The Authors of the Literary Fairy Tale

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...

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...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.