The tales and their legacy
Clever Maids by Valerie Paradiz
The famous fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm - stories like Snow White , Red Riding Hood , and Rumplestiltskin - are know to millions of people around the world and are deeply embedded in the collective psyche. In this charming account, writer and scholar Valerie Paradiz reveals the true story of how the fairy tales came to be. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, collectors and editors of more than 200 folk stories, were major German intellects of the nineteenth century, contemporaries of Goethe and Schiller. But as Paradiz reveals here, the romantic image of the two brothers traveling the countryside, transcribing tales told to them by peasants, is a far cry from the truth. In fact, more than half the fairy tales the Grimm brothers collected were actually contributed by their educated female friends from the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. While German folkloric scholars-all of them male-fancied themselves the keepers of the cultural flame, it was a handful of women who ensured that millions would know the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella by heart. Set against the backdrop of the chaotic Napoleonic wars and the years of high German romanticism, Clever Maids chronicles one of the most fascinating literary collaborations in European history and brilliantly captures the intellectual spirit of the men and women of the age. Even more, it illuminates the ways in which the Grimm tales, with their mythic portrayals of courage, sacrifice, and betrayal, still speak so powerfully to us today.
ISBN: 9780786738533
Publication Date: 2009-04-27
Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Schmiesing, Ann
"Although dozens of disabled characters appear in the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales, the issue of disability in their collection has remained largely unexplored by scholars. In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, author Ann Schmiesing analyzes various representations of disability in the tales and also shows how the Grimms' editing (or "prostheticizing") of their tales over seven editions significantly influenced portrayals of disability and related manifestations of physical difference, both in many individual tales and in the collection overall"--Publisher.
ISBN: 9780814338421
Publication Date: 2014
The Fairest of Them All by Maria Tatar
We think we know the story of Snow White from Disney and the Brothers Grimm. But acclaimed folklorist Maria Tatar reveals dazzling variations from across the globe. The story of the rivalry between a beautiful, innocent girl and her equally beautiful and cruel mother has been endlessly repeated and refashioned all over the world. In Switzerland you might hear about seven dwarfs who shelter a girl, only to be murdered by robbers. In Armenia a mother orders her husband to kill his daughter because the moon has declared her "the most beautiful of all." The Brothers Grimm gave this story the name by which we know it best, and in 1937 Walt Disney sweetened their somber version to make the first feature-length, animated fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then the Disney film has become our cultural touchstone--the innocent heroine, her evil stepmother, the envy that divides them, and a romantic rescue from domestic drudgery and maternal persecution. But, as every fan of the story knows, there is more to Snow White than that. The magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the catatonic sleep, and the strange scene of revivification are important elements in the phantasmagoria of the Snow White universe. Maria Tatar, an acclaimed folklorist and translator, brings to life a global melodrama of mother-daughter rivalries that play out across countries and cultures.
ISBN: 9780674238602
Publication Date: 2020-04-07
Grimms' Fairy Stories by Jacob Grimm; Wilhelm Grimm; John B. Gruelle (Illustrator); R. Emmett Owen (Illustrator)
From famous stories like "Hansel and Grethel" and "Cinderella" to the lesser-known "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes," this collection of twenty-five fairy tales is full of talking animals, naughty children, wicked parents, magic objects, and honorable heroes and heroines. Collected and revised over the years by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to represent and preserve German folklore, these tales of morality, humor, and romance offer a glimpse into the very nature of storytelling. Initially published in Germany in 1812, the collection underwent seven editions through 1857. This is an unabridged version of the 1922 edition, including colored Illustrations by John B. Gruelle and sketches by R. Emmett Owen.
ISBN: 9781467758482
Publication Date: 2014-09-01
Once upon a Time by Marina Warner
From wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and goblins to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These fantastic storieshave travelled across cultural borders, and been passed on from generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale.But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration drawson ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism.Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over a long writing life, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warnerunfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan'sLabyrinth.In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. Her book makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repositoryof human understanding and culture.
ISBN: 9780198718659
Publication Date: 2014-12-15
The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob Grimm; Wilhelm Grimm; Jack Zipes (Edited and Translated by); Andrea Dezsö (Illustrator)
The original vision of Grimms' tales in English for the first time When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Children's and Household Tales in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as "Rapunzel," "Hansel and Gretel," and "Cinderella" would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style. For the very first time, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions. These narrative gems, newly translated and brought together in one beautiful book, are accompanied by sumptuous new illustrations from award-winning artist Andrea Dezsö. From "The Frog King" to "The Golden Key," wondrous worlds unfold--heroes and heroines are rewarded, weaker animals triumph over the strong, and simple bumpkins prove themselves not so simple after all. Esteemed fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes offers accessible translations that retain the spare description and engaging storytelling style of the originals. Indeed, this is what makes the tales from the 1812 and 1815 editions unique--they reflect diverse voices, rooted in oral traditions, that are absent from the Grimms' later, more embellished collections of tales. Zipes's introduction gives important historical context, and the book includes the Grimms' prefaces and notes. A delight to read, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm presents these peerless stories to a whole new generation of readers.
