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Fairy Tale

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Fairy tale



 
 
A fairy tale is a fictional story that may feature folkloric
Folklore

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, superstitions, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group ....
 characters such as fairies
Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythological being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as spirit#Metaphysical and metaphorical uses, supernatural or preternatural....
, goblin
Goblin

A goblin is an imaginary evil, crabby, and mischievous creature described as a grotesquely disfigured or gnome-like Wiktionary:phantom, that may range in height from that of a dwarf to that of a human....
s, elves
Elf

An elf is a creature of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of minor nature and fertility deity, who are often pictured as youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in forests and underground places and caves, or in wells and springs....
, troll
Troll

A troll is a fearsome member of a race of creatures from Norse mythology. Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giant , although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants ? similar to the ogres of England ? to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground...
s, giants
Giant (mythology)

The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology....
, and talking animals, and usually enchantments
Enchanted

Enchanted may refer to:* Enchanted , an album by Stevie Nicks* Enchanted , a 2007 film produced by Walt Disney Pictures* Enchanted , the soundtrack to the 2007 Disney film, Enchanted...
, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events. In modern-day parlance, the term is also used to describe something blessed with princess
Princess

Princess, is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or her daughters.For many centuries, the title "princess" was not regularly used for a monarch's daughter, who might simply be called "Lady" or a non-English equivalent; Old English language had no female equivalent to "prince", "earl"...
es, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending
Happy ending

A happy ending is an ending of the Plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the hero or heroine, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains....
) or "fairy tale romance", though not all fairy tales end happily.






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Dore Ridinghood
A fairy tale is a fictional story that may feature folkloric
Folklore

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, superstitions, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group ....
 characters such as fairies
Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythological being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as spirit#Metaphysical and metaphorical uses, supernatural or preternatural....
, goblin
Goblin

A goblin is an imaginary evil, crabby, and mischievous creature described as a grotesquely disfigured or gnome-like Wiktionary:phantom, that may range in height from that of a dwarf to that of a human....
s, elves
Elf

An elf is a creature of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of minor nature and fertility deity, who are often pictured as youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in forests and underground places and caves, or in wells and springs....
, troll
Troll

A troll is a fearsome member of a race of creatures from Norse mythology. Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giant , although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants ? similar to the ogres of England ? to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground...
s, giants
Giant (mythology)

The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology....
, and talking animals, and usually enchantments
Enchanted

Enchanted may refer to:* Enchanted , an album by Stevie Nicks* Enchanted , a 2007 film produced by Walt Disney Pictures* Enchanted , the soundtrack to the 2007 Disney film, Enchanted...
, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events. In modern-day parlance, the term is also used to describe something blessed with princess
Princess

Princess, is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or her daughters.For many centuries, the title "princess" was not regularly used for a monarch's daughter, who might simply be called "Lady" or a non-English equivalent; Old English language had no female equivalent to "prince", "earl"...
es, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending
Happy ending

A happy ending is an ending of the Plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the hero or heroine, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains....
) or "fairy tale romance", though not all fairy tales end happily. Colloquially, a "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story. Fairy tales commonly attract young children since they easily understand the archetypal characters in the story.

In cultures where demon
Demon

In religion, folklore, and mythology a demon is a supernatural being that is generally described as a malevolent spirit. In Christian terms demons are generally understood as fallen angels, formerly of God....
s and witches are perceived as real, fairy tales may merge into legendary narratives
Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude ....
, where the context is perceived by teller and hearers as having historical actuality. However, unlike legend
Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude ....
s and epics they usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion
Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
 and actual places, persons, and events; they take place once upon a time
Once upon a time

"Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that has been used in some form since at least 1380 in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600....
 rather than in actual times.

Fairy tales are found in oral folktales and in literary form. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace, because only the literary forms can survive. Still, the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognized as a genre
Genre

A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other Art#Art forms or utterance....
; the name "fairy tale" was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy
Madame d'Aulnoy

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy was a France writer known for her fairy tales. When she termed her works contes de f?e , she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre....
. Literary fairy tales are found over the centuries all over the world, and when they collected them, folklorists found fairy tales in every culture. Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today.

The older fairy tales were intended for an audience of adults as well as children, but they were associated with children as early as the writings of the précieuses
Précieuses

The literary style called pr?ciosit? arose from the lively conversations and playful word games of les pr?cieuses, the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of the Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionism and...
; the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were Germans academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time ....
 titled their collection Children's and Household Tales, and the link with children has only grown stronger with time.

Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways. Among the most notable are the Aarne-Thompson classification system
Aarne-Thompson classification system

The Aarne-Thompson classification system is a system for Morphology ....
 and the morphological analysis of Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian Formalism scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements....
. Other folklorists have interpreted the tales' significance, but no school has been definitively established for the meaning of the tales.

Defining marks

Although the fairy tale is a clearly distinct genre, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute. Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian Formalism scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements....
, in his Morphology of the Folktale, criticized the common distinction between "fairy tales" and "animal tales" on the grounds that many tales contained both fantastic
Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of Plot , Theme , and/or Setting . Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three ....
 elements and animals. Nevertheless, to select works for his analysis, Propp used all Russian folktales classified as a folk lore Aarne-Thompson
Antti Aarne

Antti Amatus Aarne was a Finland folklorist....
 300-749—in a cataloguing system that made such a distinction—to gain a clear set of tales. His own analysis identified fairy tales by their plot elements, but that in itself has been criticized, as the analysis does not lend itself easily to tales that do not involve a quest
Quest

In mythology and literature a quest ? a journey towards a goal ? serves as a Plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures....
, and furthermore, the same plot elements are found in non-fairy tale works.
Wiktor Michajlowitsch Wassnezow 004
One universally agreed-on factor is that the nature of a tale does not depend on whether fairies appear in it. Obviously, many people, including Angela Carter
Angela Carter

Angela Carter was an England novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism and science fiction works....
 in her introduction to the Virago Book of Fairy Tales, have noted that a great many of so-called fairy tales do not feature fairies at all. This is partly because of the history of the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 term "fairy tale" which derives from the French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 phrase conte de fées, and was first used in the collection of Madame D'Aulnoy in 1697.

As Stith Thompson
Stith Thompson

Stith Thompson was an American scholar of folklore and the "Thompson" of the Aarne-Thompson classification system. He was born in Bloomfield, Kentucky, Kentucky, the son of John Warden and Eliza Thompson....
 and Carter herself point out, talking animals and the presence of magic
Magic (fantasy)

Magic in fiction is the endowing of fictional characters or objects with Magic .Such magic often serves as a plot device, the source of magical artifact s and their quests....
 seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves. However, the mere presence of animals that talk does not make a tale a fairy tale, especially when the animal is clearly a mask on a human face, as in fable
Fable

A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate, or nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim ....
s.

In his essay "On Fairy-Stories
On Fairy-Stories

"On Fairy-Stories" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the fairy-story as a literary form. It was initially written for presentation by Tolkien as the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 1939....
", J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Order of the British Empire was an English people English literature, poetry, Philology, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion....
 agreed with the exclusion of "fairies" from the definition, defining fairy tales as stories about the adventures of men in Faërie, the land of fairies, fairytale prince
Prince

Prince, from the Latin root princeps, is a general term for a monarch, for a member of a monarch's or former monarch's family, and is a hereditary title in some members of Europe's highest nobility....
s and princess
Princess

Princess, is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or her daughters.For many centuries, the title "princess" was not regularly used for a monarch's daughter, who might simply be called "Lady" or a non-English equivalent; Old English language had no female equivalent to "prince", "earl"...
es, dwarves
Dwarf

A dwarf is a creature from Continental Germanic mythology, fairy tales, fantasy fiction, and role-playing games. It usually has magical talents, often involving metallurgy....
, elves, and not only other magical species but many other marvels. However, the same essay excludes tales that are often considered fairy tales, citing as an example The Monkey's Heart
The Heart of a Monkey

The Heart of a Monkey is a Swahili fairy tale collected by Edward Steere in Swahili Tales. Andrew Lang included it in The Lilac Fairy Book....
, which Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a prolific Scotland man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the folkloristics of folklore and fairy tales....
 included in The Lilac Fairy Book. Other tales that include no magic but are often classified as fairy tales include What Is the Fastest Thing in the World?
What Is the Fastest Thing in the World?

