Fairy tale
A
fairy tale is a story featuring
folkloric characters such as
fairies,
goblins, ,
trolls,
giants, and others. The fairy tale is a sub-class of the
folktale. These stories often involve royalty, and modern versions usually have a
happy ending. In cultures where
demons and
witches are perceived as real, fairy tales may merge into
legendary narratives, where the context is perceived by teller and hearers as having historical actuality. However, unlike
legends and
epics they usually do not contain more than superficial references to
religion and actual places, persons, and events although these allusions are often critical in understanding the origins of these fanciful stories.
Many people, including
Angela Carter in her introduction to the
Virago Book of Fairy Tales have noted that a great deal of so-called fairy tales do not feature fairies at all. This is partly because of the history of the English term "fairy tale" which derives from the French phrase
contes de fée which was first used in the collection of Madame D'Aulnoy in 1697. As Stith Thompson and Carter herself point out, talking animals and the presence of magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves.
Some
folklorists prefer to use the German term
Märchen to refer to fairy tales, a practice given weight by the definition of Stith 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 heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses." (Thompson: 8)
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Ivan Bilibin's illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful. |
Although in the nineteenth and twentieth century the fairy tale came to be associated with
children's literature, adults were originally as likely as children to be the audience of the fairy tale. The fairy tale was part of an oral
tradition; tales were narrated orally, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation.
Despite the name, there never appears to have been a time where "fairy tales" depicted solely tales of encounters with fairies. Fairy tales were about princes and princesses, combat, adventure, society, and romance. Fairies had a secondary role.
In later versions, moral lessons and happy endings were more common, and the villain was usually punished. In the modern era, fairy tales were altered, usually with violence removed, so they could be read to children (who, according to a common modern sentiment, should not hear about violence).
Sometimes fairy tales are simply
miraculous entertainments, but often they are disguised morality tales. This is true for the
Brothers Grimm Kinder- und Hausmärchen, and much of the drily witty, dead-pan, social criticism beneath the surface of
Hans Christian Andersen's tales, which influenced
Roald Dahl.
The fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the "
Arabian Nights" collection of magical tales, in antiquity:
Cupid and Psyche,
Bel and the Dragon. Fairy tales resurfaced in literature in the 17th century, with the Neapolitan tales of
Giambattista Basile and the later
Contes of
Charles Perrault, who fixed the forms of
Sleeping Beauty and
Cinderella. Such literary forms did not merely draw from the folktale, but fed back into it. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told orally to them, because the tales derived from Perrault. The rediscovery of a manuscript of
Cupid and Psyche quickly produced variants of that tale in regions where the tale had been unknown before.
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Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes |
An extensive collection of
European fairy tales were published by
Andrew Lang in
a series of books:
The Red Fairy Book,
The Orange Fairy Book, and so forth. These provide some excellent examples of the genre.
According to a
2004 poll of 1,200 children by
UCI Cinemas, the most popular fairy tales (in the USA) are:#
Cinderella#
Sleeping Beauty#
Hansel and Gretel#
Rapunzel#
Little Red Riding Hood#
Town MusiciansIn addition, the
Arabian Nights stories like
Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp and
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves are often thought to be fairy tales themselves.
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John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales. |
In
contemporary literature, many authors have used the form of fairy tales for various reasons, such as examining the
human condition from the simple framework a fairytale provides. Some authors seek to recreate a sense of the fantastic in a contemporary discourse. Sometimes, especially in children's literature, fairy tales are retold with a twist simply for comic effect, such as
The Stinky Cheese Man by
Jon Scieszka. Other authors may have specific motives, such as
multicultural or
feminist reevaluations of predominantly
Eurocentric masculine dominated fairy tales, implying critique of older narratives. The figure of the
damsel in distress has been particularly attacked by many feminist critics. Examples of narrative reversal rejecting this figure include
The Paperbag Princess, by
Robert Munsch, a picture book aimed at children in which a princess rescues a prince, or
Angela Carter's
The Bloody Chamber, which retells a number of fairytales from a female point of view.
Other notable figures who have employed fairy tales include
A. S. Byatt,
Jane Yolen,
Terri Windling,
Donald Barthelme,
Robert Coover,
Margaret Atwood, Kate Bernheimer,
Tanith Lee,
James Thurber,
Kelly Link,
Robin McKinley,
Donna Jo Napoli,
Robert Bly,
Gail Carson Levine and many others.
It may be hard to lay down the rule between fairy tales and
fantasies 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 and
Phantastes are regarded as fantasies, while his "
The Light Princess", "
The Golden Key", and "The Wise Woman" are commonly called fairy tales.
