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Comment
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honest marc
Unregistered User
(9/12/03 4:16 am)
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Have fairytales gone out of fashion
I am writting my critical thesis on "why have fairytales gone out of fashion". Why is a broad knoledge of fairytales, which people had which were educated 70 years ago, 2 generations back, almost lost today. Have they evolved or are there any "decendants" to fairytales. Any thoughts around the subject would be very welcome
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Gregor9
Registered User
(9/12/03 9:16 am)
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Fashion?
Well, of course, those of us on the board who've written a lot of fairy tales in the past, oh, couple of decades will be disinclined even to agree with your thesis, the topic of which sounds like an obtuse essay published earlier this year in The New Yorker.
Could you clarify how are you defining or demonstrating that fairy tales have in fact gone out of fashion?
The statement you post that "people 2 generations back" were educated in fairy tales in a way that's lost today, I don't accept beyond the larger context that education two generations back was probably more replete, period, than it is today (and no doubt someone will come and get me for that statement, too).
Greg
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Terri
Registered User
(9/12/03 9:08 am)
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Re: Fashion?
Considering the breadth, quality, and sheer quantity of fairy tale literature published in the last two decades (and the same could be said for fairy tale scholarship), I also have trouble understanding why one would consider fairy tales to have gone out of fashion. Can you perhaps explain why you consider this to be the case?
(And an aside to Greg: I too had problems with that article in the New Yorker. As I imagine most fairy tale scholars did.)
Edited by: Terri at: 9/12/03 9:09 am
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(9/12/03 12:09 pm)
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Re: Fashion?
Hey, glad to hear someone's brave enough to say it!!!
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Jess
Unregistered User
(9/12/03 4:16 pm)
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Hmmm
Marc,
I am not sure exactly where your comments are coming from. Others have addressed the fact that in terms of academic scholarship, fairy tales are alive and kicking. If you mean to indicate that younger children aren't being educated about fairy tales, I would beg to differ with you there as well. Many elementary, middle and high school age children have fairy tales, folklore and myths as part of their regular school curriculum. In addition, most advocates of a particular curriculum (and here I mean any particular be it secular or religious) include a study of folklore and/or fairy tales in the curriculum at some age.
You will also find that both original and retold tales can be found in any number of venues. There is a resurrugence of oral tale tellers in the United States. Written tales are being published in book form as well as through electronic media. Have you seen the "published" list above? Further, if you check the home pages of many of the contributors here, you will find lists of fairy tale books, short stories and poems by many of the posters. Some of these home pages will include texts. One poster also had written (and produced?) a fairy tale play.
There are also the film tales, both original and retold bersions. We have a posting about our favorites in the archive.
What I find most interesting is that fairy tales are not fringe literature and film. You will find more than the mere vestigates of fairy tales in much of popular literature, e.g., Harry Potter and film, e.g. Ever After and Clueless. Perhaps the reason that you think that fairy tales are "out of fashion" is that you are unfamiliar with many of the tales. I encourage you to play "spot the fairy tale." (A little humor).
Have fun,
Jess
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Aliera
Registered User
(9/12/03 7:15 pm)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
If you're going to look at children's literature, I think the variance in readership is similar to to what I remember growing up in the 70's. Although, it's a very valid point that you can find the elements of say for example Cinderella in romances.
As a "descendant," I'd like to suggest gaming texts. This is an area of readership that I find almost universal among the boys and teens I know and the Fantasy and Fairy tale elements are striking. Most of the young men read about the games and then read/experience the story through playing, which I think is a fascinating element in and of itself.
If I could ask, it might help to know a little more about what you intended to look at?
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janeyolen
Registered User
(9/13/03 2:06 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
I was at first so struck dumb by the thesis topic that I couldn't formulate an answer, which all of you above have done. However, let's look a bit further. It certainly could be said that pure fairy tale reading (and fairy stories told in the nursery) are no longer central to family life. More books and movies are available, fewer parents (or nursery maids!) tell stories. But--as pointed out above--fairy tale redactions, media representation (or misrepresentation), scholarship, popularizatikons, games, etc. have changed the way we approach fairy tales. In some ways, though no longer central to family life, fairy tales are bigger than ever.
