2. Debating Fairy Tales
Key Features
Oral/ Written Tradition
Adult/ Children
Travelling Fairy Tales
Purpose of Fairy Tales
Controversial Fairy Tales
Different Readings of Fairy Tales
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3. Features of fairy tales
Fairy tales have instantly recognizable
features:
Simplistic
stock characters/ particular characters like
wicked stepmother, prince in disguise or hero
setting out on a quest
powerful plot drive
repetition of key phrases like ‘once upon a time’
or ‘they lived happily ever after’
lack of a specified, realistic setting/
4. Fairy Tales: Not So Easy to Define
*These features immediately classify the
story as a children’s fairy tale.
But fairy tales are more than just the
sum of their parts
Definition of fairy tales remains
contested
& sometimes controversial.
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5. ‘ONCE UPON A TIME’
Fairy tales have their origins in oral tradition of
folk tales for adults & children.
They have long existed between literature for
adults & literature for children.
They extend across the oral & the literary & have
have played an important role in the emergence
of CL.
Fairy tales have been identified as CL since the
18th c.
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6. Fairy Tales
They were told and retold & re-imagined
throughout centuries, changing along with
historical & cultural contexts.
More than any other form of literature, that
is now regarded as being for children, they
have been the subject of much debate,
analysis & controversy.
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7. History of Fairy Tales
Fairy tales were published in Italy in 1550
Similar tales appeared in France by 1560, including a
variation of ‘Puss in Boots.’
One of the most famous collections of early fairy tales
was published in Paris in 1697 by Charles Perrault,
Perrault, called ‘Tales & stories of the Past, with
Morals’ & given the subtitle ‘Tales of Mother Goose.’
The original title, in French, was Histoires ou contes du
du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma
mère l'Oye.
‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, &
‘Cinderella’ were included in this book, and are still
known & read today.
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8. Chapbooks
In England, such tales were originally
circulated via chapbooks.
Chapbooks: Cheap, popular readings sold by
pedlars 18th C, 16-24 pages long, sold for
less than a penny
They included reprints of fairy tales (as well
as old romances, religious tracts and
ballads).
Rewritten in the simplest of language for
children to understand easily.
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9. Fairy Tales: Change & Continuity
As European population became more literate, many
more versions were published.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales’ collection of stories published in
German in 1812: The most famous collection compiled
and published by brothers Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
Over centuries such tales have proved to be infinitely
adaptable & children today may learn them from Walt
Disney’s films, rather than from parents
But the key elements in their stories & structures
remain intact.
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10. Critical Essays
Jack Zipes’s essay in Reader 1: ‘Origins:
fairy tales & folk tales’ Zipes sets out the
history of fairy tales.
Looking at how oral tales were written
down & turned into literature, & how tales
travelled across linguistic & national
borders.
What are fairy tales for? A difficult
question? The answer has changed over
time.
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11. Zipes argues that, originally, these stories
were written without a moral purpose
& for the amusement of adults (were rather
rude).
Only in 1820s: they began to be seen as
particularly suitable for children:
they bridged the gap between instruction &
delight.
While children may not always have
understood their implicit meanings, there
was a clear meaning to them that was
approved of by adults.
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12. Zipes’s essay appeared in ‘The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature’
Zipes has also examined why fairy tales
‘stick’ throughout centuries.
He argues that there is no such thing as a
‘pure’ fairy tale & no easily identifiable
tradition.
He claims that all fairy tales (& folk tales)
have been ‘contaminated …. through cross-
cultural & intercultural exchange, thereby
producing endless versions of the same
story.
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13. Zipes focuses particularly on the question why we
respond to classical tales almost as if we were born
with them
Yet we know well that they are socially produced and
induced, and continue to be generated this way
through different forms of mass media.
Zipes suggests that fairy tales are designed to turn
children into the sort of adults their societies need
value.
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14. Fairy Tales & Folk Tales
Do fairy tales have to have fairies in them, a
question to which almost all commentators
would answer ‘No.’
A more difficult question is “Are fairy tales the
same as folk tales?”. Most scholars would say no
Fairy tales are part of folklore, but not all folk
tales are fairy tales.
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15. Magic & Mystery
Marcia Lane: Fairy tales have a sense of magic,
feeling or sensation of supernatural or
mysterious.
A story that happens in the past tense
a story not tied to any specifics/ If it happens ‘at
the beginning of the world’ it is a myth/ A story
that names a specific ‘real’ person is a legend/ A
story that happens in the future is fantasy/
Fairy tales are sometimes spiritual, but never
religious.
16. J.R.R. Tolkien
Fairy realm or state in which fairies, but not only
fairies, have their being.
According to Tolkien, all fairy tales have the same elements of
fantasy, recovery and consolation.
Fantasy: Although fairy tales deal with unlikely worlds or that
contain fantastic elements, magic must be treated as real.
Recovery: enables readers to see the world differently, so
review their own world & so change their own assumptions.
Consolation: pleasure these stories give to their readers,
beyond escapism, rather moral & emotional consolation
‘happily ever after’: not simply a standard phrase but a glimpse
of this consolation.
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17. Are These Fairy Tales?
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess on
the Pea” and The Old Woman and the Spirit”
(p:50-51 SG) story told by people called Trio
collected by Koelewijn & Riviere
Both contain elements that may make them
fairy tales: deal with fantastic; mythic time: the
‘once’ of the first & ‘long ago’ of the second;
end happily.
Yet no fairies; both are realistic in their own
terms.
Do we ‘feel’ they are fairy tales?
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18. Unconventional Tales
Both stories differ from conventional fairy tales.
they folk tales?