ISBN: 9781400851898
Publication Date: 2014-10-19
The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove by G. Ronald Murphy
The fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm are among the best known and most widely-read stories in Western literature. In recent years commentators such as Bruno Bettelheim have, usually from a psychological perspective, pondered the underlying meaning of the stories, why children are so enthralled by them, and what effect they have on the developing child.; This study takes five of the best-known tales ("Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Sleeping Beauty") and argues that the Grimms saw them as Christian fables. The author examines the arguments of previous interpreters of the tales, and demonstrates how they missed the Grimms' intention. His own readings of the five so-called "magical" tales reveal them as the beautiful and inspiring "documents of faith" that he claims the Grimms meant them to be. Offering an alternative perspective on these often-analyzed tales, Murphy's book should be of interest to those concerned with the moral and religious education of children, to students and scholars of folk literature and children's literature, and to general readers captivated by fairy tales and their meanings.
ISBN: 9781280473470
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Transgressive Tales by Kay Turner; Pauline Greenhill
The stories in the Grimm brothers' "Kinder- und Hausm?rchen (Children's and Household Tales"), first published in 1812 and 1815, have come to define academic and popular understandings of the fairy tale genre. Yet over a period of forty years, the brothers, especially Wilhelm, revised, edited, sanitized, and bowdlerized the tales, publishing the seventh and final edition in 1857 with many of the sexual implications removed. However, the contributors in "Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms" demonstrate that the Grimms and other collectors paid less attention to ridding the tales of non-heterosexual implications and that, in fact, the Grimms' tales are rich with queer possibilities. Editors Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill introduce the volume with an overview of the tales' literary and interpretive history, surveying their queerness in terms of not just sex, gender and sexuality, but also issues of marginalization, oddity, and not fitting into society. In three thematic sections, contributors then consider a range of tales and their queer themes. In Faux Femininities, essays explore female characters, and their relationships and feminine representation in the tales. Contributors to Revising Rewritings consider queer elements in rewritings of the Grimms' tales, including Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber," Jeanette Winterson's "Twelve Dancing Princesses," and contemporary reinterpretations of both "Snow White" and "Snow White and Rose Red." Contributors in the final section, Queering the Tales, consider queer elements in some of the Grimms' original tales and explore intriguing issues of gender, biology, patriarchy, and transgression. With the variety of unique perspectives in" Transgressive Tales," readers will find new appreciation for the lasting power of the fairy-tale genre. Scholars of fairy-tale studies and gender and sexuality studies will enjoy this thought-provoking volume.
ISBN: 9780814338100
Publication Date: 2012-09-01
The valiant little tailor: a novel by Chevillard, Eric; Stump, Jordan
"The classic Grimms' fairy tale of the valiant little tailor, as you’ve never heard it before Once upon a time, there lived a valiant little tailor who killed seven flies with one blow—but who is this narrator who has abruptly inserted himself into the story, claiming authorship? He’s indignant: the fairy tale, borne carelessly along by the popular imagination, subjected to the transformations of oral tradition, was collected in a lamentable state by the Brothers Grimm, and he intends to restore the tale and its giant-slaying, unicorn-fighting, boar-hunting star to their original magnificence. But the true hero of the story remains to be seen: Is it the tailor, the narrator, or someone else entirely? In this explosive retelling of the classic tale, Éric Chevillard enlists the reader in a dizzying game of crack-the-whip, with new directions and delights in every paragraph. At once irreverent and deeply sincere, this book is a mischievous, multifarious celebration of the power of stories and those who tell them."
ISBN: 9780300268492
Publication Date: 2022
The Grimm brothers and German identity
The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism by Jakob Norberg
In the first comprehensive English-language portrait of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as political thinkers and actors, Jakob Norberg reveals how history's two most famous folklorists envisioned the role of literary and linguistic scholars in defining national identity. Convinced of the political relevance of their folk tale collections and grammatical studies, the Brothers Grimm argued that they could help disentangle language groups from one another, redraw the boundaries of states in Europe, and counsel kings and princes on the proper extent and character of their rule. They sought not only to recover and revive a neglected native culture for a contemporary audience, but also to facilitate a more harmonious and enduring relationship between the traditional political elite and an emerging national collective. Through close historical analysis, Norberg reconstructs how the Grimms wished to mediate between sovereigns and peoples, politics and culture. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
ISBN: 9781009063890
Publication Date: 2022-04-07
The Grimm brothers and linguistics
Grimm Language. Grammar, Gender and Genuineness in the Fairy Tales by Orrin W. Robinson
Grimm Language addresses a number of issues in the Grimms fairy tales from a (Germanic) linguist s point of view. In sections dealing with the Grimms use of regional dialect material, various grammatical constructions, and specific nouns and adjectives in their Children s and Household Tales, the author argues that the Grimms were consciously or unconsciously following a number of objectives. These included reinforcing the overall Germanic impression of the tales (though we now know that many of them had French inspiration), striking the right balance between archaic and colloquial language to arrive at an ideal narrative style for what was arguably a new genre, and promoting or at least reflecting stereotypes concerning the proper roles for boys and girls. The book will be of interest not only to those interested in fairy tales, and the Grimms in particular, but also more generally to those interested in the intersection between linguistics and literary scholarship."
ISBN: 9781282558519
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
The Grimm Brothers and the Germanic Past by Elmer H. Antonsen (Editor); James W. Marchand (Editor); Ladislav Zgusta (Editor)
The pioneering work of Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm in the areas of Germanic comparative and historical linguistics, lexicography, philology, and medieval studies places them squarely among the most important figures in the history of the language sciences. The contributions to this volume present a fascinating and timely reevaluation and reaffirmation of the significance of the Grimm Brothers' work in these areas, all of which the Grimms viewed as necessary components in their search for the essence of the German and Germanic Volksgeist.
ISBN: 9781283313537
Publication Date: 2014-05-09