Folktales were originally oral stories told by adults for entertainment, but over time were cleaned up and adapted for children as they were written down. Collectors like the Brothers Grimm edited tales to remove inappropriate content and emphasize clear moral lessons. While this made the stories suitable for children, it altered them from their original form as crude adult entertainment.

1. Class 2
Folktales and Folktale Tellers

2. The tales are from the oral tradition; they were told as
entertainment to all ages.
They exist in multiple versions; they vary in details. The Grimm
brothers did not invent the tales. They collected and sold them.
They told by well-known folktale tellers of the time. They were
earthy, bawdy, violent and fun.
Everything is clear; characters are good or evil. The good ones
usually come to glory in the end. Evil is usually punished.
Characters do not usually have names or have generic names.
There is strong, economical plot structure; everything moves
towards the end. Nothing is in them without a purpose
The stories, even those with animals have no teaching purpose.
There is no overt moral to the story.

3. Folktales were told by adults and to adults for purposes of entertainment for
centuries. It is only in the last few centuries that the stories have been retired
from the arena of adult entertainment and carefully culled to provide stories for
children. The original tales were bawdy, violent, lewd and profane. They were
oral tales, told after long days of work to peasants as they worked, sat around the
fire, or perhaps whiled away long winter days. Because they were oral tales, they
existed in many versions and often varied, according to the tastes of the
storytellers.
In the late 1600s, as scholars began to record traditional literature and the tales
began to change, to be cleaned up and or eliminated, if the content was too racy
or considered to be too frightening or disgusting for children. What remains are
the versions of the tales that, while they entertain, also contain a strong moralistic
tone, with reward of good and punishment of evil. The violence did not
necessarily abate as it served to reinforce the notion that evil will be punished,
and some of the more frightening aspects remained as well in order to show
children that perseverance and courage could win the day.

4. Some of the elements of the original folktales that have been deleted:
• In The Juniper Tree, the stepmother so detests her stepson that
she chops off his head, allows her own daughter to believe that
she has knocked it off and then cooks him in a stew, which she
feeds to her husband, the boy’s father.
•In Rapunzel, the girl romped indiscriminately with her lover, not
knowing the consequences and was severely punished when her
pregnancy started to show.
•Three Army Surgeons cut out their eyes, hearts and hands to
prove that they could reattach them by means of a magic salve.
When the cat stole their body pats, they made do by cutting off
the hand of a criminal, taking the heart of the pig and the eyes of
the cat and mending themselves with these parts.

5. A willful child is stricken ill by God and dies. Her arm keeps
rising out of the grave until the mother strikes it with a rod
and she is finally at rest.
A false bride in The Goose Maid is “stripped stark naked
and thrown into a barrel that is studded inside with
pointed nails, and two white horses should be harnessed
to it, which will drag her along one street after another
until she is dead.”
In Little Red Riding Hood, the heroine escapes the wolf by
telling that she has to relieve herself (to defecate) before
the wolf eats her because she would not taste good. Then
the wolf tries to hurry her by asking if she is making a load.

6. Folktales for children
As the folktales became written (printing press:
1440, although of course not for folktales until the
end of the 1600s) they moved from the realm of
adult entertainment to tales for children.
Naturally, the earthier ones became lost. That
continues today. One of the versions of
Cinderella, Donkeyskin, a tale that has Cinderella
being wooed by her father, has come back as it
exists in many versions in different cultures but
many of the cruder, more violent and harsher
tales have disappeared from the children’s
literature tradition.

7. Charles Perrault

8. Charles Perrault
was born in 16 28 to a wealthy family in Paris, France. He was
always interested in learning. He went to the best schools,
where he was always top of his class. When he grew up,
Charles Perrault got married and became a lawyer. He also
worked with his brother collecting taxes for the city of
Paris.
When his wife died he gave up his public life to educate
their children. He was almost 70 years old when he
published his first fairy tales in 1697. Many of these stories
were already well-known to people even in Charles
Perrault’s time, but they had never been written down.
They were instant hits, and it is from Perrault Fairy Tales
that we get the most famous versions of some classic
stories. Charles Perrault died five years later, in Paris in the
year 1703.

9. The Master Cat or Puss in
Boots

10. Puss in Boots
After we summarize the story, let’s list the
elements that would appeal to adults:
And then the elements that would appeal to
children?
What is the difference? Why did Puss in Boots
survive to be added to the folklore for
children?

11. Bluebeard
What are the major
themes in this tale?
How do they contrast
with Puss in Boots?
Why did this tale
not survive in the
collections of folktales
for children?

12. The Brothers Grimm

13. The Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob(1785–1863) and Wilhelm
Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics,
linguists, cultural researchers who together
specialized in collecting and publishing folklore
during the 19th century. They were among the
best-known storytellers of folk tales, and
popularized stories such as "Aschenputtel”,
"Hansel and Gretel”, "Rapunzel",
"Rumpelstiltskin”, and "Snow White”. Their first
collection of folk tales, Children's and Household
Tales, was published in 1812.

14. Grimms continued
Although the brothers gained a reputation for
collecting tales from peasants, many tales came
from middle-class or aristocratic acquaintances.
Wilhelm's wife Dortchen Wild and her family, with
their nursery maid, told the brothers some of the
more well-known tales, such as "Hansel and
Gretel" and "Sleeping Beauty”. Wilhelm polished
the language to make it more enticing to a
bourgeois audience, eliminated sexual elements
and added Christian elements. After 1819 he began
writing for children (children were not initially
considered the primary audience), adding entirely
new tales or adding new elements that often had
strong teaching elements.

15. Making the tales less
grim
Grimms’ stories include scenes of violence that
have since been sanitized. For example, in the
Grimms' original version of "Snow White" the
Queen is Little Snow White's mother, not her
stepmother, yet even so she orders her
Huntsman to kill Snow White (her biological
daughter) and bring home the child's lungs
and liver so that she can eat them. The story
ends with the Queen mother dancing at Snow
White's wedding wearing a pair of red-hot iron
shoes that kill her.

16. More changes
• Some critics say that the deaths of the brothers'
father and grandfather are the reason for the
Grimms' tendency to idealize and excuse fathers,
as well as the predominance of female villains in
the tales such as the wicked stepmother, and
stepsisters in "Cinderella", but this disregards the
fact that they were collectors, not authors of the
tales. Autobiographical elements exist in some of
the tales, and according to Jack Zipes the work
may have been a quest to replace the family life
lost after their father died.

17. The Frog Prince

18. Mother Holle

19. Exercise
• The Grimm brothers chose tales that had
strong teaching elements.
• List the lessons they felt children might learn
from The Frog King.
• List the lesson they might learn from Mother
Holle

20. Homework
• Once Upon a Time Beyond Disney
(handout)
• "Beauty and the Beast"
367-373