What Is the Fastest Thing in the World? is a Greek fairy tale collected by Georgios A. Megas in Folktales of Greece.It is Aarne-Thompson type 875 and has many Greek and Slavic variants, generally revolving about the exchange of clever answers....
 and Catskin
Catskin

Catskin is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs, in More English Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
.

Some folklorists
Folkloristics

Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. What actually constitutes folklore is disputed even within the discipline, but generally folklore focuses on the forms of artistic expression communicated within groups....
 prefer to use the German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 term Märchen to refer to the genre, a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 edition of The Folktale: "a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures and is filled with the marvelous. In this never-never land, humble hero
Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity,their Greek hero cult being one of the most distinctive features of Religion in ancient Greece....
es kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses." The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls; youngest son
Youngest son

The youngest son is a stock character in fairy tales, where he features as the hero. He is usually the rule of three son, but sometimes there are sibling, and sometimes he has only one; usually, they have no sisters....
s and gallant prince
Prince

Prince, from the Latin root princeps, is a general term for a monarch, for a member of a monarch's or former monarch's family, and is a hereditary title in some members of Europe's highest nobility....
s; ogre
Ogre

An ogre is a large, cruel and hideous humanoid monster], featured in mythology, folklore and fiction. Ogres are often depicted in fairy tales and folklore as feeding on human beings, and have appeared in many classic works of literature....
s, giants
Giant (mythology)

The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology....
, dragon
Dragon

File:Ukiyo-e dragon 2.jpgThe dragon is a legendary creature with serpentine shape or otherwise reptilian traits that features in the mythology of many cultures....
s, and troll
Troll

A troll is a fearsome member of a race of creatures from Norse mythology. Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giant , although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants ? similar to the ogres of England ? to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground...
s; wicked stepmothers
Stepfamily

Traditionally, a stepfamily is the family one acquires when a parent enters a new marriage, whether the parent was widowed or divorced. For example, if one's mother/father death and one's father/mother marries another woman/man, the new woman is one's stepmother and vice versa....
 and false hero
False hero

The false hero is a stock character in fairy tales, and sometimes also in ballads. The character appears near the end of a story in order to claim to be the hero or heroine and is, therefore, always of the same sex as the hero or heroine....
es; fairy godmother
Fairy godmother

In fairy tales, a fairy godmother is a fairy with magic powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies....
s and other magical helpers
Donor (fairy tale)

In fairy tales, a donor is a character that tests the hero and provides magical assistances to the hero while he succeeds.The fairy godmother is a well-known form of this character....
, often talking horses, or foxes, or birds
Talking animal

A talking animal or speaking animal refers to any form of animal which can speak a human language. Many species or groups of animals have developed a Animal language, even through vocal communication between its members, or interspecies, with an understanding of what they are communicating....
; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions. Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was an Italy journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler ....
 cited the fairy tale as a prime example of "quickness" in literature, because of the economy and concision of the tales..

History of the genre

Originally, stories we would now call fairy tales were merely a kind of tale, not marked out as a separate genre. The German term "Märchen" means, literally, "tale" rather than any specific type. The genre itself was first marked out by writers of the Renaissance
Renaissance literature

Renaissance Literature refers to the period in European literature, which began in Italy during the 15th century and spread around Europe through the 17th century....
, who began to define a genre of tales, and became stabilized through the works of many writers, becoming an unquestioned genre in the works of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were Germans academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time ....
. In this evolution, the name was coined when the précieuses
Précieuses

The literary style called pr?ciosit? arose from the lively conversations and playful word games of les pr?cieuses, the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of the Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionism and...
 took up writing literary stories; Madame d'Aulnoy
Madame d'Aulnoy

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy was a France writer known for her fairy tales. When she termed her works contes de f?e , she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre....
 invented the term contes de fée, or fairy tale.

Prior to the definition of the genre of fantasy
Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of Plot , Theme , and/or Setting . Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three ....
, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", including Tolkien's The Hobbit
The Hobbit

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is an award-winning Juvenile fantasy and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien, written in the tradition of the fairy tale....
, George Orwell
George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an England author. His work is marked by a profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of totalitarianism, and a passion for clarity in language....
's Animal Farm
Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945 in literature, the book reflects events leading up to and during the History of the Soviet Union before World War II....
, and L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was an United States author, poet, playwright, actor and independent filmmaker, best known today as the creator, along with illustrator W....
's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's literature novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. It was originally published by the George M....
. Indeed, Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" includes discussions of world-building and is considered a vital part of fantasy criticism. Although fantasy, particularly in the sub-genre fairytale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy

Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore....
, draws heavily on fairy tale motifs, the genres are now regarded as distinct.

Folk and literary

Perrault1
The fairy tale, told orally, is a sub-class of the folktale
Folklore

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, superstitions, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group ....
. Many writers have written in the form of the fairy tale. These are the literary fairy tales, or Kunstmärchen. The oldest forms, from Panchatantra
Panchatantra

The Panchatantra or Tantrakhyayika also known in other cultures as Kalileh o Demneh or Anvar-e Soheyli or Kalilag and Damnag or Kalilah wa Dimnah or Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai or The Morall Philosophie of Doni was originally a canon...
 to the Pentamerone, show considerable reworking from the oral form. The Brothers Grimm were among the first to try to preserve the features of oral tales. Yet the stories printed under the Grimm name have been considerably reworked to fit the written form.

Literary fairy tales and oral fairy tales freely exchanged plots, motifs, and elements with each other and with the tales of foreign lands. Many 18th century folklorists attempted to recover the "pure" folktale, uncontaminated by literary versions. Yet while oral fairy tales likely existed for thousands of years prior to the literary forms, there is no pure folktale. And each literary fairy tale draws on folk traditions, if only in parody. This makes it impossible to trace forms of transmission of a fairy tale. Oral story-tellers have been known to read literary fairy tales to increase their own stock of stories and treatments.

History

Redsun
The oral tradition
Oral tradition

Oral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants....
 of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure. The oldest known written fairy tales stem from ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
, c. 1300 BC (ex. The Tale of Two Brothers
Tale of Two Brothers

The Tale of Two Brothers is an ancient Egyptian story from around the 13th century BC.The narrative is preserved on the Papyrus D'Orbiney. which had belonged to Seti II of the 19th Dynasty when he was crown prince, and may have been a political satire based in part on his own difficulties with his half brother, the usurper Amenmesse, but t...
), and fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literate cultures, as in The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass

The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
, which includes Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche

The legend of Cupid and Psyche first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D....
 (Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
, 100–200 AD), or the Panchatantra
Panchatantra

The Panchatantra or Tantrakhyayika also known in other cultures as Kalileh o Demneh or Anvar-e Soheyli or Kalilag and Damnag or Kalilah wa Dimnah or Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai or The Morall Philosophie of Doni was originally a canon...
 (India
Folklore of India

The folklore of India compasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent.The subcontinent of India contains a wide diversity of demographics of India, languages of India, and religion in India groups....
 200–300 AD), but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literary forms. What they do show is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the Arabian Nights
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights , is a collection of folk tales and other stories. The original concept is most likely derived from a pre-Islamic Persian prototype that probably relied partly on India elements, but the work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East an...
 collection of magical tales (compiled circa 1500 AD), such as Vikram and the Vampire
Baital Pachisi

