Chronology
1547. Noël du Fail, seigneur de La Hérissaye. Propos rustiques de maistre Léon Ladulfi, champenois.
1550-1553. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The Pleasant Nights.
1636. Giambattista Basile. The Pentamerone.
*1697. Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness D’Alnoy. Les Contes des Fées (Tales of Fairies).
*1697. Charles Perrault. Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l’Oye (Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, Tales of Mother Goose).
*1704-1717. Antoine Galland’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights: Arab Tales Translated into French (in 12 volumes) appears.
1740. Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. La Jeune Américaine, et les Contes Marins (Beauty and the Beast in its original book-long form).
1746. Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Abridged version of La Belle et la Bête. Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves. (English trans. 1757).
1812, 1814, 1825. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Children’s and Household Tales.
1825-1858. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Klein Ausgabe. (Small Edition) (50 stories) intended for children (10 printings).
1837 & 1838. Hans Christian Andersen. Fairy Tales and Fairy Tales Told for Children.
Definition of folktales and fairy tales:
A folktale is any tale that has come down through oral tradition. Stith Thompson, in his 1977 edition of The Folktale, writes that a fairy tale is “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).
Orality and Tales
“When we confine our view to our own occidental world, we see that, for at least three or four thousand years, and doubtless for ages before, the art of the story-teller has been cultivated in every rank of society” (Thompson, Folktales 26).
“[I]t is impossible to make a complete separation of the written and oral traditions. Often, indeed, their interrelation is so close and so inextricable as to present one of the most baffling problems the folklore scholar encounters. They differ somewhat in their behavior, it is true, but they are alike in their disregard of originality of plot and of pride of authorship” (Thompson, Folktales 27).
“[T]ales of the long ago … supply the simple man with all he knows of the history of his folk” (Thompson, Folktales 27).
“[B]oth the oral and the literary forms of the fairy tale are grounded in history: they emanate from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer this concrete terror through metaphors” (Zipes Dreams 1).
Folk tales and fairy tales have always been dependent on customs, rituals, and values in the particular socialization process of a social system (Zipes, Art 67).
“The oral tale had flourished in villages and nurseries as part of the popular discourse. It had even seen literary light in the mass-marketed ‘blue books’ (chapbooks 17th to mid-19th C.) distributed by peddlers for consummation by peasants and the lower classes.” (Zipes, Art 3)
“As Italo Calvino has written, the folktale ‘tends to absorb something of the place where it is narrated – a landscape, a custom, a moral outlook, or else merely a very faint accent or flavour of that locality’ (Yolen 5).
“[Children] learn behavioral and associational patterns, value systems, and how to predict the consequences of specific acts or circumstances” (Lieberman 384).
“Religion also has played a mighty role everywhere in the encouragement of the narrative art, for the religious mind has tried to understand beginnings and for ages has told stories of ancient days and sacred beings” (Thompson 27).
“Tales that are set down and then transported through time on the pages of a book have a slightly different character from those orally transmitted. Often events glossed over or forgotten by the oral tellers are tidied up, made cleaner, elaborated upon, fixed to serve a specific purpose” (Yolen 8).
“[T]he Grimms’ tales, though ingenious and perhaps socially relevant in their own time contained sexist and racist attitudes and served a socialization process which placed great emphasis on passivity, industry and self-sacrifice for girls, and on activity, competition, and accumulation of wealth for boys” (Zipes, Art 46)
Though the Grimms imbued the tales with a heavy dose of Christian morality, the Protestant work ethic, and patriarchalism, they also wanted the tales to depict social injustices and possibilities for self-determination” (Zipes, Dreams 79).
“The beauty contest is a constant and primary device in many of the stories … Beautiful girls are never ignored; they may be oppressed at first … but ultimately they are chosen for reward… the focus [is] on beauty as a girl’s most valuable asset, perhaps her only valuable asset “(Lieberman 385).
“[S]ince the heroines are chosen for their beauty … not for anything they do … they seem to exist passively until they are seen by the hero, or described to him. They wait, and are chosen, and are rewarded […] Marriage is the fulcrum and major event of nearly every fairy tale; it is the reward for girls… Marriage is associated with getting rich … Beauty has an obvious commercial advantage” (Lieberman 386).
Bibliography
Lieberman, Marcia. “‘Someday my Prince will come”: Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale” College English 34.3. (Dec. 1972): 383-395.
Tolkien. J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories.” Web.
Thompson, Stith. “The Universality of the Folktale.” Web.
_____. The Folktale. 1978.
Yolen, Jane. Favorite Folktales from around the World. 1986.
Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. 1983.
_____ Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture. 1991.
_____ When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Traditions. 1999.