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Author
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Comment
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dagny
Unregistered User
(3/14/05 3:45 pm)
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myth vs fairy tale
hello, i am writing my grad school dissertation on a topic relating to fairy tales, and was wondering if anyone could help me to find some examples of descent definition of what a fairy tale is opposed to a myth.. as well as examples of where the two have been confused in lit crit. i have maria warners def. relating to the historical context of the story, from her book "from the beast to the blond" as well as the discussion of ernst bloch's inability to properly define them as explained in jack zipes essay "the utopian function of fairy tales and fantasy" but i was wondering if anyone has run across more info. any help would be greatly apreciated.
thanks
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/15/05 11:35 am)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
IMO a myth is a story about a Divine Being.
I don't use the term fairy tale when I want specificity. I prefer the term wonder tale (separate from legend & folk tale).
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redtriskell
Registered User
(3/16/05 10:15 pm)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
To me, a myth (as BlackSheep pointed out) has an element of divinity. I think of myths as being very specifically related to religion of one kind or another. Fairy tales, even with their improbable settings and devices, are still ultimately about regular people. Even princesses are human.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(3/17/05 10:36 am)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
I don't have the origins on hand, but "fairy tales" (derived from the celtic) originally meant "tales of wonder". So a fairy tale is a story meant for entertainment purposes. Nowadays movies and television fill that role.
A myth is a cultural story which is often used to explain something such as the reason we have a moon. As such, myths often have a religous basis, as the Greek myths do.
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/17/05 11:14 am)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
In the English tradition a cultural origin story which explains something and is supposedly true would be called a legend unless it featured a Divine Being when it would qualify as a myth so:
Giant makes hill by dropping rocks = legend,
Hill is really sleeping dragon = legend,
A God made hill while throwing rocks at enemy = myth,
Angel kills dragon which then forms hill = arguable case.
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aka Greensleeves
Registered User
(3/17/05 3:00 pm)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
Although I have no specific references to point you toward, this was a subject of no little discussion in my college myth/fairy tale/legend classes. I'm not sure there are universally accepted definitions, or any classification that won't blur or mislabel according to someone else's view.
The working definition we used was that a myth is an account that helps a culture define itself--it tells a society where it came from, what it believes most strongly, and often how their world came about. They are a society's defining foundation. They're not necessarily fictional. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a Judeo-Christian myth. Arguably, the stories of Paul Revere's ride or the Boston Tea Party fall into this category.
Fairy tales are more intimate--instead of the sweeping cultural statements made by myths, fairy tales deal with the psyche, the world inside ourselves. The characters, events, and images are symbolic and intended to ease or confront fears, changes, growing up, etc.
Legends tend to be inspiring and location-specific. They foster local pride and a sense of unity for a group of people--like the story of "Moonrakers" or Bigfoot, or Paul Bunyan. Blacksheep's "Giant makes hill by dropping rocks" is a perfect example.
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redtriskell
Registered User
(3/17/05 11:48 pm)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
I respectfully disagree that either Paul Revere or the Boston Tea Party qualify as myth. They are legendary, certainly- boosted by years of retelling- but since both Paul and irate colonists were actually real, I don't think they can possibly qualify. I realize this means that I think of myths as essentially fictional, while legends seem to me more based in actual events or people. Though over time and embellishment, legends can become myths. So in a thousand years when all historic reference is gone, Paul Revere will be a mythic piece of America. I think King Arthur is the perfect example of myth, legend, and fairy tale in one convenient package. Myth: he was the chosen king, not only by blood, but also by the wishes of a god- Christian or Celt, take your pick. Legend: the slight, but growing archealogical (sp?) evidence that there was indeed a powerful warlord/king attempting to rule the whole of Britain after the departure of Rome. Fairy tale: well, the story, of course. Kings, chivalry, cataclysmic battles, wizards, dragons, quests etc. etc.
