In Italy,Anderson would write on two works:an autobiography,The True Story of My Life,and a strange—and highly atypical(at least by Andersen’s standards)—story called“The Shadow.”Literary critics have argued that while Andersen largely fabricates an idealized version of himself(and,in particular,his childhood)in the autobiography—which turns his life into a fairytale—the fictional text is altogether more biographically truthful.My argument in this essay is that The Shadow signified an ironic moment in Andersen’s trajectory as a literary writer.It is the moment during which Andersen’s private self as a writer is overshadowed by a public persona,the well-known fairytale writer“H.C.Andersen”—who became the truthful subject of The True Story of My Life.The Shadow articulates the moment when the writing becomes increasingly self-conscious,or when it takes on a life of its own—like the shadow—in Andersen’s ironic story.