‘The Princess on the Pea’ was probably not part
oral tradition. It was written for educated elite who
had access to books.
The Trio tale ‘The Old Woman and The Spirit’ is a
reflection of Trio cosmology & belief systems. The
Trio believe in a world of invisible spirits that take a
variety of forms & humans need to be on their
guard against such spirits.
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19. Folk & Fairy Tales: Controversy
Andrew Lang : anthropologist who collected fairy tales
from around the world & published them in a series of
12 different coloured books (between 1899 &1910)
As the series developed, Lang took stories from India,
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20. Importance of Fairy tales
Some of Lang’s contemporaries argued that fairy
tales were part of folk traditions that should be
studied academically, and referring to them as
‘fairy tales’ classifies them as children’s stories,
demeaning them & devaluing their meaning.
The President of Folklore society, Laurence Gomme
believed that Fairy tales should not be given to
children, but should be studied for what they
anthropologists & folklorists about ancient
& historical heritage of Europeans.
21. Purpose & Impact of fairy tales
According to Victorian critic John Ruskin fairy tales
have a moral simplicity and nobility lost from
other forms of literature for children.
Ruskin: they not only teach children morality but
are also to cope with inherent unfairness of life
they might suffer now or in the future.
But Andrew Lang (see above) claimed that while
did have a moral to them and were meant to make
their hearers better, children actually showed
interest in ‘the diversion than
[in] the lesson.’
22. Freudian psychoanalysis
In a post-Freudian world, fairy tales are seen as a
form of therapy, a way for children to understand
face their fears: symbolism of fairy tales (Bruno
Bettelheim, Freudian psychoanalyst)
C.S.Lewis also believed that fairy tales could help
children manage their anxieties.
Like Ruskin, Lewis suggested that fairy tales allowed
children to make sense of a disordered world (in
which fear could be safely expressed & overcome
through these stories).
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23. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
One of the most enduring & best known of fairy tales:
‘Little Red Riding Hood’ written by Charles Perrault
(1697): retold & re-imagined ever since.
For Jack Zipes, it is ‘the most popular & certainly
most provocative fairy tale in the Western world.’
Zipes has written extensively about variations in tale,
argued that, despite differences across countries, the
tale remains at heart patriarchal, politically
conservative, reflecting & upholding social values
the most powerful elites.
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24. Different Versions
All versions contain common key features: girl in red
hood (cap), grandmother, wolf; repeated phrases like
‘What big ears you have.’
But different versions differ in tone & outcome:
1st version : does not end happily ever after but with
warning that there are various kinds of wolves. Little
Riding Hood learns her lesson the hard way, and the story
ends with her death. The story can be enjoyed as a
straightforward tale, but its symbolism suggests other
meanings.*
*Its original adult audience were aware of the French slang of that time, which
suggests that a girl who lost her virginity was said to ‘have seen the wolf’ & the word
‘chaperon’ (cap or hood) meant then in French what its derivative ‘chaperone’ means in
English – someone or something that guards a girl’s sexual virtue & reputation.
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25. 2nd Version: Grimms’ story, danger has
changed from sex to disobedience. Little Red Cap is
explicitly warned about dangers of straying from the
path but ignores this caution, thereby placing herself
& grandmother in danger.
The moral is subtler in the 2nd version. Rather than
disobedience bringing death & dishonor, obedience
pays & brings its own rewards.
The Grimm brothers cleaned the tale of much of its
sexual & cannibalistic overtones/
They emphasised the importance of obedience
rather than sexual propriety, although obviously the
are connected.
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26. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ today
& Feminist Approach
‘Little Red Riding Hood’ remains a popular story to this
one of the most analyzed & studied of all fairy tales,
by feminist & psychoanalytical critics.
It has been re-written extensively by women.
Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ (1979) : the heroine
reclaims control of her sexuality & chooses to become a wolf
herself.
Francesca Lia Block in ‘Wolf’ : Little Red Riding Hood is a
victim who shoots dead her attacker, her mother’s boyfriend,
her grandmother’s house.
Study Roald Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood & The Wolf in
Poems
27. Feminist Critics
According to feminist critics, traditional versions of this
tale present a reactionary view of women as passive &
helpless objects of both male lust & male fantasies of
rescue.
Drawing attention to hidden messages of tales, feminist
writers tried to reclaim fairy tale as a particular form of
women’s culture, where stories were passed from
to woman until men turned the oral into literary & added
moralistic ending.
Catherine Orenstein claims that ‘Little Red Riding
has another history, that it was a story told between
women & that original versions of the story showed
heroine outwitting the wolf.
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28. Psychoanalysis
Another prominent way of analyzing ‘Little Red
Riding Hood’ in 20th & 21st c has been through
psychology & psychoanalysis.
Bruno Bettelheim, viewed ‘Little Red Riding
Hood’ as a symbolic representation of
unconscious desires, & emphasized the story’s
sexual overtones.
He draws parallels between girl & grandmother
being cut out of the wolf, & pregnancy & birth,
again suggesting the innately sexual nature of
the story to the child.
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29. Psychoanalysis
He believed the tale enabled the child’s
anxieties about sex & death to be worked through
& a resolution to be found.
The fact that the wolf & Little Red Riding Hood end up
in bed together before she is devoured is central to
Bettelheim’s thesis that children are fascinated by
both death & sex, and are in the grip of desires they
do not understand yet which scare them.
Compare different versions of Little Red Riding Hood
in Study Guide & 100 poems
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30. Good Bye to Fairy Tales &
Thank you very Much
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Sleeping Beauty
Cinderella