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/18/05 8:19 am)
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Re: myth vs fairy tale
The English word myth is derived from the ancient Greek word muthos which refers to a story about a divine being. The use of the word myth to mean fiction/lie is a comparatively recent usage which originated with Christians who wanted to disparage the study of Pagan cultures. A myth (about a Divine Being) is different from a mythic story (myth-like) or a mythical story (fictional/a lie).
The Boston tea party, for example, has no religious significance and references no Divine Beings and therefore cannot be linguistically, philosophically, or historically defined as a myth (except in the sense that parts of the traditional folk story are lies). Although if anyone would like to attempt that definition I'll certainly go through the relevant points with them. It can however be accurately described as mythic (myth-like) or in parts mythical (fictional/including lies).
Legends are specifically stories which are claimed to be true. Greensleeves is correct that the English moonrakers tales (which are also folktales) and the American bigfoot stories are legends (but are Sasquatch part of a mythos? ;) ).
King Arthur is a fascinating example of how Victorian propaganda has skewed many contemporary people's view of the history of tales so I'm going to risk starting a row by making a few points.
Yes Redtriskell the Arthur cycles of stories contain many legends and wonder tales but there are no myths in the corpus (except in the sense of myth = fiction/lie). All British Kings claimed Divine Right (as do many power holding groups e.g. many U.S. Christians choose to believe that George W. Bush was chosen by their God to impose His/his will on the world as far as possible!) but none of their histories are myths (except for the fictional/lying bits. We could also define some of them as mythic = myth-like). In the oldest wonder tales, which were written by Christian monks for a Christian audience about Christian characters (no "Celtic" Deities in evidence!), Arthur is little more than a local warleader. He is certainly neither divine nor of religious significance. Bear in mind that Christian Saint stories are usually referred to in English as legends and not myths despite their much stronger religious significance (even the foundation stories for Marian pilgrimages are "merely" described as histories or legends because Mary was/is not believed to be a Divine Being by any orthodox Christian sect).
And, to open a new strand, "urban myths" are neither exclusively urban nor myths. What they are is contemporary legends.
There's more in my head but I'll shut up now. :)
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(3/18/05 1:20 pm)
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Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales????
So with that definition in mind, what would you say was a good example of a contemprary legend, Black Sheep? Personally, I'm not a definition kind of person. I like things that break the rules. And why do we have to put things in pigeonholes anyway?;)
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/18/05 2:39 pm)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
So the pigeons can find them of course!
And beacause the person who began this thread asked us to.
Contemporary legend: phantom hitchhiker.
More pigeonholes: fables, memorates, and tall stories (which I grew up calling yarns).
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redtriskell
Registered User
(3/20/05 11:41 pm)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
While I must admit that early the Christian Church certainly had an agenda to demonize all things pagan and strike all evidence of any other deities, I still think the earliest recorded Arthurian stories utilize a distinctly divine right sort of approach. The widespread usage of "my lineage or right to the throne can be traced to a god" does not, in my opinion, reduce the divine quality associated with myth. To use another example, Hercules also fits the bill for crossing lines between myth- bastard son of a god; legend- possibly there was a guy; and fairy tale- the twelve trials. I also confess that, to me, the definitions are merely windowdressing. All of it can be placed under the umbrella of "wonder story" and everything else is just for fun. Besides, when you think about it, there are really only about ten stories that people have been telling and writing over and over again for millenia; the good part is what the bard does with the idea. :D
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/21/05 11:09 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
Herakles and Hercules were demi-Gods who were worshipped and I have no problem with their stories being defined as myths because they were/are Divine Beings with religious significance.
The earliest Arthurian stories don't emphasise "the divine right of kings" because the Arthurian canon only begins to emphasise this once it had been adopted as useful propaganda by the Norman royals who mostly stole their thrones and therefore needed to manipulate ideas of kingship to try to justify their illegal/illegitimate seizure of power through war/violence (like Arthur!).