Jane
see my TOUCH MAGIC: Fantasy, fairy and follore in the literature of childhood. And my Mirror, Mirror: 40 Folktales for Mothers and Daughters to Share.
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Don
Registered User
(9/13/03 12:16 pm)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
I believe Jane is right. The question of the popularity of fairy-tales doesn't allow a one-dimensional answer (yes, they're popular/no, they're not popular). The question involves many questions--about the numerous contexts of fairy-tale reception, the many different audiences, the diverse media, generic identity (what are we calling a fairy tale or what is recognized as a fairy tale), the truncated forms in which classical fairy tales are now transmitted (as in greeting cards, jokes, bumper stickers, advertisements, etc.), and so on. There is no question that fairy-tale production and scholarship around fairy tales reamain vital, but that doesn't explain away the fact that many of the university students who have come through my fairy-tale courses over the last 20 years--and who can at best identify a few names and motifs--are hard pressed to retell even the most classic tales. "Popularity," I think, is not the issue.
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Terri
Registered User
(9/14/03 12:46 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
Don, I'm surprised by your experience with your students. How depressing! Yet all the kids (young to teen) I know are quite familiar with all the standard fairy tales (Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, etc.), albeit with the modern forms of them, through the children's picture books they read and had read to them when they were young, plus Disney films of course. This includes my extended working class family, not just the children of writer and artist friends whose households might not be considered typical. Mind you, these are modern versions of the tales that they know, usually based on Grimms -- I certainly don't see kids seeking out Madame D'Aulnoy.
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(9/14/03 4:01 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
To chime in -
I work part time as a school librarian in a rural town. Do the kids I work with grow up knowing folklore - well, it's a difficult question. When they come to school, I can count on them knowing a few -and I mean FEW - common nursery rhymes and folk tales, for instance THE THREE LITTLE PIGS. Much of what they learn about folk tales, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes comes from what they're learning in school or have seen in Disney movies or TV. They certainly don't come from a vibrant oral storytelling culture. To talk about fractured fairy tales, I often have to read a few "standard" versions first, so they'll get the jokes. By thirteen, they know what we've come to think of as common fairy tales - Cinderella, Snow White, etc. Usually they know the Disney version best, or, say ELLA ENCHANTED. As I write this, I realize we've talked a lot about what Disney has done to folklore and pop culture, but maybe not so much about what the literary YA writers are doing for them. But the audience isn't as wide either...
Perhaps I'll write more on this once I muse some more.
Laura MC
PS I might add that a common misconseption among teachers and other adults I've worked with, ones who sometimes use fairy tales in the classroom, is that people like the Grimms were collectors who took down tales straight from oral storytellers, that those tales are stories in their "original" form.
Edited by: Laura McCaffrey at: 9/14/03 4:09 am
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Don
Registered User
(9/14/03 6:34 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
Taking up the topic of your PS--I used to structure my fairy-tale course around the idea of debunking the myth about the Grimms. That is, I based it on the assumption that the students came in thinking the Grimms collected tales from oral tradition. It quickly became evident that (a) they didn't know the name Grimm at all, or (b) they thought the Grimms were authors who wrote the tales. I generalize, of course, but I found this to be essentially the case.
Edited by: Don at: 9/14/03 8:43 am
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Jess
Unregistered User
(9/14/03 9:43 am)
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Perhaps
Maybe it depends on the community you live in, but our schools have extensive folklore in the lower grades (as do my sisters' kids schools in distant parts of the country). Moreover, as one school is on the local reservation, there is quite a bit of effort to bring in Salish, Suquamish, Clallam and Clatsop (I apologize if the spelling of these tribes' names are wrong) folktale tellers. The Suquamish are particularly sensitive since they believe they "lost" a lot of their culture in an attempt to assimilate in the late 19th century. Do these kids know Grimms? Maybe, maybe not, but they know Susquach and the tales of the orcas, seals and salmon.
I should add they have learned Grimms, African tales as well as local Native American tales before the fifth grade (at least 3 units - one every other year). Do they retain it? I wonder.
How are you defining "fairy tales"?
Jess
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(9/14/03 11:48 am)
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Memory
"Do they retain it?" There's the real question. Don't you feel that the real problem lies in the fact that the huge potential of memory is ignored in modern education?
