Grimm's Fairy Tales and Folklore

Grimm's Fairy Tales

• The term "fairy tale" originated with French writer Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century.
• Charles Perrault's fairy tale retellings are more famous than d'Aulnoy's.
• William Thoms, an English antiquarian, created the term "folklore" in 1846 in a letter to The Athenaeum magazine.
• Welsh Mabinogion tales from the 14th century had a spiritual or religious purpose.
• Traditional fairy tales lack real people, places, or events, starting with "once upon a time..."
• In Fairy tales the reader anticipates magic, reward, revenge, random characters, and happy endings.
• Fairy tales are written in plain language with direct imagery, avoiding poetic references and realism.

Timeline of Folklore

• c. 1350-1410: Oral Welsh tales are compiled in the Mobinogion, Britain's earliest prose literature.
• 1697: Charles Perrault, a French author, wrote Tales of Mother Goose, a collection of rewritten and original stories.
• 1782-87: Johann Karl August Musaus, a German author, published a collection of satirical folk series.
• 1835-49: Elias Lonnrot's epic poem Kalevala celebrates Finnish folklore.
• 1841: Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe released Norwegian Folktales.
• 1979: Angela Carter's novel The Bloody Chamber challenges traditional folktale portrayals of women.
• "Grimm's Fairytale" focuses on folklore collections blending oral history, fairy tales, and popular briefs from the Middle Ages.
• The Brothers Grimm aimed to preserve the spirit of the people by documenting fairy tales.
• Interest in folklore rose due to nationalism and cultural pride, inspiring the Grimms' collection.
• The Grimms' Children's and Household Tales is a significant and widely translated body of European stories.
• W.H. Auden considered Grimms' tales foundational to Western culture.
• The Brothers Grimm collected their stories directly from people, including written submissions like "The Juniper Tree" from painter Philip Otto Runge.
• The Grimms' first edition was for adults; revisions to sanitize the stories for children came after Edgar Taylor's 1823 English translation.
• Early versions of stories like "Rapunzel" were altered to remove mature themes like pregnancy.
• In the Grimms' version of Cinderella, Cinderella's helper-birds peck out her stepsisters' eyes, unlike Perrault's version where Cinderella forgives her stepsisters.
• The Grimms' tales have maintained popularity, interpretations, and adaptations across various media due to their romantic depiction of inextinguishable truths.

Archetypal Folklore Characters

• The Magical Helper: In the Grimms' Cinderella, a hazel tree at the mother's grave provides Cinderella's outfit instead of a fairy godmother.
• The Wicked Stepmother: Early Grimm versions featured mothers as villains; later versions changed them to stepmothers to preserve motherhood's sanctity.
• The Witch or Sorceress: This archetype leads to shifts in plot and sparks magical events that are often terrible.
• The Trickster: This archetype creates challenges to the natural order.
• The Transformed Animal: Characters transform into animals and may regain human form.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

• Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), known as the Brothers Grimm, were German academics, linguists, and cultural researchers.
• They were raised in Hanau, Hesse, and educated at the University of Marburg due to their aunt's support.
• The Grimms developed a folk story collecting methodology that is the basis for folklore studies.
• The Grimms were philologists and worked on a 32-volume German dictionary that remained unfinished.

Pride and Prejudice

• The novel of manners emerged in England, moving away from Romanticism's excesses by focusing on beliefs, manners, and social structures.
• These novels were often centered on women, both as authors and main characters, leading to their frequent trivialization.
• Jane Austen's novels exemplify this genre, satirizing English country gentry and Gothic Romanticism.
• Austen’s focuses on the vulgarities of the English upper class, the importance of the rank, the stigma of the social inferiority, and the system of the patronage

Timeline of Novels

• 1740: Samuel Richardson's Pamela is the story of a servant rising in social status and is considered an early novel of manners.
• 1847: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre critiques class divisions, prejudice, and societal expectations for women.
• 1847-48: William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair satirizes duplicity and dishonesty via Becky Sharp.
• 1905: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth depicts social, economic, and moral constraints on women in America.
• Pride and Prejudice follows the Bennet sisters seeking eligible bachelors, marriage being crucial for women's social status.
• Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and one of five daughters to Mr. Bennet, a country gentleman, and his vulgar wife.
• Elizabeth dislikes Fitzwilliam Darcy due to his arrogance, contrasting with Bingley, who likes Elizabeth's sister Jane.
• Lydia elopes with George Wickham, is saved by Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet learns from her errors and matures.
• Darcy overcomes his pride, becoming worthy of Elizabeth.
• Austen uses wit and irony to show that good breeding doesn't always mean good manners, exploring society's manners and morals.

Jane Austen

• Jane Austen (1775-1817) was the daughter of a country person born in Stevenson rectory, Hampshire, England, the seventh of eight children.
• She read extensively from her father's library and began writing early, producing an early version of Pride and Prejudice called First Impressions (1796-1797). -In 1800, her father retired and the family moved to Bath, where Austen was unhappy. In 1809, she moved to Chawton, Hampshire, writing daily and observing genteel life.
• She wrote about marriage but never married, although she received a proposal.