Fairyworld

Tag: collection

  • Brothers Grimm

    Brothers Grimm

    The Grimm Brothers – Facts You Probably Don’t Know

    Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm are famous for their collection of fairy tales. It was first published in 1812 as Children’s and Household Tales and went through seven editions during its lifetime. Today, it’s by far the best-known book with fairy tales featuring Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, The Town Musicians of Bremen, and many other classic works for children.

    King of the Golen Mountain by Max Teschemacher

    Despite the worldwide popularity of the Brothers Grimm, most people don’t know much about their lives and works. This article will address numerous misconceptions, so you will be better informed and able to use your newly acquired knowledge to your full advantage. Let’s dive into their magical world!

    Harsh Life, Hard Work

    Jakob and Wilhelm were born to a jurist with a well-established business and a mother who was the daughter of a city councilman. They were the oldest surviving sons in a family with eight boys and a girl. Three of their brothers died before they reached the age of two. Kids were schooled at home by private tutors and lived happily until their father died of pneumonia.

    The Land of Plenty, postcard by Oskar Herrfurth

    This led to significant financial hardship for the family. They suddenly became poor and lost their large home and servants. They then had to rely on their mother’s family for financial support. When a year later the grandfather died as well, the brothers had to leave the rest of the family and move to Kassel. They enrolled in a gymnasium, paid for by their aunt.

    Portraits of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

    After that, they slowly built their positions with hard work and renunciation, taking responsibility for other family members, including their brother Ludwig, who became a painter and made the first illustrations for their most famous book.

    The pattern of riches-to-rags-to-riches appears in more than half of their stories for children, but it is not the only pattern.

    Injustice

    Fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers are characterized by another recognizable element: the pattern of injustice. They experienced it from an early age. It followed them for the rest of their lives. Let’s highlight a few examples:

    • Father dies, and the young children have to take the responsibility of adults.
    • Despite hard work and top achievements (they both graduated as the best in the class), they couldn’t get scholarships because they belonged to a lower social class. Instead, they had to find jobs. Jacob abandoned his studies to work as an assistant in Paris and earn enough money to feed his family.

    Cinderella (Aschenputtel) by Georg Albert Strodel

    • Both brothers became librarians at the King of Westfalia, where they were overlooked when the post of the chief librarian was available.
    • They became professors in Gottingen but lost their jobs and income during political unrest.

    Absent Father, Large Families, and Sacrifice

    For most of his life, Jacob was responsible for other family members. He also helped Wilhelm, who suffered from poor health, missed a year of school due to scarlet fever, and had to visit a sanatorium to heal his heart and respiratory conditions. Sacrifice is another pattern in their fairy tales. Another characteristic is the presence of a family with many boys and a single girl. This is just like the Grimm family.

    We can find six brothers and a daughter in Six Swans, seven brothers and a daughter in Seven Ravens, and Snow White, who takes care of seven dwarfs. The theme of sacrifice appears in dozens of other fairy tales from their collection, but all of them share almost the same trigger: an absent father.

    Seven Swans by Willy Juttner

    The death of Jakob’s and Wilhelm’s father undoubtedly marked their lives. It’s no coincidence that so many of their fairy tales start with one of the following situations:

    • The King dies, and his immature children are forced to find a way to survive in an unhospitable world.
    • A poor family is suffering from hunger with an incompetent father and cruel mother (in most cases, replaced by a stepmother).
    • Mother dies, father remarries and gets out of the picture so the new wife can take control of the household, favoring her children from before and humiliating her stepchildren.
    • Kids are so poor they have to leave their homes and look for any kind of job to put some food on their plates.

    All Kinds of Fur by Rudolf Geissler

    But wait! Didn’t the brothers Grimm collect the tales from folk tradition? Aren’t those patterns just coincidental with their life experiences?

    Closer to Writers than Collectors

    Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting fairy tales, fables, and other similar stories at the suggestion of Clemens Brentano. Brentano believed in a united Germany, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was divided into approximately 200 kingdoms, counties, cities with special status, and other entities. Brothers Grimm shared Bretano’s views on the situation. They were pretty confident that the Germans could live in a stronger, more centralized state if they recognized their shared history and language. This could be achieved through shared myths and stories.

