I managed to steal these little booklets from the library a few days ago. (Don’t worry I’m lying, the librarian was kind enough to give them to me.) They’re useful partly because they have broken down ‘fairy tales’ into smaller sub-categories such as Quests and Riddles, and also for the afterwords in the back which make interesting comments and observations on the four tales that precede.
Notes have been and are being made accordingly. Lovely.
Basically everything I’ll ever need ever… There’s too much to list. Some of the most useful things include 49 of the most famous fairy tales, completely annotated. As well as over 40 ebooks that cover folklore anthologies, critical texts and other resources.
I’ve begun looking through some of the content, but I mean to keep looking through it and taking notes etc. I expect it will be a resource to keep coming back to throughout my project.
On the side - the site links a blog: http://surlalunefairytales.blogspot.com/ on fairy tales; seemingly anything related to them - it even includes fairy tale themed oragami. It seems worth looking through for anything of particular interest.
So I need to choose a title, and having only just begun to read and read about fairy tales, I still want to keep my options open. This title is very much a provisional one and may bare no resemblance to my final choice, at the moment however, it is just the direction that most intrigues me.
Do fairy tales reflect the society and country from which they originate?
I am also interested in the way in which same fairy tales, in essence, have originated inpendently of each other in other countries and cultures.
These are strictly early thoughts - as I read more and gain a greater understanding and knowledge of this topic, it will of course alter what course my project will take.
Reading at least some of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales is where I’ll start, just to get a general feel for them. I have also obtained The Classic Fairy Tales from the school library which includes the.. classics and reading some, if not all, should destroy the childishly pure, untainted memories I have of them and freshly instill my teenage cynicism. Hopefully they’ll kindle and inspire an interest in finding more about them, their meanings and messages and all the assorted wonderings I listed below, beyond what I could procure last time I had a flick through the bits with pictures as a six year old.
My next step is to find books and articles concerned with fairy tales - critiques and analysis’s that I may find cover a lot of the questions I’ve posed.
That’s about all, for now.
It’s interesting, and slightly infuriating, to read and think about this happening, and a definite niche of fairy tales worth looking into. What is it that has made people regard them in this way? Why does today’s society reject the very purpose of fairy tales? Of course, a question like that would deal a lot less with the fairy tales themselves than the modern perception of them - I think I would end up trying to reason and explain why such an overly protective and cautious public mentality exists, instead of concentrating on what I’m more interested in; the fairy tales themselves. Indeed regardless, I think a question like that could better be applied to other, perhaps more relevent issues of political correctness.
Plus it just annoys me way too much.
“…while it scares just a little.”
Not too much, not too little, did you get the formula just right? The perfect amount of fear? Manuel, you are an idiot.
I didn’t realise that the inset paragraphs,
(these ones)
appear in italics, and so look ridiculous, and so have made my last post look ridiculous.
Just saying.
For various reasons my original blog is now gone. Thankfully, it only had a few posts on it, but to summarise what was there as quickly as possible:
Last week at some point I flicked through and read a few fairy tales from a little booklet lying around in the library - some kind of newspaper-supplement-type-thing I think - and I started thinking about fairy tales. Then I completely forgot about them. On thursday night I chanced across a complete works of The Brothers Grimm at home and it reminded me of the interest I’d had in fairy tales a few days earlier.
What is a fairy tale?
How do fairy tales reflect the (nature of) the society from which they originate? Or more simply, do they?
Why do the same (or very similar) fairy tales, in essence, exist in different cultures and countries, irrespective of the barriers of communication and therefore collaboration that existed when they were written?
How have fairy tales influenced society, if at all?
What is the worth of *traditional* fairy tales?
Has the traditional fairy tale been ruined/spoiled/made worthless by the constraints/influences/limits/controls of the 21st century?
When did fairy tales as we know them first appear?
A lot of these are questions I seek to answer, as best as is possible, in my general research. Hopefully out of the greater understanding I’ll have because of this research, one idea will take my attention and interest most and I will pursue it in the course of my project.
It feels good to have caught up with myself.
