Duality or double coding in fairy tales. The idea of making Hansel and Gretel identical twins came to Susanne Janssen after reading about the Italian version called Nennillo and Nennella". She studied under Wolf Ehrlbruch in Dusseldorf, and now lives in Alsace.
"The story of Hansel and Gretel, one of the oldest known European repertoire with this title and the variants that we know - first part has strong similarities with the Puccettino (Thumb)(1697) by Perrault. But the theme of infants who are abandoned by poverty and that find their way home already appears in the "Gartengellschaft" by Martin Montanus(1559) and Giambattista Basile Pentamerone with the title "Nennillo and Nennella"(1634-1636)."(Benson S.F.) Cycles of Influence:Fiction, folktale, theory.