    Vintage book covers of Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Blanche Fisher Laite (left) and Noel Pocock (right)

    Jakob and Wilhelm started collecting both. But they were not traveling across the country looking for old storytellers, as many believe. They didn’t have the financial resources to do that, and they also wanted to accomplish as much as possible in the shortest time possible. Instead of working on the terrain, they preferred to talk to people from the neighborhood. In this manner, they collected dozens of fairy tales from their neighbors. One of these neighbors was Henriette Dorothea Dortchen Wild, who later became Wilhelm’s wife and the mother of their four children. They didn’t know that the fairy tales they were writing had often been published many years before they were born. These tales did not belong to the German tradition (most had already been printed in Basile’s Pentamerone), nor were they written by unknown authors. Many were written by well-known authors like Hans Christian Andersen.

    The brothers also didn’t care about the suitability of their collection for children because they were targeting academic circles. After publishing, a few people suggested softening or excluding some of the stories from the collection because they have tremendous potential to teach important lessons to children.

    Vintage book covers of Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Arthur Rackham (left) and Monro Scott Orr (right)

    So Wilhelm rewrote most fairy tales to make them appropriate for kids. He added aesthetic descriptions, deleted allusions to sexual activities, but never really bothered with violence. In Sleeping Beauty, he even added the part with princes dying on thorns while trying to rescue the sleeping princess.

    The Brothers Grimm’s collection was not an immediate commercial success. In fact, they had serious problems convincing the publisher of the second edition. Their contemporary Ludwig Bechstein, who published a very similar collection with numerous fairy tales with the same titles and plots but written more tailored to the audience of the time, was considerably more successful.

    Vintage book covers of various myths and legends by the Grimm Brothers

    Anyway, today we can say that Jakob and Wilhelm made a much bigger impact. They were awarded several honorary doctorates for their writing. Apart from fairy tales, they published myths, sagas, and the first volumes of the German dictionary.

    More vintage book covers by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

    Their fairy tales became a part of the school curriculum and were heavily abused during both world wars while German nationalism was on the rise. They were translated into all major languages, although often adapted and censored. Now, it is regarded as the second most influential book in the Western Hemisphere after the Bible. The collection made its way into popular media.

    • Did you know that in computer science, the term “breadcrumbs” refers to user interface elements such as internal links on websites? The term comes from the story of Hansel and Gretel.
    • Did you know that modern medicine uses terms such as the Cinderella complex and the Sleeping Beauty syndrome, both of which are taken from the Grimm’s fairy tales?

    While many modern parents don’t read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to their children because they believe they are too violent, a growing number of experts in children’s psychology believe exactly the opposite – they provide a perfect opportunity to learn about the injustice and cruelty of the real world in the safe environment of their parents’ laps. On condition, of course, they are presented at the right time in the right way.

    But this is a theme for another debate.

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  • Pentameron

    Pentameron

    Il Pentamerone: The Oldest Known Collection of Fairy Tales

    Il Pentamerone (also known as Lo cunto de li cunti, or The Tale of Tales) is little-known outside academic circles, yet it is foundational to many popular fairy tales. Published in the 17th century, it predates Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales, thereby setting the stage for classic fairy-tale literature.

    Understanding Il Pentamerone’s special place in history requires context about its era and Basile’s intent. Its importance lies in its role as the cornerstone of the evolution of fairy-tale storytelling.

    Indeed, some of the oldest versions of well-known tales, including Rapunzel, Cinderella, and The Beauty and the Beast, can be found in The Pentameron.

    The Book

    One of the most popular books in the 15th and 16th centuries was definitely Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. It presents 100 stories, each told by one of 10 people over 10 days.

    How the Tales Came to Be Told by Warwick Goble (left) and The Goat-Faced Girl by Henry Justice Ford (right)

    Such a framed format, with fictional people telling fictional tales, was popular for centuries and reached its peak with the publication of Galland’s Arabian Nights at the beginning of the 18th century. Gianbattista Basile chose the same format but decided to write 50 stories, not 100, as in the Decameron. This logically leads to the unofficial name Pentameron. Another important influence was Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s The Pleasant Nights, perhaps the first collection of written fairy tales (though it contains other types of stories as well). Some of the plots that appear later in Basile’s book were already present in The Pleasant Nights. Straparola’s major contribution to the then nonexistent genre was the structure of the tales. It was revolutionary in that it presented the possibility of climbing the social ladder thanks to magic. Straparola introduced a so-called rags-to-riches plot.

    Basile, who likely held a higher social position than Straparola (whose life is shrouded in mystery), preferred a different kind of plot. The main character starts out as a prince, rich merchant, or similar member of the upper class, but loses this position due to circumstances beyond his or her control, such as war, illness, or accident.