Baital Pachisi or Vetala Panchvimshati or Vikram and The Vampire is a collection of tales and legends from History of India....
, and Bel and the Dragon
Bel and the Dragon

The tale of Bel and the Dragon incorporated as chapter 14 of the Additions to Daniel was written in Aramaic around the late second century BC and translated into Greek in the Septuagint....
. Besides such collections and individual tales, in China
Chinese folklore

Chinese folklore includes songs, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, and the supernatural, or stories explaining natural phenomena and distinctive landmarks....
, Taoist
Taoism

Taoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts. These traditions have influenced East Asia for over two thousand years and some have spread to the West....
 philosophers such as Liezi
Liezi

The Liezi is a Daoist text attributed to Lie Yukou, a circa 5th century BCE Hundred Schools of Thought philosopher, but Chinese and Western scholars believe it was compiled around the 4th century CE....
 and Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosophy who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, corresponding to the Hundred Schools of Thought philosophical summit of Culture of China thought....
 recounted fairy tales in their philosophical works. In the broader definition of the genre, the first Western famous fairy tales are those of Aesop
Aesop

File:Aesop pushkin01.jpgAesop , known only for the genre of fables ascribed to him, was by tradition a Slavery in Ancient Greece who was a contemporary of Croesus and Peisistratos in the mid-6th century BC in ancient Greece....
 (6th century BC) in ancient Greece
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
.

Allusions to fairy tales appear plentifully in Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
's The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century . The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from London Borough of Southwark to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathed...
, Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an important England poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I....
's The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene is an English Epic poetry by Edmund Spenser, published first in three books in 1590, and later in six books in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza....
, and the plays of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
. King Lear
King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works....
 can be considered a literary variant of fairy tales such as Water and Salt
Water and Salt

Water and Salt is an Italian fairy tale, it can be found in the collection Italian Popular Tales, collected by Thomas Frederick Crane.In the Aarne-Thompson classification system, Water and Salt is Type 923....
 and Cap O' Rushes
Cap O' Rushes

Cap O' Rushes is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
. The tale itself resurfaced in Western literature
Western literature

Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European languages as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque language, Hungarian language, and so forth....
 in the 16th and 17th centuries, with The Facetious Nights of Straparola
The Facetious Nights of Straparola

The Facetious Nights of Straparola, also known as The Nights of Straparola, is a two-volume collection of 75 fairy tales produced by the Italy writer and fairy-tale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola in the first half of the sixteenth century....
 by Giovanni Francesco Straparola
Giovanni Francesco Straparola

File:Straparola.jpgGiovanni Francesco Straparola was an Italy writer and fairy tale collector. He has been termed the progenitor of the literary form of the fairy tale in Europe....
 (Italy, 1550 and 1553), which contains many fairy tales in its inset tales, and the Neapolitan
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
 tales of Giambattista Basile
Giambattista Basile

Giambattista Basile was an Italy poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector....
 (Naples, 1634–6), which are all fairy tales. Carlo Gozzi
Carlo Gozzi

Carlo, Count Gozzi , was an Italy dramatist....
 made use of many fairy tale motifs among his Commedia dell'Arte
Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'Arte is a form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 16th century and held its popularity through the 18th century, although it is still performed today....
 scenarios, including among them one based on The Love For Three Oranges
The Love for Three Oranges (fairy tale)

The Love for Three orange s or The Three Citrons is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in the Pentamerone. It is the concluding tale, and the one the heroine of the frame story uses to reveal that an false hero has taken her place....
 (1761). Simultaneously, Pu Songling
Pu Songling

Pu Songling was a Chinese author who wrote during the Qing Dynasty....
, in China, included many fairy tales in his collection, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio or Liaozhai Zhiyi is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling in Classical Chinese during the early Qing Dynasty....
 (published posthumously, 1766). The fairy tale itself became popular among the précieuses
Précieuses

The literary style called pr?ciosit? arose from the lively conversations and playful word games of les pr?cieuses, the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of the Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionism and...
 of upper-class France
Early Modern France

Early Modern France is the early modern period of French history from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century . During this period France evolved from a feudalism regime to an increasingly centralized state organized around a powerful absolute monarchy that relied on the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and the explic...
 (1690–1710), and among the tales told in that time were the ones of La Fontaine and the Contes of Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault

File:ChPerrault.jpg'Charles Perrault' was a France author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , La Belle au bois dormant , Le Ma?tre chat ou le Chat bott? , Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre , La Barbe bleue , Le Petit Pouce...
 (1697), who fixed the forms of Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma M?re l'Oye .While Perrault's version is better known, an older variant, the tale Sun, Moon, and Talia, was contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone ....
 and Cinderella
Cinderella

Cinderella , is a well-known classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world....
. Although Straparola's, Basile's and Perrault's collections contain the oldest known forms of various fairy tales, on the stylistic evidence, all the writers rewrote the tales for literary effect.

The first collectors to attempt to preserve not only the plot and characters of the tale, but also the style in which they were preserved, were the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were Germans academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time ....
, collecting German fairy tales; ironically enough, this meant although their first edition (1812 & 1815) remains a treasure for folklorists, they rewrote the tales in later editions to make them more acceptable, which ensured their sales and the later popularity of their work.

Such literary forms did not merely draw from the folktale, but also influenced folktales in turn. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told orally to them by Germans, because the tales derived from Perrault, and they concluded they were thereby French
French folklore

French folklore encompasses the fables, folklore and fairy tales and legends of the Gauls, Franks, Normans, Brittanys, Occitania, and other peoples living in France....
 and not German tales; an oral version of Bluebeard
Bluebeard

'Bluebeard' is the title character in a famous fairy tale about a violent nobleman and his curious wife. It appeared in Charles Perrault's Les Contes de ma M?re l'Oye, first published in 1697....
 was thus rejected, and the tale of Briar Rose, clearly related to Perrault's Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma M?re l'Oye .While Perrault's version is better known, an older variant, the tale Sun, Moon, and Talia, was contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone ....
, was included only because Jacob Grimm convinced his brother that the figure of Brynhild proved that the sleeping princess was authentically German folklore.

This consideration of whether to keep Sleeping Beauty reflected a belief common among folklorists of the 19th century: that the folk tradition preserved fairy tales in forms from pre-history except when "contaminated" by such literary forms, leading people to tell inauthentic tales. The rural, illiterate, and uneducated peasants, if suitably isolated, were the folk and would tell pure folk tales. Sometimes they regarded fairy tales as a form of fossil, the remnants of a once-perfect tale. However, further research has concluded that fairy tales never had a fixed form, and regardless of literary influence, the tellers constantly altered them for their own purposes.

The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism

Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs....
, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
n Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian folkloristics who recorded and published over 600 Russian folktales and fairytales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world....
 (first published in 1866), the Norwegians
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
 Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen was a Norwegian writer and scholar. He and J?rgen Moe were collectors of Norway folklore. They were so closely united in their lifes' work that their folk tale collections are commonly mentioned only as "Asbj?rnsen and Moe"....
 and Jørgen Moe
Jørgen Moe

J?rgen Engebretsen Moe was a Norway bishop and author.He is best known for the Norske Folkeeventyr, a collection of Norwegian Scandinavian folklore which he edited in collaboration with Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen....
 ( first published in 1845), the Romanian Petre Ispirescu
Petre Ispirescu

Petre Ispirescu was a Romanian printer and publicist....
 (first published in 1874), the English
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 Joseph Jacobs
Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs was a literary and Jewish historian. He was a writer for the Jewish Encyclopaedia and a notable folklorist, creating several noteworthy collections of fairy tales....
 (first published in 1890), and Jeremiah Curtin
Jeremiah Curtin

