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A Short History of Fairy Tales

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features European folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarves, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, mermaids, trolls or witches, and usually magic or enchantments to boot! Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including fables or those of a religious nature. In cultures where demons and witches are perceived as real, fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However unlike legends and epics, they usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and actual places, people, and events; they take place ‘once upon a time’ rather than in actual times.

The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace because only the literary forms survive. Still, the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognized as a genre. The name ‘fairy tale’ was first ascribed to them by Madame d’Aulnoy in the late seventeenth century. Many of today’s fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared, with variations, in multiple cultures around the world. Two theories of origins have attempted to explain the common elements in fairy tales across continents. One is that a single point of origin generated any given tale, which then spread over the centuries; the other is that such fairy tales stem from common human experience and therefore can appear separately in many different origins.

Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or ‘wonder tale’ to refer to the genre over fairy tale, a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 edition of The Folktale. He described it as ‘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 marvellous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses.’ The genre was first marked out by writers of the Renaissance, such as Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, and stabilized through the works of later collectors such as Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page however.

Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure. Many fairy tales appear in written literature throughout different cultures, as in The Golden Ass, which includes Cupid and Psyche (Roman, 100–200 AD), or the Panchatantra (India 3rd century BCE). However it is still unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The fairy tale itself became popular among the French nobility and among the tales told in that time were the ones of La Fontaine and the Contes of Charles Perrault (1697), who fixed the forms of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Cinderella.’ Perrault largely laid the foundations for this new literary genre, with some of the best of his works being ‘Puss in Boots’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’

The first collectors to attempt to preserve not only the plot and characters of the tale, but also the style in which they were told were the Brothers Grimm, who collected German fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told by Germans, because the tales derived from Perrault and they concluded they were thereby French and not German tales. An oral version of ‘Bluebeard’ was thus rejected, and the tale of ‘Little Briar Rose’, clearly related to Perrault’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ was included only because Jacob Grimm convinced his brother that the figure of Brynhildr, from much earlier Norse mythology, proved that the sleeping princess was authentically German folklore. The Grimm Brothers remain some of the best-known story-tellers of folk tales though, popularising ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘Rapunzel’, ‘Rumplestiltskin’ and ‘Snow White’.

The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it (ignoring cross-cultural references). Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev (first published in 1866), the Norwegian Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and the Englishman, Joseph Jacobs (first published in 1890). Simultaneously to such developments, writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and George MacDonald continued the tradition of literary fairy tales. Andersen’s work sometimes drew on old folktales, but more often deployed fairytale motifs and plots in new tales; for instance in ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ Fairy tales are still written in the present day, attesting to their enormous popularity and cultural longevity. We hope the current reader, whether old or young – enjoys this book.