Fairy Tales Kinder und Hausmrchen

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Jakob Grimm (1785-1863) and his brother Wilhelm
  (1786-1859) wrote the best-known book in the
  German language.
• Romanticism project of discovering the true
  spirit of the German nation, which resided in the
  language and literature of the people.
• Approx. 1795-1830. Age of Goethe and Napoleon.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Jakob and Wilhelms father died young, thrusting
  the family into poverty.
• Jakob and Wilhelm, the two oldest children,
  became overachievers to provide for their family.
• Study of law in Marburg brought them to Friedrich
  Karl von Savigny, professor of law.
• Savigny an important Romantic, believed in the
  unification of Germany. Taught Grimms to seek
  German culture in the history of its laws.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Savigny introduced the Grimms to the older circle
  of romantic poets in the area.
• 1806 Jakob decides to try to make a living as a
  scholar of philology and literature instead of
  law.
• 1806-1807 a job in the War Commission.
• 1808 Jakob and later Wilhelm become Royal
  Librarians in Kassel. First scholarly
  publications.
• 1829 they resigned their positions in the library
  due to disgust with the local politics.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• 1830 the Grimms accept positions at the
  University of Göttingen. Gifted and stimulating
  teachers.
• 1837 they and five colleagues protest the
  restoration of absolutistic rule and are
  dismissed.
• Grimms blacklisted because of their liberal
  views.
• 1841 Savigny and Bettina von Arnim get them
  positions in the University of Berlin.
• 1848 Grimms representatives in the National
  Assembly in Frankfurt. Failed Revolution.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Jakob retires from politics and teaching (but not
  from research and writing).
• The brothers spend their final years working on a
  complete historical dictionary of the modern
  German language. They make it to the word
  Frucht (fruit).
• The project is assumed by other scholars upon
  their deaths it is completed only in 1960, with
  teams from both East and West Germany working in
  collaboration.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• In 1806, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano
  publish a collection of German folk songs, Des
  Knaben Wunderhorn, which inspires the young Grimm
  brothers.
• Through their mutual friend Savigny, the Grimms
  are asked to collect tales for a third volume of
  The Boys Wonder Horn.
• Grimms see the project as a scholarly
  contribution to discovering and recording German
  cultural artifacts. Early form of cultural
  anthropology.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Contrary to the legend, they did not travel the
  countryside in search of the tales.
• Most tales told to them by family friends, mostly
  upper-middle-class women, some with French
  backgrounds.
• Wilhelm married one of their primary sources,
  Dörtchen Wild. Wilhelm was the primary editor
  for the later editions of this book.
• Two brothers collaborated on most of their
  projects, always on extremely close terms with
  each other.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• They send Brentano a copy of their tales, but he
  donates the manuscript to a monastery (discovered
  only in the 20th century).
• When Volume III of Des Knaben Wunderhorn did not
  materialize, they published an edition of tales
  with many scholarly footnotes (1812).
• Unexpectedly, the book was a popular success, and
  the brothers prepared Vol. II (1814).

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• In their lifetime, Kinder- and Hausmärchen
  (Childrens and Household Tales) sees seven
  editions.
• After they realize the popularity of the book,
  they delete the scholarly commentary and sought
  to improve the tales for children less moral
  ambiguity in later editions.
• Their work inspired collections of fairy tales in
  other national cultures in 19th century.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
Important Dates in Fairy Tale Studies 1697 Charle
s Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du temps passe,
(Mother Goose Tales) is published. 1812 1814
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm publish volumes I and II
of Kinder und Hausmärchen (Childrens and
Household Tales). 1835 Hans Christian Andersen
publishes Fairy Tales Told for Children, some
based on traditional folklore, including The
Wild Swans and The Princess on the Pea.
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
1845 Norwegian Folk Tales, collected by Peter
Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe appears,
includes East of the Sun and West of the Moon
and The Three Billy Goats Gruff. 1870-1910 The
Golden Age of Illustration for Childrens books
Walter Crane, Gustave Dore, Arthur Rackham,
Warwick Goble, et al. 1866 Aleksandr Afanasyev
collects and publishes his first volume of
Russian fairy tales.
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
1890 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The
Sleeping Beauty premieres in St.
Petersburg. 1893 Engelbert Humperdinck's opera,
Hansel und Gretel premieres. 1937 Walt Disney's
first feature length animated film is released,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 1945 The
premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet,
Cinderella.
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
1961 Stith Thompson expands and translates
Finnish scholar Antti Aarne's The Types of the
Folktale (1910) into English in 1961. The
Aarne-Thompson Classification System becomes the
most widely used for classifying Indo-European
folktales, cataloging some 2,500 basic plots and
over 10,000 motifs.
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• In addition to fairy tales, the Grimm brothers
  were the first scholars to do groundbreaking work
  in a number of areas.
• In fact, they were two of the first professors of
  German literature ever, and helped shape the
  academic discipline as it is know today.
• Most of the topics discussed in the classEddic
  poetry and Norse mythology, Germanic languages,
  Germanic history and legendswere first studied
  by the Grimm brothers!