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redtriskell
Registered User
(3/21/05 10:33 pm)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
So are you saying that worship is a necessary element of the definition of myth? If so, I think an even better argument could be made that Arthur can be classed as a myth... it would depend on how you define "worship". If, for example, naming one's children after someone in order to curry favor with said someone is a worshipful act, then the queen of England "worshiped" Arthur when she named her son. Alternatively, if naming was not a worshipful act, then why bother to name your son after the once and future king?
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/22/05 12:49 pm)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
IMO the essential element for tale to be a myth is that it's about a Divine Being. If someone wants to add to that basic requirement then I'm interested in listening to their reasons. It might be possible to argue for a tale on grounds of its religious significance _but_ traditionally, historically, that isn't enough for a tale to qualify as a myth.
In English speaking cultures neither Mary nor Christian saints have tales called anything beyond legends (or histories). "Worship" is a difficult definition in and of itself. It derives from the Old English meaning literally "worth-relationship". In Catholicism, which is the orthodox Christian sect which most emphasises the role of Mary and their saints, only the Deity (either singly or in trinity) is worshipped. Other beings with religious significance to Catholics are "merely" revered or venerated (etc.).
I have an unusual perspective on the Arthurian tales because I've studied contemporary British Pagan religious practises. Many "Celtic" Pagans use the Arthurian stories as a basis for religious practices and some Pagans even worship selected characters from the tales as Deities but I haven't encountered any Pagans who worship Arthur as a God (not even in an ancestor-worshipping way). Even among practising Pagans it's not usual to refer to Arthurian tales as myths.
Naming your child after an aunt or grandmother etc isn't religious worship or even, in the Christian/English context, ancestor-worship. When Henry VIII's older brother was named Arthur (by his father) it was for the purposes of political propaganda which failed because Arthur died and his ill-regarded younger brother, in fact, became one of the most successful Kings England ever had ("we propose but the Gods dispose" as the saying goes). The political propaganda was required because the Tudors had stolen the throne (like the Norman propagandists before them!). As you say Redtriskell the same stories are repeated again and again.
Arthur sleeps in fairyland like dozens of other fairytale characters. Sleeping isn't specifically a divine trait.
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redtriskell
Registered User
(3/23/05 12:48 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
I love this board! It is never boring. At any rate... BlackSheep, what you say about religious practice among modern Pagans is very interesting. I guess I have a very broad definition of myth in my head. I view Arthur as a myth primarily because he seems to fill the same role (in an intuitive way for me) as a god. Not specifically because anyone prays to him or seeks solace from the ills of the world, but because he stands for something greater- a grace that seems woefully lacking in our modern society. As to Catholic saint stories being labelled as legends...well, this makes perfect sense if one believes that said saints were real people who had real lives. Like Paul Revere from the earlier post. I sure do enjoy batting ideas around for the pure pleasure of it... thanks for the brain food.;)
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catja1
Registered User
(3/23/05 4:37 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
Actually, the Greek term "muthos" means simply "story." It's a generic term, much like "Marchen" in German.
The most useful definition, and one that I've found a great many other folklorists use, is a functionalist one -- that is, the myth/legend/folktale division is based upon how those stories are *used* in the culture that creates them. There's also some stuff from Max Luthi mixed up in here. But the important thing to remember is that all of these definitions are fluid, and the barriers between myth and legend, and legend and folktale, are extremely porous. There simply *isn't* any hard-and-fast universally agreed-upon definition for any of these terms, and behaving as if there is is a mistake.