Speaking for the generation that heard fairy tales "told", not read, by a family member who remembered the tales told to them, and for the generation who heard the Bible read aloud (the poetry of that remains with me for life) and who learned songs by heart and poetry by heart and long parts of the Bible by heart and later Shakespeare, I can only say that all that enriched my thinking in a way nothing in modern education could begin to do. We ignore the huge power of memory in modern education. And when you think that in the past whole cultures were passed down through the stories and songs and music of the people, and survived when everything else was destroyed, you wonder what we are doing when we ignore something so vital to the survival of civilization.
Alison
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Nicole
Schreiber
Registered User
(9/14/03 6:29 pm)
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Re: folklore in schools
I know I am new to the discussion board, but I wanted to mention something that has been bothering me in my own classroom...
I am a part-time 2nd grade teacher (Language Arts, Writing, Social Studies) in southern California, and over here the teaching of reading has shifted from a literature rich, whole language approach, to a phonics based approach. I fear for the children I have and for those in the future who will be learning to read in this way, since they will be deprived of so many stories!
What does this have to do with teaching folklore and fairy tales in schools? A lot, because there will more than likely be less and less of it exposed to them. Not much will be retained in their memories because the stories won't be a priority to teach to them.
It's sad.
-Nicole
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Helen
Registered User
(9/15/03 12:02 pm)
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Have fairytales gone out of fashion? ... No.
I think that the your original question could be slightly reworded, actually, to reflect the general situation at hand: you ask, "Why is a broad knowledge of fairytales, which people who were educated 70 years ago, 2 generations back, almost lost today?" You could as easily remove the "of fairy tales" to wonder about diminishing intellectual standards across the board. Seventy years ago, a decent education included not only fairy tales but Greek myths, a working knowledge of literature, history and geography, in all probability fluency in more than one language ... today, those may be *ideals,* but they're fairly rarely fulfilled to the same level. Conversely, that education would have been offered to a far smaller segment to the population than the current equivalent. I think that all of the previous rebuttals are accurate: the last two, from Alison and Nicole, certainly touch upon some of the practical reasons for a diminishing base of knowledge. I'll also say, though ... in a world where incoming freshman believe that "Judytheism was the first monolithic religion," that "The Trojan War raged between the Greeks and the Tories," and that "Charlemagne used the 'missi dominici' (Latin for 'missiles of the king') to inflict government on his people," fairy tales don't seem too badly off.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(9/16/03 10:43 am)
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I wonder
Whether our nostalgia is actually creating an achievable *ideal* education of 70 years ago versus the reality. First, Helen makes a nice point that term "educated" is being applied to a much larger segment of the population, so to some extent we are comparing apples to oranges.
Second, the number of books published in the last few years probably overwhelms the cumulative number of books published prior to 1930. The Wall Street Journal had a nice article about this subject a few years back. In addition, "literature" must encompass some of the great literature published in the last 70 years. My guess is (and I have no proof of this) but my guess is that only a few generations of educated people had a "broad knowledge of fairy tales" as opposed other literature. I would think that most educated people had some knowledge of fairy tales, and hopefully, there is a growing trend to include myths, folklore and fairy tales back into school curriculia.
Third, I think that perhaps earlier generations' levels of knowledge might be greatly exaggerated. Take, for example, Winston Churchill's education. His knowledge of geography was so poor that just prior to being examined for entrance into Sandhurst he put the names of 25 countries on a scrap of paper, picked one, and studied it - the country, New Zealand. The next day at the exam, as luck would have it, had the geography problem "draw a map of New Zealand." See Willaim Manchester's "The Last Lion", Vol. 1, page 176. He also had trouble with math and Latin, but apparently had a broad knowledge of fairy tales and history. My point is that people, even well-educated people, have strengths and weakness.
Fourth, I think we see a greater emphasis on Science and Mathmatics over the humanities. Freshman today are expected to have some working knowledge of scientific concepts that were unknown or in their infancies 70 years ago. Similarly, many college bound high school students have some exposure to calculus. Something that was almost unheard of even 25 years ago. The same could be said for basic business and economics concepts. Most high school seniors that I have spoken with know something of Keynsian (sp?) economics, although they have no clue who Keynes is.
