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Author
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Comment
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duglis
Registered User
(4/23/04 5:07 pm)
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Grimms' Thousand/All Furs = a terribly flawed DONKEYSKIN?
I just read the Grimms' take on the Perrault DONKEYSKIN tale (or
else they collected it from a unique source)! What a horrible ending!
SPOILERS
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The heroine tries to hide from her incestuous father all story long, yet somehow drops the trinkets he gave her into the soup to rouse his suspicions and winds up marrying her father and the end as well?!! Even taking into account, the different morals and sources of this tale at the time of the Brothers, doesn't this seem to you to be *somewhat* messed up? As if they told the tale wrong? It really is illogical in its presentation (in Zipes)...and compared with the Perrault tale,
DONKEYSKIN (which makes perfect sense and succeeds as an alternate version of this tale), it's plain awful.
Anyone agree with me? Did the Brothers get the tale wrong? Or did they just tell what they collected?
-Douglas
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(4/23/04 5:29 pm)
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Re: Grimms' Thousand/All Furs = a terribly flawed DONKEYSKIN
Douglas,
Maybe I'm reading your question incorrectly, if so I apologize. However, she doesn't marry her father in Grimm's All Furs. She marries the king of the land she's run to. After she runs away and sleeps in the tree, she's found by "the king who was lord of this forest." (p. 261, Zipes, _The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm_, 1987) From that transition point in the story, "the king" means the new king she's encountered, not her father.
Unless I've been misreading this, which is not outside the realm of possibility.
LauraMc
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(4/23/04 6:06 pm)
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Re: Grimms' Thousand/All Furs = a terribly flawed DONKEYSKIN
Nope, Laura, yours is the common interpretation (although Freudian critics from Bettelheim onwards can never seem to resist the urge to explore the juxtaposition). It's a question that has come up in every class where I've taught (or studied) 510-B. My German isn't good enough yet for me to read it in the original and to see if the confusion is caused by the translation ... has anyone out there read it in the original?
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duglis
Registered User
(4/23/04 8:25 pm)
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Re: Grimms' Thousand/All Furs = a terribly flawed DONKEYSKIN
Laura wrote: After she runs away and sleeps in the tree, she's found by "the king who was lord of this forest." (p. 261, Zipes, _The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm_, 1987
It's my mistake. I read this as being the same king for some very
odd reason. Maybe i was under some sort of spell?
My entire point goes out of the window if it is a different king,
of course! In that case, it's a fine variant
Doug
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Don
Registered User
(4/23/04 11:38 pm)
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It's truly "relative"
There is, if you'd like there to be, ambiguity in the Grimms' version. Whether the "the king who was lord of this forest" is her relative or not depends on whether one takes the relative clause as restrictive or nonrestrictive. In German, the relative clause is always set off by a comma. So it's not entirely clear whether it's "the king who was lord of the forest" (i.e., a new king other than her father) or "the king, who was lord of the forest" (i.e., the king who has already been mentioned--that is, her father--who, by the way, was lord of the forest she had fled into). This tale type, of course, is based on the father's incestuous desires, and this ambiguity only intensifies it. In English translations it's a question of whether the translator uses a comma before "who" or not.
Edited by: Don at: 4/23/04 11:42 pm
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(4/24/04 4:50 am)
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Original text
The original sentence is "Da trug es sich zu, daß der König,
dem dieser Wald gehörte, darin jagte.", according to gutenberg.spiegel.de/grim...lerlei.htm
As Don said, it is ambigous if you want it to be. Maybe I'm just naive, but I always read this as another King. Of course, we have the lead up to that (she is walking for a long time till she reaches that forest, and remember, even at the Grimm Brothers time the countries that form todays Germany were small and many). And all the questioning by the hunters and the king when they capture her, they should surely regcognize the cloak?
But again, it is interpretation and if you really want it, you can read it both ways. The language allows for that.
Best regards, Lotti
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duglis
Registered User
(4/24/04 9:14 pm)
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Re: Original text
Just came across something else...
If anyone has THE BIG BOOK OF GRIMM (It is a 200 page black and white comic adaptation of the Grimms' tales),
check out the All Furs story. It has the father marrying the daughter at the end.
This is all very confusing.
-Douglas (who'll stick to DONKEYSKIN)
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duglis
Registered User
(4/30/04 10:50 pm)
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Big Book of Grimm
Does anyone else have the Big Book of Grimm and what do you think about it?
-Doug
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