Fairy tales are more than true -not because they tell us dragons exist,but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.G. K. ChestertonAny 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, as revised by Stith Thompson, into the Aarne-Thompson classification system, and
Vladimir Propp'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, in which a persecuted heroine, with the help of the
fairy godmother or similar magical helper, 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,
Aschenputtel,
Katie Woodencloak,
Cap O' Rushes,
Catskin,
Fair, Brown and Trembling,
Allerleirauh, and
Tattercoats.
Further analysis of the tales shows that in
Cinderella,
The Wonderful Birch, 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, by her sister, another female figure, 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 is type 310 The Maiden in the Tower, but it opens with a child being demanded in return for stolen food, as does
Puddocky, but
Puddocky is not a maiden in the Tower tale, while
The Canary Prince, which opens with a jealous stepmother, is.
Morphology
Vladimir Propp specifically studied a collection of Russian fairy tales, but his analysis has been found useful for the tales of other countries.
Having criticized Aarne-Thompson type analysis for ignoring what motifs
did in stories, 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 â€" except that each individual element might be negated twice, so that it would appear three times, as when, in
Brother and Sister, the brother resists drinking from enchanted streams twice, so that it is the third that enchants him.
One such element is the
donor who gives the hero magical assistance, often after testing him, and this function can be independent of any appearance of the donor. In
The Golden Bird, the talking fox tests the hero by warning him against entering an inn and, after he succeeds, helps him find the object of his quest; in
Cinderella, the fairy godmother gives Cinderella the dresses she needs to attend the ball; in
The Red Ettin, 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
The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, three separate animals pledge the hero their aid in return for his aid. Other fairy tales, such as
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was, do not feature the donor.
Analogies have been drawn between this and the analysis of myths into the
Hero's journey.
This analysis has been criticized for ignoring tone, mood, characters, and, indeed, anything at all that differentiates one fairy tale from another..
Many fairy tales have been interpreted for their (purported) significiance. One mythological interpretation claimed that many fairy tales, including
Hansel and Gretel,
Sleeping Beauty, and
The Frog King, all were solar myths; this mode of interpretation is rather less popular now. Many have also been subjected to Freudian, Jungian, and other psychological 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. In variants of
Bluebeard, the wife's curiosity is betrayed by a blood-stained key, by an egg's breaking, or by the singing of a rose she wore, without affecting the tale, but interpretations of specific variants have claimed that the precise object is integral to the tale.
*
Antti Aarne*
Bengt Holbek*
Fairytale fantasy*
Fantasy*
Fairy*
Fairy godmother*
Youngest son*
False hero*
List of fairy tales*
Contes de ma mère l'Oye by
Charles Perrault*
Grimm's Fairy Tales**
Joseph Jacobs, for collected fairy tales
*
Norske Folkeeventyr**
Madame d'Aulnoy*
Popular Tales of the West Highlands by
John Francis Campbell**
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books*
Italian Folktales by
Italo Calvino*
Fables, a comic book series about the lives of various fairy tale characters in the "real" world.
*
Fable (video game)*
Read Children's Story Books online, fairy tales, short stories, and popular books.*
Classic Fairytale Company (International Touring Theatre) website*
SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: Annotated tales, illustrations, and much more.*
The Endicott Studio Journal of Mythic Arts: Fairy tale history, contemporary fairy tale arts, and much more*
How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives, by Jonathan Young, Ph.D.*
A collection of fairy tales from KidsGen* Fairy Book collections edited by Andrew Lang, from
Project Gutenberg**
Blue Fairy Book**
Orange Fairy Book**
Red Fairy Book**
Brown Fairy Book**
Crimson Fairy Book**
Violet Fairy Book**
Yellow Fairy Book**
Lilac Fairy Book*
Grimm's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg*
Andersen's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg*
D.L. Ashliman's Grimm Brothers website*
Irish Fairy Tales*
A Fairytale Outline Generator: based on Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale
*
Fairy Stories, Myths and Legends* Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson:
The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography (Helsinki, 1961)
* Thompson, Stith
The Folktale* Tatar, Maria
The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (Princeton, 1987)
*
J. R. R. Tolkien, "
On Fairy-Stories" essay first published in
Essays Presented to Charles Williams, Oxford University Press, 1947
*
Fables - Collection and guide to fables and Fairy Tales for children.*
The Fairy Tale Review: A Journal of Fairy Tale Literature*
Cabinet des Fees: An Online Journal of Fairy Tale Fiction*
Old Wives Tales: a page of women's fairy tale art, historical and contemporary*
Free Audio Fairy Talesat Storynory
*
Vladimir Propp's Theories