Jeremiah Curtin was an United States translator and folklorist....
, an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 who collected Irish
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
 tales (first published in 1890). Ethnographers collected fairy tales over the world, finding similar tales in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, the Americas
Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
, and Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
; Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a prolific Scotland man of letters. He was a poet, novelist, and literary critic, and contributor to anthropology. He now is best known as the folkloristics of folklore and fairy tales....
 was able to draw on not only the written tales of Europe and Asia, but those collected by ethnographers, to fill his "coloured" fairy books series
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally , made them an immensely influential collection, especially as...
. They also encouraged other collectors of fairy tales, as when Yei Theodora Ozaki
Yei Theodora Ozaki

Yei Theodora Ozaki was an early 20th century translation of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death....
 created a collection, Japanese Fairy Tales (1908), after encouragement from Lang. Simultaneously, writers such as Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen , also known as simply H. C. Andersen ); was a Denmark author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Red Shoes "....
 and George MacDonald
George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scotland author, poet, and Christian minister.Though no longer well known, his works have inspired admiration in such notables as W....
 continued the tradition of literary fairy tales. Andersen's work sometimes drew on old folktales, but more often deployed fairytale motifs and plots in new tales. MacDonald incorporated fairytale motifs both in new literary fairy tales, such as The Light Princess
The Light Princess

The Light Princess is a fairy tale by George MacDonald. It was published in 1864....
, and in works of the genre that would become fantasy
Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of Plot , Theme , and/or Setting . Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three ....
, as in The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and the Goblin

The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co.The sequel to this book is The Princess and Curdie, in which Princess Irene and Curdie are a year or two older, and must overthrow a set of corrupt ministers who are poisoning Irene's father, the king....
 or Lilith
Lilith

Lilith is a mythology female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 4000 BC....
.

Cross-cultural transmission

Two theories of origins have attempted to explain the common elements in fairy tales found spread over continents. One is that a single point of origin generated any given tale, which then spread over the centuries; the other is that such fairy tales stem from common human experience and therefore can appear separately in many different origins.

Fairy tales with very similar plots, characters, and motifs are found spread across many different cultures. Many researchers hold this to be caused by the spread of such tales, as people repeat tales they have heard in foreign lands, although the oral nature makes it impossible to trace the route except by inference. Folklorists have attempted to determine the origin by internal evidence, which can not always be clear; Joseph Jacobs
Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs was a literary and Jewish historian. He was a writer for the Jewish Encyclopaedia and a notable folklorist, creating several noteworthy collections of fairy tales....
, comparing the Scottish
Scottish people

The Scots people are a nation and an ethnic group indigenous to Scotland.Historically, as an ethnic group, they emerged from an amalgamation of Celts, Picts, Gaels and Brythons....
 tale The Ridere of Riddles
The Ridere of Riddles

The Ridere of Riddles is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, listing as his informant John Mackenzie, a fisherman near Inverary....
 with the version collected by the Brothers Grimm, The Riddle
The Riddle (fairy tale)

The Riddle is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 22. It is Aarne-Thompson type 851, winning the princess with a riddle....
, noted that in The Ridere of Riddles one hero ends up polygamously
Polygamy

The term polygamy is used in related ways in social anthropology, sociobiology, and sociology. Polygamy can be defined as any "Types of marriages in which a person [has] more than one spouse."...
 married, which might point to an ancient custom, but in The Riddle, the simpler riddle might argue greater antiquity.

Folklorists of the "Finnish" (or historical-geographical) school attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with inconclusive results. Sometimes influence, especially within a limited area and time, is clearer, as when considering the influence of Perrault's tales on those collected by the Brothers Grimm. Little Briar-Rose appears to stem from Perrault's Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma M?re l'Oye .While Perrault's version is better known, an older variant, the tale Sun, Moon, and Talia, was contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone ....
, as the Grimms' tale appears to be the only independent German variant. Similarly, the close agreement between the opening of Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a famous fairy tale about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has changed considerably in its history, and been subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings....
 and Perrault's tale points to an influence—although Grimms' version adds a different ending (perhaps derived from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids
The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids

The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 5....
).

Fairy tales also tend to take on the color of their location, through the choice of motifs, the style in which they are told, and the depiction of character and local color.

Association with children

Originally, adults were the audience of a fairy tale just as often as children. Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the fairy tale came to be associated with children's literature
Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes exclude young-adult fiction, comic books, or other genres....
.

Cutlery for Children Detail
The précieuses
Précieuses

The literary style called pr?ciosit? arose from the lively conversations and playful word games of les pr?cieuses, the witty and educated intellectual ladies who frequented the salon of the Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet; her Chambre bleue offered a Parisian refuge from the dangerous political factionism and...
, including Madame d'Aulnoy
Madame d'Aulnoy

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy was a France writer known for her fairy tales. When she termed her works contes de f?e , she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre....
, intended their works for adults, but regarded their source as the tales that servants, or other women of lower class, would tell to children. Indeed, a novel of that time, depicting a countess's suitor offering to tell such a tale, has the countess exclaim that she loves fairy tales as if she were still a child. Among the late précieuses, Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont
Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont

Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont born in Rouen, France in 1711; died, in 1780 was a French novelist.Her first marriage, in 1743, was annulled after two years....
 redacted a version of Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale . The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune am?ricaine, et les contes marins in 1740....
 for children, and it is her tale that is best known today. The Brothers Grimm titled their collection Children's and Household Tales and rewrote their tales after complaints that they were not suitable for children.

In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on eliminating sexual references; Rapunzel
Rapunzel

"Rapunzel" is a German culture fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales....
, in the first edition, revealed the prince's visits by asking why her clothing had grown tight, thus letting the witch deduce that she was pregnant, but in subsequent editions carelessly revealed that it was easier to pull up the prince than the witch. On the other hand, in many respects, violence – particularly when punishing villains – was increased. Other, later, revisions cut out violence; J. R. R. Tolkien noted that The Juniper Tree
The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)

The Juniper Tree is a German fairy tale Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm.It is tale number 47 and Aarne-Thompson type 720: "my mother slew me, my father ate me"....
 often had its cannibalistic
Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating other humans. The ritualistic eating of human flesh is also known as anthropophagy, from Greek: ?????p??, anthropos, "human being"; and fa?e??, phagein, "to eat"....
 stew cut out in a version intended for children. The moralizing strain in the Victorian era
Victorian era

The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the period of Victoria of the United Kingdom reign from June 1837 to January 1901....
 altered the classical tales to teach lessons, as when George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank

George Cruikshank was an England caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern William Hogarth" during his life. Born in London, he was a member of the Cruikshank family of caricaturists and artists, the son of Scotland painter and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank....
 rewrote Cinderella in 1854 to contain temperance
Temperance movement

A temperance movement attempts to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed within a community or society in general -- and even to prohibit its production and consumption entirely....
 themes. His acquaintance Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens, Royal Society of Arts , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English people novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous Reform movement....
, protested "In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected."

Psychoanalysts
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
 such as Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim , a Jewish native of Austria, became known as a child psychology and writer after immigrating as a refugee to the United States in 1939....
, who regarded the cruelty of older fairy tales as indicative of psychological conflicts, strongly criticized this expurgation, on the grounds that it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues.

The adaptation of fairy tales for children continues. Walt Disney
Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, film director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and philanthropist....
's influential Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the Snow White by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animation feature film to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history....
 was largely (although certainly not solely) intended for the children's market. The anime
Anime

is animation in Japan and considered to be "Japanese animation" in the rest of the world. Anime dates from about 1917.Anime, in addition to manga , is extremely popular in Japan and well known throughout the world....
 Magical Princess Minky Momo
Magical Princess Minky Momo

, also known as Magical Princess Gigi or Gigi or Benvenuta Gigi and Tanto tempo fa...Gigi in Italy, is the title of two different magical girl anime....
 draws on the fairy tale Momotaro
Momotaro

is a popular hero from Japanese folklore. His name literally means Peach Taro; as Taro is a common Japanese boy's name, it is often translated as Peach Boy....
.