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The Fathers of Folkloreand of Germanic Philology

• Grimm Brothers selected publications
• 1813-1816 Collections of Essays on Germanic
  folklore
• 1815 Lays of the Elder Edda, edited volume
• 1816 German Legends
• 1819-37 German Grammar (Jacob)
• 1821 On German Runes (Wilhelm)
• 1829 The German Heroic Legend (Wilhelm)
• 1835-54 German Mythology (Jacob)
• 1848-53 History of the German Language (Jacob)
• 1852-1960 Historical Dictionary of the German
  Language

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• What is a fairy tale?
• Short stories in prose, originally for adults,
  but commonly for children nowadays.
• A peasant perspective, quite unlike the
  aristocratic perspective in heroic legends.
• Unlike legends, which deal with ostensibly
  historical events, fairy tales have vaguely
  medieval, indeterminate time and place.
• Plots and images common in different lands.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Fairy tales typically have no character
  development strong contrasts between good and
  bad characters also typical.
• Use of magic and magical items is common.
• Familial setting is typical, often dysfunctional
  or incomplete nuclear family setting.
• Family tensions tend to play important roles.
• Strong reliance on stock characters and very
  well-known motifs and plot structures.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• A few common fairy tale motifs
• Triumph of the youngest, laziest, dumbest,
  weakest, most oppressed, least promising, etc.
• Inherently good and bad characters, strong moral
  contrasts
• Triadic structure, circuitous journey with
  reversal of fortune
• (Familial) adversaries establishment of
  improved and secure familial structure at end
• Helping figures, with magical objects and
  creatures
• Rewards in the form of honor, wealth, spouse,
  power
• Talking animals animate world, with enchanted
  cosmos
• Happy end, poetic justice, reward and retribution

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• What are fairy tales not?
• Morally unambiguous tales a product of the modern
  concern for proper child-rearing.
• Original versions of many fairy tales contain a
  lot of sex and violence.
• Protagonists can be active or passive, male or
  female, successful or unsuccessful.
• Tales may be innocent or cynical in tone.
• Difficult to generalize about fairy tales

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Apparently simply but frustratingly complex
• Fairy tales are interpreted in different ways.
• Origins of fairy tales extremely difficult to
  trace, since motifs are common in Europe and even
  beyondCinderella versions everywhere!
• Psychology of fairy tales a tortured subject
• Power and class relations, Freudian sexual
  fantasies, Jungian archetypes, cultural images,
  Christian and pagan ideologies and rites,
  collective class consciousness, etc.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
Timeless psychological Truth? In a fairy tale,
internal processes are externalized and become
comprehensible as represented by the figures of
the story and its events. Bruno
Bettelheim Culturally Determined Social
Fantasies? Folktales are historical documents,
each colored by the mental life and culture of
its epoch. after Robert Darnton
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Grimm brothers edited their fairy tales, with
  increasing changes in later editions.
• Violent subject matter was actually increased in
  many fairy tales (unlike U.S. versions!).
• Certain conditions and relationships, on the
  other hand, were often carefully edited to remove
  inappropriate material
• Premarital sex incest pregnancy

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Rapunzel

• Husband and wife have been wishing for a child
  for years, finally the wife gets pregnant.
• They live in a house which borders a beautiful
  garden that belongs to a sorceress.
• One day the wife stands at the window and beholds
  some rapunzel-lettuce that grows there and
  develops a craving for it.
• Craving the rapunzel-lettuce, the wife falls ill
  with grief, so that the husband has to enter the
  garden to steal some of it.
• Once the wife has tasted the lettuce, her craving
  increases, so the husband has to climb the wall
  once more.

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Rapunzel

• This time, the sorceress catches him. He explains
  his wifes condition and the sorceress allows him
  to take as much lettuce as he wants if she can
  have the child!
• In fear, the man complies.
• The child grows up to be a beautiful girl, named
  Rapunzel
• Rapunzel is taken way to a tower in the forest
  when she is twelve years old (cite 43).
• A few years later, a young prince happens by and
  watches the sorceress climbing the tower with the
  help of Rapunzels hair
• At night, he calls Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down
  your hair for me!

