Stories of the Brothers Grimm

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Recommended: Compare and contrast Rapunzel and Cinderella

Every girl has at one time wanted to be a princess. We held this belief because of the stories we were told as young girls. The stories we heard in which poor peasant girls could become princesses through perseverance, patience, beauty or wit. These stories were introduced to us under the guise of fairytales, which, for many of us are synonymous with the name Grimm, although several of our favorite fairytales are by other authors. Even if you don’t know the name Grimm, you know at least one story by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel, and the list continues. The Grimm Brothers collected and wrote stories scattered throughout the rural countryside, recording them based on a general structure and often containing certain aspects. The stories were affected by the religion, morals and culture of that era, but Grimm’s tales are translatable from the time when they were written to the modern times because of their base in universal themes. Still today their stories are not only being rewritten and reimaged several times over, but used structurally in literature. A notable author is one whose literature is able to withstand time and still be applicable no matter the technology, culture, or religion. The Grimm Brothers are notable authors because they are the founders of modern literature, both in structure and in morals.

Let’s look at a simple and famous fairytale, Rapunzel, for the Grimm’s trademark characteristics. First of all, there is the magical aspect, whether a transforming witch, talking animals, or the ability to best death. In Rapunzel, the magical aspect comes in form of witch and the magical growing hair. Always in fairytales, the subject the story is written about...

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...hite’s evil step-mother. Gone are Cinderella’s birds, replaced by a charming godmother. Then again, when the original stories were circulating by word of mouth, they were more severe than the version we read now. The difference between their revisions and our revisions is what makes the Grimm Brother authors of literary merit.

Works Cited

Abler, Alice. "The Moral of the Story." Vision. Spring 2008. Web. 28 Apr. 2011. .

Asliman, D. L. "Incest in Indo-European Folktales." Grimm Stories - Grimmstories.com. University of Pittsburg, 30 Apr. 2008. Web. 28 Apr. 2011. .

"Fairytales of the Grimm’s." Grimm Stories - Grimmstories.com. Web. 28 Apr. 2011. .

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009. Print.

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