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Author
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Comment
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Hiraeth
Registered User
(3/16/04 4:38 pm)
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The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
Hi,
I am currently studying the role of landscape in fairytales, specifically in german fairy tales such as hansel and gretel. I have found the SurLaLune annotations very helpful, and I am aware of the important role of the forest in german folklore, but I would like to find more sources of info about other types of landscape and what they bring to the stories. Any ideas??
Hiraeth.
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Don
Registered User
(3/16/04 5:07 pm)
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Re: The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
You're probably already familiar with Jack Zipes's essay on the forest in his book on The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World.
My article on "Children, War, and the Imaginative Space of Fairy Tales" in The Lion and the Unicorn
It's not clear whether your focusing only on folktales and/or Grimms' stories, but landscape also plays an important role in German literary fairy tales--for example, in Ludwig Tieck's "Blond Eckbert" and in the tales embedded in Novalis's fairy-tale novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Take a look too at Hermann Hesse's story "The Forest Dweller."
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Hiraeth
Registered User
(3/16/04 5:29 pm)
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The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
thanks very much! I am probably going to focus on german folklore, as I want to explore what it says about life in germany at the time the stories came about.
Is your article available to read online, I would be interested in it.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(3/16/04 8:22 pm)
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Swamps and Rivers, etc.
Just some other stories: The Girl who trod on a loaf - Doesn't she decend into a swamp? Then there are the reflections into river stories or the lost gifts, for example, The Goosegirl and HCA's The Seven Swans - not a German folktale; rivers, thus, seem to be agents of change. Mountains seem to imply justice, e.g. The Water of Life has a crevice in a mountain in which the bad brothers get stuck. Gardens also play an important part in many tales, often with a solo tree playing an important or central role as a symbol of a lost loved one, i.e. the Juniper Tree and Cinderella.
This is just off the top of my head. I know there are other landscape features that are important.
I hope this isn't too simplistic a response.
Jess
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Hiraeth
(3/17/04 11:01 am)
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The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
no, thats great, rivers have interesting roles. Also I read somewhere that lakes or crossing a lake can be like baptism, a developmental stage for the character. Oohhh it's all so interesting. You know Jack Zipes, well does anyone know if he wrote his book 'From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World' in german originally? It would be really helpful if I could find it in german.
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(3/17/04 5:08 pm)
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Re: The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
As far as I know, Zipes writes in English--he translates from German to English, but I don't think he writes in German.
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(3/19/04 9:45 am)
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Re: The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
Remember also that Authors can only write about what the
have knowledge of. Living one's total life in a forest
wouldn't let the author write about a great sea voyage.
As for allegory, we can never truly know, if we can't get
inside the author's mind. It's easy to attribute such, to
stories when the Author has long been dead. There are
those who deliberately use allegory and there are those who
only write for the entertainment, and any attributable after
effects (or affectives) are purely sub-conscious, at best.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(3/19/04 3:00 pm)
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Re: The meaning of landscape in fairy tales
"New Post Re: The meaning of landscape in fairy tales Remember also that Authors can only write about what the
have knowledge of. Living one's total life in a forest
wouldn't let the author write about a great sea voyage."
Hmmm, so I had better have the publisher trash my Caldecott Honor Book set in China (where I have never been), can my Jewish Book Award novel set in Poland (where I have never been), and dump my Nebula-winning short story set in Neverland (where I certainly have never been.) And what about my fairy tales set under the ocean or in faerie?
Imagination and good research serve authors well.
Snarkily,
Jane
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Jess
Unregistered User
(3/19/04 5:48 pm)
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And good, knowledgable friends
as in my friend from Taiwan who tells me when even my research about Taiwan isn't quite right.
Jess
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(3/22/04 9:48 am)
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Re: ouch
Nothing in life is that "black and white". I did not intend to indicate any totality on an absolute. My intention was to remind folks once again, that viewing "ancient" tales with todays expirences, is partially invalid. Ancient peoples had to, as we do today, "speak" from personal expirences and knowledge.
Yes, one can learn about a subject with out "going there", as one can learn about murder without committing it, ala Agatha C.
Learning is repository. For someone in the 1400's to write about a Great Sea Voyage would require either an actual expirence or the learning from someone with that expirence.
However, I see your post containing a great amount of anger and rediclule. Such is the nature of life at times. I will not, hence forth, burden you with any further posts or opinions.
Have a good life.
Warren
Edited by: RymRytr1 at: 3/22/04 10:09 am
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janeyolen
Registered User
(3/22/04 9:29 pm)
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Re: bandaid for your owie
Not anger so much as exhaustion because that is an argument writers hear all the time. And it ridicules our imaginations and our ability to research and our ability to touch on the numinous and to stick a toe into the unknowable.
Jane
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Jess
Unregistered User
(3/23/04 1:02 am)
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All opinoins are important in a board
Ah, Warren, I have frequently made comments that others disagree with...sometimes adamently or even sarcastically. Don't leave the board just because someone challenges your opinion. Come back and share as many of your thoughts are interesting. The beauty of a board such as this is that you can state your opinion, others can disagree and the audience as a whole is wiser for knowing the two sides, or perhaps even better it sparks a wider discussion.
The truth is it is easier to write about something you know or think you know intimately, but much more difficult to put yourself in another time or place or culture. We have had the discussion about how our culture shades our interpretations and our writings. So you aren't entirely off base, but we also it is fun as a writer to try to put yourself in a new situation and try to determine what your character would be in that culture or time. My Tawainese character has been criticized by Americans as sterotyped and applauded by my several Tawianese friends as being right on the money. So what do I do? I don't know Tawain's true culture myself, only second hand, which is the right approach? Do I give more cultural background for the American audience or do I let it go?
So, I can see some of your points, Warren.
Jess
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CrCeres
Unregistered User
(3/24/04 9:49 pm)
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Landscape and German stories
I can't claim much expertise in the relationship between stories and their native lands, but the query reminded me of something my mom once said. It was during a discussion of the truly grim elements of stories collected by the Brothers Grimm. "Yes, living on the edge of the Black Forest made the people a little weird." I believe the example she had in mind involved a wolf swallowing a little girl whole.
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