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Rapunzel
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Rapunzel

• Rapunzel is shocked to find the first man shed
  ever laid eyes on in her bedroom at night!!!
• The prince proposes to her and she sighs, YES!
• They make a plan to rescue Rapunzel The price
  will bring a skein of silk and she will weave it
  into a ladder, then they would ride away.
• But Rapunzel blurts out the secret and the
  sorceress (mother Gothel) takes away the girl to
  a far off land.
• She lays an ambush for the prince and tells him
  that he will never see Rapunzel again (cite 45)
• Prince jumps off the tower in despair, is blinded
  from landing in thorns, lives in misery for years.

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Rapunzel

• Happy ending On his ramblings, he meets Rapunzel
  by chance. As she weeps for joy, her tears fall
  into the princes eyes and his eyesight returns.
• They return to the princes kingdom and live
  happily ever after.
• The Grimms added the marriage proposal to the
  original version, which dealt (obviously) with
  premarital sex.
• In the original version, it is her pregnancy that
  gives her away to the sorceress.
• The twins are retained, but the context has been
  changed to obscure their indelicate behavoir.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich (2-5)
• A good example of differences in versions of a
  fairy tale!
• English version, the
• princess kisses the frog
• who turns into a prince,
• and they live happily
• ever after

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• The German version presents more violence!
• The Frog wants more attention from the princess
  than just a kiss (2).
• The Frog follows the princess everywhere, even
  into her bed! (Freudian projection?!)
• The girl is afraid of the Frog, so she dashes him
  against the wall (3).

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen
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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• When he fell to the ground, he was no longer a
  frog but a prince with kind and beautiful eyes
  (3).
• Her father gives his blessing, they become dear
  companions and get married.
• In the manuscript version The frog falls down
  into her bed and lies there as a handsome young
  prince, and the kings daughter lies down next to
  him.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Grimms collection contains different genres
  realistic folk tales humorous tall tales
• magical fairy tales fables and parables
• Folklore straddles the line between adult and
  childrens literature.
• Original context for folklore disappeared in
  the 19th century oral literature was altered
  when transformed into written literature.
• Censorship at every stage of transformation.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Interpretation of fairy tales is complicated
• Many different versions of fairy tales.
• No one original authoritative text.
• Details of versions are especially arbitrary.
• 4. Supernatural events invite interpretation.
• 5. Simple tales encourage allegorical readings.
• 6. Many interpretations tell us more about the
  anxieties of the interpreter!

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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap 101-105.

• Tame American version is well known.
• In a French version, the heroine unwittingly
  consumes the flesh and blood of her grandmother,
  is called a slut by her cat, and performs a slow
  striptease for the wolf.
• In an Italian version, the wolf kills the mother,
  makes a latch cord of her tendons, a meat pie of
  her flesh, and wine from her blood.

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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap 101-105.

• The German Version is slightly different
• Cake and Wine for grandmother.
• Wicked Wolf tempts the juicy morsel with
  flowers and birds to distract her.
• Wolf gobbles up the grandmother.
• Big ears, big hands, terribly big mouth
• Wolf gobbles up Little Red Cap and snores.
• A huntsman happens by, hears odd snoring

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Fairy Tales Little Red Cap
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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap
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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap

• The Huntsman wants to shoot the sleeping wolf,
  but fears harming grandmother.
• He cuts open the belly, and out jump Little Red
  Cap and grandmother.
• They fill his belly with large stones he leaps
  up and falls down dead.

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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap

• Wilhelm Grimm added a short epilogue
• Huntsman gets the fur of the wolf.
• Grandmother gets the cake and wine.
• Little Red Cap gets an admonition never to stray
  from the path her mother has given her.
• This nice little fairy tale has led to some
  surprising interpretations.
• Some actual interpretations

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Fairy TalesLittle Red Cap

• Tale records contact with actual werewolves.
• Little Red Cap represents the burning sun setting
  forth on her westward journey home.
• Wolf represents male pregnancy envy, killed
  ironically by stones, symbols of his sterility.
• Wolf is a projection of Little Red Caps pubertal
  sexual desire.
• A parable of rape and female helplessness.
• Usual reading Girls should be wary of wolves.

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Fairy TalesThe Maiden Without Hands 118-123

• This story is not well known in the U.S.
• A Miller falls into poverty, tricked by the devil
  into trading his daughter for wealth.
• The sinless girl is too clean for the devil.
• The father chops off her hands so that the devil
  can take her she obediently complies.
• The girl takes her hands and leaves home.
• An angel guides her to a garden, she eats
  forbidden pears.