In Waldorf Schools, fairy tales are used in the first grade as a central part of the curriculum. Rudolf Steiner's work on human development shows that at age six to seven, the mind of a child is best taught through storytelling
Storytelling

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, s, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values....
. The archetypes and magical nature of fairy tales appeals strongly to children of these ages. The nature of fairy tales, following the oral tradition, enhances the child's ability to visualize a spoken narrative, as well as to remember the story as heard.

Contemporary tales


Literary

John Bauer 1915
In contemporary literature
Contemporary literature

Contemporary literature is literature with Setting generally after World War II.Subgenres of contemporary literature include contemporary romance....
, many authors have used the form of fairy tales for various reasons, such as examining the human condition
Human condition

The human condition encompasses all of the experience of being human. As mortal entities, there are a series of biology determined events that are common to most human lives, and some that are inevitable for all....
 from the simple framework a fairytale provides. Some authors seek to recreate a sense of the fantastic in a contemporary discourse. Some writers use fairy tale forms for modern issues; this can include using the psychological dramas implicit in the story, as when Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley

'Robin McKinley' is a fantasy author especially known for her Newbery Medal-winning novel The Hero and the Crown. She has also won a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, the Mythopoeic Award for Sunshine , the World Fantasy Award for Imaginary Lands, and the 1998 Phoenix Award honor book for Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of...
 retold Donkeyskin
Donkeyskin

Donkeyskin is a French fairy tale told by Charles Perrault. Andrew Lang included it, somewhat euphemized, in The Grey Fairy Book.It is Aarne-Thompson classification system folktale type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
 as the novel Deerskin
Deerskin

Deerskin is a dark fantasy novel by Robin McKinley. It is based on an old French fairy tale by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin.The book contains a graphic rape scene and numerous adult themes....
, with emphasis on the abusive treatment the father of the tale dealt to his daughter. Sometimes, especially in children's literature, fairy tales are retold with a twist simply for comic effect, such as The Stinky Cheese Man
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales is a children's book by Jon Scieszka. Published in 1992 by Viking Press, it is a collection of twisted, humorous parodies of famous children's stories and fairy tales, such as "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Gingerbread Man"....
 by Jon Scieszka
Jon Scieszka

Jon Scieszka was born September 8, 1954 in Flint, Michigan is an United States author of children's literature, best known for his collaborations with illustrator Lane Smith ....
 and The ASBO Fairy Tales by Chris Pilbeam. A common comic motif is a world where all the fairy tales take place, and the characters are aware of their role in the story, such as in the film series Shrek.

Other authors may have specific motives, such as multicultural
Multiculturalism

The term multiculturalism generally refer to an applied ideology of Race , culture and Ethnic group diversity within the demographics of a specified place, usually at the scale of an organization such as a school, business, neighborhood, city or nation....
 or feminist
Feminism

Feminism is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights to men. It involves various movements, Theory, and philosophies, all concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women and that campaign for women's rights and interests....
 reevaluations of predominantly Eurocentric
Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective, with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European culture....
 masculine-dominated fairy tales, implying critique of older narratives. The figure of the damsel in distress
Damsel in distress

The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a young, nubile woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or a monster and who requires a hero to dash to her rescue....
 has been particularly attacked by many feminist critics. Examples of narrative reversal rejecting this figure include The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch
Robert Munsch

Robert Norman Munsch, Order of Canada is an United States-born Canada Children's literature....
, a picture book aimed at children in which a princess rescues a prince, and Angela Carter
Angela Carter

Angela Carter was an England novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism and science fiction works....
's The Bloody Chamber, which retells a number of fairy tales from a female point of view.

One interesting use of the genre occurred in a military technology journal named Defense AT&L, which published an article in the form of a fairytale titled Optimizing Bi-Modal Signal/Noise Ratios. Written by Maj. Dan Ward (USAF
United States Air Force

The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the Military of the United States and one of the uniformed services of the United States....
), the story uses a fairy named Garble to represent breakdowns in communication between operators and technology developers. Ward's article was heavily influenced by George MacDonald
George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scotland author, poet, and Christian minister.Though no longer well known, his works have inspired admiration in such notables as W....
.

Other notable figures who have employed fairy tales include Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish people playwright, Irish poetry and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest Celebrity of his day....
, A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, Order of the British Empire is an England novelist and poet. She is daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor and is married to Peter Duffy....
, Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen

Jane Hyatt Yolen is an United States author and editing of almost 300 books. These include folklore, fantasy, science fiction, and children's books....
, Terri Windling
Terri Windling

Terri Windling is an UNited States editing, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. Windling has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr....
, Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was an American Literature of short story and novels. He also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas , co-founder of Fiction Magazine , and a professor at various universities....
, Robert Coover
Robert Coover

Robert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction....
, Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, Order of Canada is a Canada author, poet, literary criticism, feminist and activism. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C....
, Kate Bernheimer, Espido Freire
Espido Freire

Mar?a Laura Espido Freire was born in Bilbao, Spain on July 16, 1974....
, Tanith Lee
Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee is a United Kingdom writer of science fiction, horror fiction and fantasy.She is the author of over 70 novels and 250 short stories, a children's picture book and many poems....
, James Thurber
James Thurber

James Grover Thurber was an United States author, cartoonist and celebrated wit.Thurber was best known for his contributions to The New Yorker magazine....
, Robin McKinley
Robin McKinley

'Robin McKinley' is a fantasy author especially known for her Newbery Medal-winning novel The Hero and the Crown. She has also won a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, the Mythopoeic Award for Sunshine , the World Fantasy Award for Imaginary Lands, and the 1998 Phoenix Award honor book for Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of...
, Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Nobel Prize in literature-winning Poland-born United States author and one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literature movement....
, Kelly Link
Kelly Link

Kelly Link is an United States author of short stories born in 1969 . Her stories might be described as Slipstream or magic realism: sometimes a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction, Mystery fiction, and Realism ....
, Bruce Holland Rogers
Bruce Holland Rogers

Bruce Holland Rogers is an United States author of short fiction who also writes under the pseudonym Hanovi Braddock. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, two World Fantasy Awards, and have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Spain's Premio Ignotus....
, Donna Jo Napoli
Donna Jo Napoli

Donna Jo Napoli is an author of children's and young adult books, as well as a prominent linguist who has worked in syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology , historical and comparative linguistics, Romance languages, structure of Japanese language, structure of American Sign Language, poetics, writing for ESL students, and mathematical and...
, Cameron Dokey
Cameron Dokey

Cameron Dokey is an United States author. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her four cats and her husband. She has a collection of over 50 old sci-fi and horror films....
, Robert Bly
Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an United States poet, author, activism and leader of the Mythopoetic men's movement in the United States....
, Gail Carson Levine
Gail Carson Levine

Gail Carson Levine is an American author of young adult literature books....
, Annette Marie Hyder, Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde is an England novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written another series, the Nursery Crime Stories series....
 and many others.

It may be hard to lay down the rule between fairy tales and fantasies
Fairytale fantasy

Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore....
 that use fairy tale motifs, or even whole plots, but the distinction is commonly made, even within the works of a single author: George MacDonald's Lilith
Lilith (novel)

Lilith is a Fantasy literature written by Scotland writer George MacDonald and first published in 1895. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969....
 and Phantastes
Phantastes

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women is a fantasy novel written by George MacDonald, first published in London in 1858. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fourteenth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in April 1970....
 are regarded as fantasies, while his "The Light Princess
The Light Princess

The Light Princess is a fairy tale by George MacDonald. It was published in 1864....
", "The Golden Key
The Golden Key

The Golden Key is a fairy tale written by George MacDonald. It was published in 1867 .It is particularly noted for the intensity of the suggestive imagery, which implies a spiritual meaning to the story without providing a transparent allegory for the events in it....
", and "The Wise Woman" are commonly called fairy tales. The most notable distinction is that fairytale fantasies, like other fantasies, make use of novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
istic writing conventions of prose, characterization, or setting.