So, what does this have to do with the broad knowledge of fairy tales? I think that (1) there is a growing understanding of the importance of teaching fairy tales, folklore, myths and legends. We are seeing schools try to incorporate their study into the curriculum again. (2) Our understanding of an educated man's knowledge 70 years ago may reflect nostalgia, includes a smaller portion of society, and the education itself reflects the emphasis of its time.
Jess
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Ken
McGuire
Registered User
(9/16/03 11:16 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
Last week I was invited to speak on the subject of fairy tales to a group of approximately 30 people. After I made a few introductory remarks, my college junior daughter and I read tales to the group which included Basile, Ann Sexton (poem, of course), Perrault and Carter. The audience was widely varied, from university professors to engineers to housewives to musicians. The discussion afterward clearly showed that many in the group were familiar with fairy tales and some fairy tale scholarship. A number of them said that they were going to go home and read some more, and at least one reported later that they had broad expansive dreams as a result of the evening. Not only have fairy tales not lost their power, I don't believe that they have lost their audience. People do need to be reminded that they are not children's literature. We all have a responsibility to do that.
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wrightales
Registered User
(9/17/03 2:34 pm)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
I think part of the problem in rebutting this question is that fairy tales were NOT taught in earlier generations. They were disseminated orally. Fairy tales were (and for many of us, still are) a form of entertainment which has, to a large degree, been replaced by electrically generated forms of entertainment. These include not just the obvious movies and televison, but also electric lights in general which permit us to read books at night when we might otherwise be telling each other stories.
It is not fairy tales which have gone out of fashion, but oral storytelling.
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Terri
Registered User
(9/17/03 11:02 pm)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
But in the West, fairy tales have been a popular literary art, in addition to an oral art, since at *least* the 16th century -- so much so that a number of the "German" folk tales published by the Grimms actually come from Italian and French literary sources. It's been a long, long while since fairy tales were disseminated in a primarily oral fashion.
Of course, it depends on which classes of people you're looking at in any given time period -- the lower classes having retained an oral tradition longer than the upper classes. But even the lower classes had access to literary fairy tales when they were re-published in the Blue chapbooks that were sold cheaply throughout Europe, and many oral storytellers then used the literary tales in their repetoire.
Edited by: Terri at: 9/17/03 11:11 pm
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Helen
Registered User
(9/18/03 7:36 am)
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Re: Have fairytales gone out of fashion
That's almost exactly the same process that we see know: only today, instead of a "secondary orality," we see a "secondary literacy" in the retellings, and a ... I don't even know quite what to phrase it. A secondary "aurality"? I mean the use of fairy tales in popular culture - in songs (i.e. Lorena McKennitt), in advertisements (Chanel), in movies, etc. - which allow them to be heard. The fairy tales may be disseminated in a modified form: however, in the case of tales that were carried across borders to be remastered as a part of the oral traditions that had never carried those particular motifs, the same was certainly true. Versions of "Sleeping Beauty" in post-Grimms Russia bore far less of a resemblance to the original events of the tale than one would imagine: today, the audience of a work based on the text, regardless of the medium, would likely recognize the tropes, even if they might not understand their significance. That's the part of the process that does seem to need ... remodeling - comprehension of their significance.
I'd argue that we're still at more or less an even level in terms of familiarity with fairy tales as compared with previous generations: unfortunately, they're still broadly known as "children's" stories (not because of any inherent quality, but because of the value of the form for didacticism, as Perrault, and the Grimms, and a plethora of Victorian editors were only too happy to note). It's a notion that's receding with every year, thanks in large part to the efforts of individuals like the ones on this board. Getting there ...
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Gregor9
Registered User
(9/22/03 2:42 pm)
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Re: ...No
Helen,
My personal favorite of the incoming freshman history test answers is that "in the Middle Ages everyone was middle-aged." That certainly has it nailed.
Again after reading all the posts up to here, I find that the original thesis as proposed makes a huge generalization about a fairly complex matter, and which I think most everyone has addressed in one way or another; but it does seem to come down to a question of whether or not you were raised in a family/school/environment that promoted reading of tales. If not, then your perception might be that indeed we just aren't paying any attention to fairy tales because "I don't know anything about them." We know that they thrive in academia. But outside that arena, it's on a case-by-case basis. My next door neighbors' children are being introduced to the idea of such tales (if perversely) because I slipped their parents copies of "The Stinky Cheese Man," from which there is no escape.
Greg
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