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Fairy TalesThe Maiden Without Hands

• The King notices a missing pear, decides to
  discover the reason.
• The King gives her silver hands, marries her.
• She gives birth but the devil tries to get the
  Kings mother to kill her and the child.
• Kings Mother kills a deer instead.
• She leaves with her child, lives in the forest.
• King learns of devils deception, searches far
  and wide for the girl.

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Fairy TalesThe Maiden Without Hands

• After 7 years, the King finds his wife and child
  they are reunited and return home to live happily
  ever after
• Different versions collected by Grimms.
• Devil substituted for earlier introduction, in
  which Father wanted to marry the daughter.
• Her refusal led him to cut off her hands and her
  breasts. That is why she did not want to stay
  with him, despite all his money

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Fairy TalesThe Maiden Without Hands

• Wilhelm Grimm was able to erase the theme of
  incest by reintroducing the devil.
• Incest also appears in other tales, such as
  Thousandfurs.
• Much more common are fairy tales with strong
  suggestions of Oedipal and Electra complexes
  the child desires the parent of the opposite sex.
• Grimms also actively erased such desire.

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Fairy TalesKinder- und Hausmärchen

• Electra Complex places a girl in competition with
  her mother for her fathers affections.
• Most of the Stepmothers in the tales were
  originally mothers.
• Texts changed to avoid awkward images.

Evil Stepmother / Witch
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Fairy Tales Kinder- und Hausmärchen

• According to one psychological interpretation,
  the mother is split into two different images, a
  good, absent mother, and an evil stepmother.
• Generally dysfunctional families of fairy tales
  also reflect Freudian Family Romance.
• Children imagine themselves misplaced in the
  wrong family their true home is much nicer,
  wealthier, more respected
• Orphan and foundling tales reflect such wishes

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Fairy TalesThe Juniper Tree 171-179.

• Some fairy tales do not fall into any neat
  categories, such as The Juniper Tree
• Dysfunctional family, evil stepmother, child
  abuse, infanticide, cannibalism, transformations,
  magical animals, murder.
• The good mother gives birth to a beautiful boy,
  then dies.
• She is buried beneath the Juniper tree.
• Next wife has a good daughter, but she mistreats
  the boy and favors her own girl.

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Fairy TalesThe Juniper Tree

• The mother kills the boy, blames the girl, cooks
  him in a stew that only the father eats.
• The girl takes her brothers bones to the Juniper
  Tree, which transforms them into a talking bird.
• The singing bird gets a golden chain, a pair of
  shoes, and a heavy millstone.
• Father hears the bird, gets the golden chain.
• Marlene hears the bird, gets the red shoes.

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Fairy TalesThe Juniper Tree
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Fairy TalesThe Juniper Tree

• Mother hears the bird, gets the millstone!
• The little boy returns to his usual shape.
• Despite his wifes death, the father is now very
  happy, and the three of them go back inside, sit
  down at the table, and eat.
• If you have a good interpretation of this fairy
  tale, I would love to hear it!

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Fairy TalesThe Three Spinners 55-57

• One school of interpretation stresses the
  cultural background of fairy tales.
• Russian tales have more magic, French tales more
  worldly and sophisticated, less nobility, German
  versions emphasize value of work.
• Wilhelm greatly expanded Snow Whites duties for
  the dwarfs, for example (199).
• A notable reversal is The Three Spinners.
• This is more of a folk tale than a fairy tale.

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Fairy TalesThe Three Spinners

• A lazy girl refuses to do any spinning, so her
  mother beats her.
• Queen hears her cries her mother lies, telling
  her that her daughter wont stop spinning!
• Queen takes the girl home, promises the
  industrious girl her son in marriage if she
  spins all the flax.
• Girl sits and cries typical response for
  heroines in tales by the brothers Grimm.

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Fairy TalesThe Three Spinners

• Girl begs three odd looking women for help one
  had a flat foot, one a protruding lower lip, one
  an enormous thumb.
• They offer to help, if she invites them to her
  wedding, is not ashamed of them, calls them
  cousins, and eats with them.
• They spin the flax to yarn in no time.
• The prince is delighted to get such a skillful
  and industrious girl as his wife

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Fairy TalesThe Three Spinners

• The wedding comes, and the girl is careful to
  invite the three old women.
• The prince finds them ghastly asks how they
  came to be so disfigured
• From treading, from licking, from twisting
• Prince swears that his beautiful wife will never
  be allowed to spin flax any more!
• Triumph of the laziest girl!
• Realistic setting, reversal of usual order.