Film

Fairy tales have been enacted dramatically; records exist of this in commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'Arte is a form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 16th century and held its popularity through the 18th century, although it is still performed today....
, and later in pantomime
Pantomime

Pantomime is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in Great Britain, Canada, Jamaica, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Republic of Ireland, Gibraltar and Republic of Malta, and is usually performed during the Christmas and New Year season....
. The advent of cinema
Film

Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the film industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects....
 has meant that such stories could be presented in a more plausible manner, with the use of special effects and animation
Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of Motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways....
; the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the Snow White by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animation feature film to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history....
 in 1937 was a ground-breaking film for fairy tales and, indeed, fantasy in general. Disney's influence helped establish this genre as children's movies, despite the fact that Snow White, as well as the company's other early feature-length films
List of Disney theatrical animated features

This is a list of theatrical animation feature films produced and/or released by Walt Disney Productions/The Walt Disney Company.Unless explicitly stated, all films on this list are traditionally-animated 2D films....
, were originally intended for adults as well, and has been blamed for simplification of fairy tales ending in situations where everything goes right, as opposed to the pain and suffering — and sometimes unhappy endings — of many folk fairy tales

Many filmed fairy tales have been made primarily for children, from Disney's later works to Aleksandr Rou's retelling of Vasilissa the Beautiful
Vasilissa the Beautiful

Vasilissa the Beautiful is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.Another of the many versions of the tale also appears in A Book of Enchantments and Curses , by Ruth Manning-Sanders....
, the first Soviet film
Cinema of the Soviet Union

The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, although sometimes censored by the Central Gover...
 to use Russian folk tales in a big-budget feature. Others have used the conventions of fairy tales to create new stories with sentiments more relevant to contemporary life, as in Labyrinth
Labyrinth (film)

Labyrinth is a 1986 fantasy film, directed by Jim Henson, produced by George Lucas, and designed by Brian Froud. Henson collaborated on the screenwriting with children's author Dennis Lee and Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones....
 and the films of Michel Ocelot
Michel Ocelot

Michel Ocelot is a France Screenwriter, character designer, storyboard artist and Film director of animation Film and Television program and a former president of the International Animated Film Association....
.

Other works have retold familiar fairy tales in a darker, more horrific or psychological variant aimed primarily at adults. Notable examples are Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eug?ne Cl?ment Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright and filmmaker. Along with other Surrealists of his generation Cocteau grappled with the "algebra" of verbal codes old and new, mise en sc?ne language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde....
's Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (1946 film)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1946 Cinema of France romance film fantasy film adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's fairy tale. Directed by French poet/filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the film stars Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais as both Avenant and The Beast....
 and The Company of Wolves
The Company of Wolves

The Company of Wolves is a 1984 in film gothic fantasy film-horror film directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Sarah Patterson and Angela Lansbury....
, based on an Angela Carter
Angela Carter

Angela Carter was an England novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism and science fiction works....
's retelling of Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a famous fairy tale about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has changed considerably in its history, and been subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings....
. Likewise, Princess Mononoke
Princess Mononoke

is a 1997 in film anime historical fantasy feature film Screenwriter and Film director by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. It was first released in Japan on July 12, 1997 and in the United States on October 29, 1999 in select cities and on November 26, 1999 in Canada....
 and Pan's Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 in film Spanish films of 2006 Spanish language fantasy film written and directed by Mexico film-maker Guillermo del Toro....
 create new stories in this genre from fairy tale and folklore motifs.

In comics and animated TV series, The Sandman, Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena

is a manga by Chiho Saito and anime directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. The manga serial began in the June 1996 issue of Ciao and the anime was first broadcast in 1997....
, Princess Tutu
Princess Tutu

is a magical girl anime created by Ikuko Itoh in 2002 for animation studio Hal Film Maker. It was adapted as a 2-volume manga illustrated by Mizuo Shinonome....
, Fables and MÄR
MÄR

, which stands for "M?rchen Awakens Romance", is a manga series created by mangaka Nobuyuki Anzai. The television anime based on the series is titled and was originally broadcast in Japan on the TXN station....
 all make use of standard fairy tale elements to various extents but are more accurately categorised as fairytale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy

Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore....
 due to the definite locations and characters which a longer narrative necessitates.

Motifs

Warwick Goble Beauty and Beast
Any comparison of fairy tales quickly discovers that many fairy tales have features in common with each other. Two of the most influential classifications are those of Antti Aarne
Antti Aarne

Antti Amatus Aarne was a Finland folklorist....
, as revised by Stith Thompson
Stith Thompson

Stith Thompson was an American scholar of folklore and the "Thompson" of the Aarne-Thompson classification system. He was born in Bloomfield, Kentucky, Kentucky, the son of John Warden and Eliza Thompson....
 into the Aarne-Thompson classification system, and Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian Formalism scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements....
's Morphology of the Folk Tale.

Aarne-Thompson

This system groups fairy and folk tales according to their overall plot. Common, identifying features are picked out to decide which tales are grouped together. Much therefore depends on what features are regarded as decisive.

For instance, tales like Cinderella
Cinderella

Cinderella , is a well-known classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world....
 – in which a persecuted heroine, with the help of the fairy godmother
Fairy godmother

In fairy tales, a fairy godmother is a fairy with magic powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies....
 or similar magical helper
Donor (fairy tale)

In fairy tales, a donor is a character that tests the hero and provides magical assistances to the hero while he succeeds.The fairy godmother is a well-known form of this character....
, attends an event (or three) in which she wins the love of a prince and is identified as his true bride – are classified as type 510, the persecuted heroine. Some such tales are The Wonderful Birch
The Wonderful Birch

The Wonderful Birch is a Russian fairy tale.A variant on Cinderella, it is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 510A, the persecuted heroine. It makes use of shapeshifting motifs....
, Aschenputtel, Katie Woodencloak
Katie Woodencloak

Katie Woodencloak or Kari Woodengown is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen and J?rgen Moe in Norske Folkeeventyr....
, The Story of Tam and Cam
The Story of Tam and Cam

'The Story of T?m and C?m' is a Vietnamese fairy tale collected by L. T. Bach-Lan in Vietnamese Legends.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510A. Others of this type include Cinderella, Fair, Brown and Trembling, Finette Cendron, The Golden Slipper, The Green Knight , Katie Woodencloak, Rushen Coatie, The Sharp Grey...
, Ye Xian
Ye Xian

Ye Xian or in the southern part, Yeh-Shen is a China fairy tale that resembles Cinderella. The story first appears during the 9th Century in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang....
, Cap O' Rushes
Cap O' Rushes

Cap O' Rushes is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
, Catskin
Catskin

Catskin is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs, in More English Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
, Fair, Brown and Trembling
Fair, Brown and Trembling

Fair, Brown and Trembling is an Irish fairy tale collected by Jeremiah Curtin in Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland and Joseph Jacobs in his Celtic Fairy Tales....
, Finette Cendron
Finette Cendron

Finette Cendron is a French literary fairy tale written by Madame d'Aulnoy.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510A. Other tales of this type include Cinderella, Fair, Brown and Trembling, The Golden Slipper, Katie Woodencloak, Rushen Coatie, The Sharp Grey Sheep, The Story of Tam and Cam, and The Wonderful Birch....
, Allerleirauh
Allerleirauh

Allerleirauh or All-Kinds-of-Fur is a fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, it has been recorded as Tale no....
, and Tattercoats
Tattercoats

Tattercoats is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in his More English Fairy Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 510B, the persecuted heroine....
.

