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Author
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Comment
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Beth
Unregistered User
(10/26/03 3:08 pm)
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Original versions
Hi, I'm currently writing a proposal for a documentary about fairy tales, their origins and evolution. I was wondering if anybody could help me, I'm trying to find the very first versions of some fairy tales, I'm talking pre Grimm Brothers and all the rest. If anybody knows where I could read the original versions of stories like Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, etc, could you let me know. Thanks.
Beth
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Terri
Registered User
(10/26/03 11:08 pm)
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Re: Original versions
Maria Tatar's Annotated Classic Fairy Tales is a good primer on early versions of fairy tales. Jack Zipes's various books are very useful too. Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde is a "must read" if you're doing a documentary on pre-Grimms fairy tales -- forgive me for stating the obvious if you've read all these already. Do you want the earliest known published European versions (which are often the Italian versions), or are you trying to trace things back to very early varients, often found in Asia?
You'll also find short articles on the history of several well known
fairy tales (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast,
etc.) on-line in the Reading Room of the Endicott Studio web site,
which may point you to other sources. The URL is: www.endicott-studio.com/readingRoom.html.
And the host of this discussion board, the Surlalune Fairy Tale
Pages, is an invaluable resource for all fairy tale matters. The
URL is: www.surlalunefairytales.com
Edited by: Terri at: 10/26/03 11:11 pm
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(10/27/03 11:29 pm)
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Re: Original versions
Another interesting text is Graham Anderson's "Fairytale in the Ancient World." He discusses the connections of our more modern fairy tales (last five hundred years) with ancient mythology.
Heidi
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(10/30/03 7:14 pm)
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Re: Original versions
Is there really such a thing as an 'original version' of such tales? Maybe the earliest surviving, shortly pre-Grimm, or such. But in the sense of normative, that others derived from?
My impression was that such tales sort of bounced back and forth between different mediums. Basile wrote some up in a risque, sophisticated manner for commercial publication in PENTAMERONE. Maybe some oral peasant versions were influenced by those. (Calvino does say one of his got to his lowbrow oral tellers from some literary source, Grimm or Perrault I think.) The Cabinet des Fees writers (using what sources I'm not sure) made quite literary, complicated, 'dark' versions. Lang took some of theirs and condensed and cleaned them a bit. Nurses read Lang to children ... and back the story went into oral household tradition, this time in England. The Grimms took some oral versions and made them a bit more marketable.
I liked the image in one book about tellers of tales, of peasants working at winnowing grain or something, being entertained by one person reciting such stories: as our factory workers might listen to radio or tv. Entertainment, popular values (little 'dark disturbing' appeal there, I'd expect) -- but lowbrow. Or tellers/performers at a fair, with a hat for donations, whole family invited. Which is how I'd see the early Disney versions, at least.
Am I wrong in all this? Is there an 'original', normative version?
(Unless possibly Calvino's may become that: he combined as many old oral versions as he could find, but didn't otherwise slant things much.)
R.L.
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(10/31/03 10:15 am)
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Re: Original versions
As a person who has had personal experiences in living without modern connivances - living where there is no electricity - having been in the deep wilderness at sunset and become aware of absolute darkness and in that darkness, being totally lost, unaware of direction, knowing that putting one foot in front of the other might mean falling off a cliff or stepping into a hole or even (in the imagination) into the waiting teeth of a bear or mountain lion... I can imagine that tales came about among the earliest cognizance.
Sitting, huddled together, around a small fire, knowing that the wilderness (WILD +er +ness) just outside the fire's light contained a great number of things that would love to crunch your bones after having devoured you heart, kidneys and `internals',... would require that someone break the silence and ease the fear! Silence and Fear mixed together are the basic ingredients of Madness.
Tales of bravery should have come first to encourage the youngest and re-assure the adult. Tales of the disobedient getting eaten, next, to instill the importance of learning what others had already learned: how to survive.
Just having conversation, sitting around the fire, with 4 or 5 others does, indeed, bring some comfort. I think that if we look around the world now, and find those populations that live without electricity, gas or other means to produce light, we might find a remnant of that original life.
South American Rain Forest tribes for example, those that live a literal hand to mouth Hunter/Gather existence, surely would provide examples of the "night-life" that gave birth to Oral Retellings. Mainly, it is Humans that sleep at night, Flesh Eaters, Snakes, things that can crawl into your ear, Evil Spirits, Ghosts of the Dead (whom you may have wronged), and all the life-forms of the vast `Unknown' existence inside and outside of our minds; these prowl the darkness "seeking whom they might devour".
Just an opinion, offered from the quizzical mind of the Rym Rytr.
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