    But through the story, the fallen star regains his or her position, which may be even higher at the end of the story. Such a plot was definitely less problematic for the target audience than Straparola’s.

    Yet just like Straprola, Basile didn’t want to risk – he never published his stories. They were printed only several years after his death, when his sister brought the manuscripts to the printers.

    Portraits of Giambattista Basile and his sister Nicoletta

    Basile’s Tale of Tales was published in two volumes: the first in 1534 and the second in 1536. Not even his sister dared to use the author’s real name, so the book was published under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis.

    The style of narration is typical baroque with numerous unnecessary descriptions, which soon made the tales unfit for the new times, and they were almost forgotten until Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm discovered them in the translation of one of their colleagues, Felix Liebrecht.

    They praised the book as the first collection of national fairy tales in history. Its famous collection contains recognizable plots of many well-known tales. One of the reasons for staying unknown to a wider audience was the language of Pentamerone. It was written in Neapolitan dialect with numerous vulgarisms and many elements unsuitable for sensitive ears.

    Parsley (left), Three Enchanted Princes (middle) by Warwick Goble, and The Serpent Prince by Edmund Dulac (right)

    The Stories

    The Pentamerone starts with a frame story about Princess Zoza, who was unable to laugh. Her father finally manages to make her laugh, but she offended an old lady who put a spell on Zoza. She can marry a prince only if she fills a jug with her tears in three days. Just before the jug was filled, Zoza fell asleep, her slave stole it, and ended the task instead of her. The slave marries the prince, becomes pregnant, and demands to hear stories for her amusement. Ten storytellers, including Zoza (in disguise), told her five stories each, and one of them discloses a slave’s fraud. She is punished (cruelly), and Zoza finally gets her husband.

    Among the told stories, we can find many of the first known written versions of popular fairy tales like Rapunzel (Parsley), Snow White (The Young Slave), Brother and Sister (Nennillo and Nennella), Diamonds and Toads (The Two Cakes), King Thrushbeard (Pride Punished) … Despite the subtitle (Stories for Little Ones) these tales were obviously not meant for kids. They are full of themes more fitting for yellowback literature, such as unfaithful spouses, treacherous servants, and evil neighbors. They are also the first written collection of fairy tales, most of which have plots present in many countries. This makes the Pentamerone a very special literary treasure.

    Il Pentamerone, illustrations by George Cruikshank

    Some of the biting sharpness of the original Pentamerone was lost through translations. Actually, most of the book was heavily censored. For example, the first English translation (Taylor, 1848) included only 30 stories instead of 50 because the general public deemed Basile’s humor unacceptable. The second edition of Taylor’s translation in 1912 kept only 12 stories! But thanks to the widow of Richard Burton, famous translator of the Arabian Nights, English still got a complete book in 1893, three years after his death. However, the second edition of this book in 1927 was heavily censored, a fact that the editors briefly explained as ‘some corrections.’The best available translation today is probably by Nancy Canepa. It is a direct translation from the Neapolitan dialect, featuring all 50 stories, and is backed by extensive research. It’s definitely not a children’s book, but an important document from which everybody can learn a lot about the literature, our society, and ourselves.

    The Movie

    The Tale of Tales (Il racconto dei racconti) is a movie extravaganza by Matteo Garrone, with Salma Hayek, Shirley Henderson, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly, and other movie stars. The book comprises three tales: The Enchanted Doe, The Flea, and The Flayed Old Lady, enriched with elements from other fairy tales in the Pentamerone.

    The Enchanted Snake (left) and The Myrtle (right) by Warwick Goble

    The movie is a unique creation with exotic settings, costumes, and music. Still, the plots and specific scenes may be a bit too gruesome for the general audience. The movie’s earnings (less than $6 million), despite its $12 million budget, reflect this concern. However, it will likely become a classic, a must-see for every film enthusiast willing to explore film beyond its ordinary limits. (And over two hours in length.) Beware: it’s R-rated for nudity and violence.

    Giving Credit to the Original

    The Pentameron, also known as The Tale of Tales, is arguably the most important book most people haven’t heard of. It introduced a so-called restoration plot into the story. In combination with fantastic elements, this plot forms the basis not only of fairy tales, but also of a significant portion of fiction in general.

    The Enchanted Snake (left) and The Goat-Faced Girl (right) by Henry Justice Ford

    The giants like Madame d’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, but also J. R. R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling all profited on this base, and it’s only fair to put the name of Giambattista Basile in the same group.