Further analysis of the tales shows that in Cinderella, The Wonderful Birch, The Story of Tam and Cam, Ye Xian, and Aschenputtel, the heroine is persecuted by her stepmother and refused permission to go to the ball or other event, and in Fair, Brown and Trembling and Finette Cendron by her sisters and other female figures, and these are grouped as 510A; while in Cap O' Rushes, Catskin, and Allerleirauh, the heroine is driven from home by her father's persecutions, and must take work in a kitchen elsewhere, and these are grouped as 510B. But in Katie Woodencloak, she is driven from home by her stepmother's persecutions and must take service in a kitchen elsewhere, and in Tattercoats, she is refused permission to go to the ball by her grandfather. Given these features common with both types of 510, Katie Woodencloak is classified as 510A because the villain is the stepmother, and Tattercoats as 510B because the grandfather fills the father's role.

This system has its weaknesses in the difficulty of having no way to classify subportions of a tale as motifs. Rapunzel
Rapunzel

"Rapunzel" is a German culture fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales....
 is type 310 (The Maiden in the Tower), but it opens with a child being demanded in return for stolen food, as does Puddocky
Puddocky

"Puddocky" is a Germany fairy tale. A variant, "Cherry," was collected by the Brothers Grimm, and in French language, Madame d'Aulnoy retold it in a literary fairy tale as "The White Cat", altering the tale's frog into a cat....
; but Puddocky is not a Maiden in the Tower tale, while The Canary Prince
The Canary Prince

The Canary Prince is an Italian fairy tale, the 18th tale in Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino. He took the tale from Turin, making various stylistic changes; he noted it developed a medieval motif, but such tales as Marie de France's Yonec produced a rather different effect, being tales of adultery....
, which opens with a jealous stepmother, is.

It also lends itself to emphasis on the common elements, to the extent that the folklorist describes The Black Bull of Norroway as the same story as Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale . The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune am?ricaine, et les contes marins in 1740....
. This can be useful as a shorthand but can also erase the coloring and details of a story.

Morphology

Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian Formalism scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements....
 specifically studied a collection of Russian fairy tales, but his analysis has been found useful for the tales of other countries.
Morozko
Having criticized Aarne-Thompson type analysis for ignoring what motifs did in stories, and because the motifs used were not clearly distinct, he analyzed the tales for the function each character and action fulfilled and concluded that a tale was composed of thirty-one elements and eight character types. While the elements were not all required for all tales, when they appeared they did so in an invariant order — except that each individual element might be negated twice, so that it would appear three times
Rule of three (writing)

The rule of three is a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things....
, as when, in Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister

Brother and Sister is a well known European fairy tale which was, among others, written down by the Brothers Grimm in their collection of Children's and Household Tales....
, the brother resists drinking from enchanted streams twice, so that it is the third that enchants him.

One such element is the donor
Fairy godmother

In fairy tales, a fairy godmother is a fairy with magic powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies....
 who gives the hero magical assistance, often after testing him. In The Golden Bird
The Golden Bird

"The Golden Bird" is a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, number 57, about the pursuit of a golden bird by a king's three sons.A French version, collected by Paul S?billot, is called The Golden Blackbird....
, the talking fox
Fox

A fox is an animal belonging to any one of about 27 species of small to medium-sized Canidae, characterized by possessing a long, narrow snout, and a bushy tail, or brush....
 tests the hero by warning him against entering an inn and, after he succeeds, helps him find the object of his quest; in The Boy Who Drew Cats
The Boy Who Drew Cats

"The Boy Who Drew Cats" is a Japanese fairy tale collected by Lafcadio Hearn in Japanese Fairy Tales....
, the priest advised the hero to stay in small places at night, which protects him from an evil spirit; in Cinderella
Cinderella

Cinderella , is a well-known classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world....
, the fairy godmother gives Cinderella the dresses she needs to attend the ball, as their mothers' spirits do in Bawang Putih Bawang Merah
Bawang Putih Bawang Merah

Bawang Putih Bawang Merah is one of the more famous of old Malay archipelago folktales, passed down orally through the generations. Like most Malays folktales, the story is laden with lessons regarding familial values, patience in the face of adversity, and that ultimately good will be rewarded and the evil will be punished....
 and The Wonderful Birch
The Wonderful Birch

The Wonderful Birch is a Russian fairy tale.A variant on Cinderella, it is Aarne-Thompson folktale type 510A, the persecuted heroine. It makes use of shapeshifting motifs....
; in The Fox Sister
The Fox Sister

The Fox Sister is a Korean fairy tale....
, a Buddhist
Buddhism

Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices considered by most to be a religionand is based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as "The Buddha" , who was born in what is today Nepal....
 monk gives the brothers magical bottles to protect against the fox spirit. The roles can be more complicated. In The Red Ettin
The Red Ettin

The Red Ettin or The Red Etin is a fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs. It was included by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book....
, the role is split into the mother – who offers the hero the whole of a journey cake with her curse or half with her blessing – and when he takes the half, a fairy who gives him advice; in Mr Simigdáli
Mr Simigdáli

Mr Simigd?li is a Greece fairy tale, collectd by Irene Naumann-Mavrogordato in Es war einmal: Neugriechische Volksm?rchen. Georgios A. Megas collected a variant Master Semolina in Folktales of Greece....
, the sun, the moon, and the stars all give the heroine a magical gift. Characters who are not always the donor can act like the donor. In Kallo and the Goblins
Kallo and the Goblins

Kallo and the Goblins is a Greek fairy tale. Fani Papalouka, Nikolaos Politis, and Haris Sakellariou collected variants of the story....
, the villain goblins also give the heroine gifts, because they are tricked; in Schippeitaro
Schippeitaro

Schippeitaro is a Japanese fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book, listing his source as Japanische Marchen....
, the evil cat
Cat

The cat , also known as the Domestication cat or house cat to distinguish it from other Felinae and Felidae, is a small predationy carnivore species of crepuscular mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin, snakes, scorpions, and other unwanted household pests....
s betray their secret to the hero, giving him the means to defeat them. Other fairy tales, such as The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was or The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm....
, do not feature the donor.

Analogies have been drawn between this and the analysis of myths into the Hero's journey
Monomyth

The term Monomyth as used within the field of comparative mythology refers to a basic pattern supposedly found in many narratives from around the world....
.

This analysis has been criticized for ignoring tone, mood, characters and, indeed, anything that differentiates one fairy tale from another.

Interpretations

Many variants, especially those intended for children, have had morals
Morality

Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong....
 attached. Perrault concluded his versions with one, although not always completely moral: Cinderella concludes with the observation that her beauty and character would have been useless without her godmother, reflecting the importance of social connections.

Many fairy tales have been interpreted for their (purported) significance. One mythological interpretation claimed that many fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale of Germanic origin, adapted by the Brothers Grimm and earlier by Giambattista Basile....
, Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma M?re l'Oye .While Perrault's version is better known, an older variant, the tale Sun, Moon, and Talia, was contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone ....
, and The Frog King
The Frog Prince (story)

The Frog King or Iron Heinrich , also known as The Frog Prince, is a fairy tale, best known through the Brothers Grimm's written version; traditionally it is the first story in their collection....
, all were solar myths
Solar deity

A Solar Deity , is a deity who represents the sun, or an aspect of it. People have worshiped these for all of recorded history. Hence, many beliefs have formed around this worship, such as the "missing sun" found in many cultures ....
; this mode of interpretation is rather less popular now. Many have also been subjected to Freudian
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
, Jungian
Analytical psychology

Analytical psychology is the school of psychology originating from the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and then advanced by his students and other thinkers who followed in his tradition....
, and other psychological
Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
 analysis, but no mode of interpretation has ever established itself definitively.

