The Authors of the Literary Fairy Tale

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The Authors of the Literary Fairy Tale When asked to name authors of fairy tales, most people now (if they knew at all) would answer the Grimm Brothers or Charles Perrault, and perhaps Hans Christian Andersen. Yet throughout history, fairy tales have been women's stories, passed down orally by the mothers and grandmothers. When the tales began to be a literary form, the number and output of female authors vastly exceeds that of the males. The Grimm Brothers collected their tales from peasants and edited them to suit their audience; most of Perrault's stories are retellings of old tales. Although the female authors included familiar elements, their now-forgotten tales were largely more inventive, original and fantastical than their male counterparts - and frequently nastier, too. The Authors of the Literary Fairy Tale In 1634, a cycle of fifty tales was published by Giambattista Basile, in which can be found some of the earliest written versions of familiar stories like "Sleeping Beauty". Basile's tone is bawdy and comic; his narrators within the tale are old women, hags, crones and old gossips, the stereotypical tellers of the "old wives' tale". The women who brought the literary fairy tale to popularity fifty years or so later were anything but "old wives". The story which marked the beginning of the form was written by the Countess d'Aulnoy, an aristocratic woman who tried to implicate her husband in a crime of high tre... ... middle of paper ... ...ence to the young, telling tales which outlined social functions and places, which saw the virtuous rewarded, and adversity overcome. While people worked at boring tasks, at sewing and spinning, tales would be told. While the voices of the women were unheard politically, they were passing on knowledge to the young. The best-known tales today are the ones collected by the Grimms and written by Perrault, changed to favour the charming Prince rather than the clever heroine. Even so, throughout the tales still read today can still be found traces of messages about the lives the tellers read, from step-mother to mother-in-law to childbirth, their greatest killer for many years. Modern writers are returning to fairy tale themes to produce great works, taking them out of the children's nusery and back where they belong.

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