Specific analyses have often been criticized for lending great importance to motifs that are not, in fact, integral to the tale; this has often stemmed from treating one instance of a fairy tale as the definitive text, where the tale has been told and retold in many variations. In variants of Bluebeard
Bluebeard

'Bluebeard' is the title character in a famous fairy tale about a violent nobleman and his curious wife. It appeared in Charles Perrault's Les Contes de ma M?re l'Oye, first published in 1697....
, the wife's curiosity is betrayed by a blood-stained key
Bluebeard

'Bluebeard' is the title character in a famous fairy tale about a violent nobleman and his curious wife. It appeared in Charles Perrault's Les Contes de ma M?re l'Oye, first published in 1697....
, by an egg's breaking
Fitcher's Bird

Fitcher's Bird is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 46.It is Aarne-Thompson type 311, the heroine rescues herself and her sisters....
, or by the singing of a rose she wore
How the Devil Married Three Sisters

How the Devil Married Three Sisters is an Italian fairy tale collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales.It is Aarne-Thompson type 311, the heroine rescues herself and her sisters....
, without affecting the tale, but interpretations of specific variants have claimed that the precise object is integral to the tale.

Other folklorists have interpreted tales as historical documents. Many German folklorists, believing the tales to have been preserved from ancient times, used Grimms' tales to explain ancient customs. Other folklorists have explained the figure of the wicked stepmother historically: many women did die in childbirth, their husbands remarried, and the new stepmothers competed with the children of the first marriage for resources.

Compilations

  • List of fairy tales
    List of fairy tales

    This is a list of fairy tales, the dates of their earliest known printed version, the author and, if known, the collection of tales in which it was published....
  • Collections of fairy tales


Authors and works:
    • Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
      Andrew Lang's Fairy Books

      Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally , made them an immensely influential collection, especially as...
    • Fairy Tales
      Fairy Tales (Cummings)

      Fairy Tales is a book of short stories by e. e. cummings, published posthumously in 1965. It contains four stories: "The Old Man Who Said 'Why'", "The Elephant and The Butterfly", "The House That Ate Mosquito Pie", and "The Little Girl Named I"....
      , a book by E. E. Cummings
      E. E. Cummings

      Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, was an Poetry of the United States, painter, essayist, author, and playwright....
    • Giovanni Francesco Straparola
      Giovanni Francesco Straparola

      File:Straparola.jpgGiovanni Francesco Straparola was an Italy writer and fairy tale collector. He has been termed the progenitor of the literary form of the fairy tale in Europe....
    • Grimm's Fairy Tales
      Grimm's Fairy Tales

      Children's and Household Tales is a collection of Germany origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm....
    • Hans Christian Andersen
      Hans Christian Andersen

      Hans Christian Andersen , also known as simply H. C. Andersen ); was a Denmark author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Red Shoes "....
      , for Andersen fairy tales
    • Joseph Ritson
      Joseph Ritson

      Joseph Ritson , was an England antiquary.He was born at Stockton-on-Tees, of a Westmorland yeoman family. He was educated for the law, and settled in London as a conveyancer at the age of twenty-two....
      , for Fairy Tales, Now First Collected
    • Italian Folktales
      Italian Folktales

      Italian Folktales is a collection of 200 Italy folktales published in 1956 in literature by Italo Calvino. Italo Calvino began to undertake the project that will lead to the Italian Folktales in 1954, influenced by Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale; his intention was to emulate the Brothers Grimm in producing a popular col...
       by Italo Calvino
      Italo Calvino

      Italo Calvino was an Italy journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler ....
    • Joseph Jacobs
      Joseph Jacobs

      Joseph Jacobs was a literary and Jewish historian. He was a writer for the Jewish Encyclopaedia and a notable folklorist, creating several noteworthy collections of fairy tales....
      , for collected fairy tales
    • Legende sau basmele românilor
      Legende sau basmele românilor

      Legende sau basmele rom?nilor is a collection, in several volumes, of Romania folktales, first published in 1874 in literature by Petre Ispirescu....
       by Petre Ispirescu
      Petre Ispirescu

      Petre Ispirescu was a Romanian printer and publicist....
    • Madame d'Aulnoy
      Madame d'Aulnoy

      Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy was a France writer known for her fairy tales. When she termed her works contes de f?e , she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre....
    • Norske Folkeeventyr
      Norske Folkeeventyr

      Norwegian Folktales is a collection of Norway folktales and legends by Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen and J?rgen Moe. It is also known as Asbj?rnsen and Moe, after the collectors....
    • Narodnye russkie skazki
      Narodnye russkie skazki

      Narodnye russkie skazki , is a collection of Russian fairy tales, collected by Alexander Afanasyev and published by him between 1855 and 1863....
    • Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile
      Giambattista Basile

      Giambattista Basile was an Italy poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector....
    • Contes de ma mère l'Oye
      Mother Goose

      Mother Goose is a well-known figure in the literature of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Mother Goose is best known in the United States, in the United Kingdom and other English language speaking nations....
       by Charles Perrault
      Charles Perrault

      File:ChPerrault.jpg'Charles Perrault' was a France author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , La Belle au bois dormant , Le Ma?tre chat ou le Chat bott? , Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre , La Barbe bleue , Le Petit Pouce...
    • Panchatantra
      Panchatantra

      The Panchatantra or Tantrakhyayika also known in other cultures as Kalileh o Demneh or Anvar-e Soheyli or Kalilag and Damnag or Kalilah wa Dimnah or Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai or The Morall Philosophie of Doni was originally a canon...
    • Peter Leithart
      Peter Leithart

      Peter J. Leithart is an United States author, Minister , theologian and Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature as well as Dean of Graduate Studies at New Saint Andrews College....
       - Wise Words
    • Popular Tales of the West Highlands
      Popular Tales of the West Highlands

      Popular Tales of the West Highlands is a four-volume collection of fairy tales, collected and published by John Francis Campbell, and often translated from Gaelic as well....
       by John Francis Campbell
      John Francis Campbell

      John Francis Campbell , Celtic scholar, educated at Eton College and University of Edinburgh, was afterwards Secretary to the Lighthouse Commission....
    • Ruth Manning-Sanders
      Ruth Manning-Sanders

      Ruth Manning-Sanders was a England poet and author who was perhaps best known for her series of children's books in which she collected and retold fairy tales from all over the world....
      , for collected fairy tales
    • Tales of Brother Goose
      Tales of Brother Goose

      Tales of Brother Goose, written by Brett Nicholas Moore, was a satirical book published in May 2006 which pokes fun at the classic Mother Goose tales....
       by Brett Nicholas Moore
    • Tono Monogatari (Legends of Tono) by Kunio Yanagita
      Kunio Yanagita

      is a scholar who is often known as "the father of Japanese native ethnology."He was born in Fukusaki, Hyogo, Hyogo Prefecture. After graduating with a degree in law from Tokyo Imperial University, he became employed as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce....
    • World Tales
      World Tales

      World Tales, subtitled "The Extraordinary Coincidence of Stories Told in All Times, in All Places" is a book of 65 Fairy tale collected by Idries Shah from around the world, mostly from literary sources....
       by Idries Shah
      Idries Shah

      Idries Abutahir Shah , also known as Idris Shah, n? Sayyid Idris Hashemite , was an author and teacher in the Sufism tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies....


See also

  • Bengt Holbek
    Bengt Holbek

    Bengt Holbek was a Danish folklorist who wrote one of the definitive works of fairy tale scholarship entitled Interpretation of Fairy Tales ....
  • Fairytale fantasy
    Fairytale fantasy

    Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore....
  • Fable
    Fable

    A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate, or nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim ....
  • Nursery rhyme
    Nursery rhyme

    The term nursery rhyme is used for ?traditional? songs for young children in Britain and many English speaking countries, but usage only dates from the nineteenth century and in North America the older ?Mother Goose Rhymes? is still often used....
  • Saga
    Saga

    Saga may refer to:...


External links

  • - Annotated Tales including histories, Discussion Forum, Fairy Tale Books, Illustrations and Multicultural tales
  • - An Online Journal of Fairy Tale Fiction
  • - Journal of Mythic Arts, fairy tale history and contemporary fairy tales
  • - Collection and guide to fables and Fairy Tales for children
  • - How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives, by Jonathan Young, Ph.D.
  • , and the Fairy Tale outline generator