"Myth," generally, is a story about a *cosmic* truth. It's the Big Important Truths about Big Important Things: how the world came to be, how it will end, the relationship of the human with the divine, and so forth. It will almost always involve gods in some capacity, but the key thing is that it tells a story of cosmic importance. Myth can take place in no-time, no-space (Myth time!), but it doesn't have to -- many Greek and Roman myths have specific locales, for example. How much "this world" action occurs depends largely on the cosmology of the people involved, but the key thing is that a myth does have something to do with cosmology, or Why Things Are The Way They Are. Sorry for the capitals, but myth does deal with those kind of subjects. :)
Legends may have overlapping elements with myth -- gods may be characters, for example -- but legends generally are treated as folk *history*, as opposed to *religion.* Their themes aren't as... cosmic as those of myths, and aren't as earth-shaking, perhaps? Though the people telling them may view them as extremely important, they're not placed on the same level as full-blown myths. The thing about legends, also, is that they are almost always real-time, real-space stories. The perspective is very firmly in *our* world. In fact, most legends tend to be about the eruption of another, supernatural dimension, into everyday reality. A very holy person performs miracles, a great king with supernatural help founds a kingdom, there's fairies in them thar hills. Legends are told as if they were real history. Myth -- a little different, even if the people whose myth it is are literalists; there's a difference between cosmic importance and local importance, even though the two may sometimes seem to slide together. Also, you can be perfectly historically verifiable, and yet still be a "legendary" figure: Charlemagne's battles, etc. are a matter of record, but the stories about him sleeping under this or that mountain are legends.
Folk tales are in some ways the easiest to define: they are told and understood as wholly fictional. Fairy tales (Zaubermarchen is a *much* better term, as most "stories about fairies" tend to be legendary) are a specific subset of folk tales, concerned with magic. The thing about fairy tales is that they are, as Luthi says, completely "one-dimensional": not just in terms of character depth, but mainly, in terms of the world itself. There is no separation, in a fairy tale, between everyday reality and the supernatural -- it all exists in the same dimension. No one in a fairy tale stops and says, "Wait a minute! Frogs don't *talk*!" It's just taken as a matter of course. Whereas in a legend, that would be, like, the entire point: "This is the spot where the frog talked to Clement the Great!"
It gets kind of confusing because there's so much overlap in motif and tale type among myths, legends, and folktales -- talking animals, forbidden rooms, wounded kings/queens, and so forth. Folk narratives of all levels in a given culture all tend to draw on the same kinds of symbolism; too, the myths of a conquered/converted people often become the legends and fairy tales of the conquerors. Not to mention trade routes, traveling storytellers, intermarriage, et cetera, all of which contribute to a hodge-podge of different stories. Which is why it's much handier to divide tales up not by this or that element of the story they tell, but by how that particular story is *understood*, within the culture that tells it.
Edited by: catja1 at: 3/23/05 4:40 am
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(3/23/05 5:00 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
I must say I think that's a very clear, lucid, interpretation of the different terms and I'm wondering, catja,what you think about magic realism in the light of what you've said. Of course magic realism began in Latin America but it's now been taken up world wide and it's evolved with different cultures. I'm wondering why it is we feel a need for this form in the 21st century.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(3/23/05 8:36 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
I second Alisson's opinion, catja. Thank you for the helpful information.
As to magical realism, I don't think it fits into the myth/legend/folktale categories unless the author specifically uses fairy tale tropes--and even then it would not fit into catja's description of the folkloric view of fairy tales since the stories are more three-dimensional.
Which brings me to a separate point: numerous fairy tale retellings now in existence have very three-dimensional aspects, with full-blown characters and surprise and concern over the magic. I'm thinking in particular of Angela Carter's and Neil Gaiman's versions which I believe are fairy tales, but don't seem to fit the folkloric definition--could it be that the evolution of the tales, as they have been taken up by modern writers, have rendered that definition too narrow?
Best,
Alice
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/23/05 11:45 am)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
Catja said: "Actually, the Greek term "muthos" means simply "story." It's a generic term, much like "Marchen" in German."
Actually, the Greek word "muthos" has a variety of specific meanings in specific contexts which, if you try to mix them all together into one English word, can be translated by a generalisation such as "story" but the derivation of the English word "myth" is, as with all etymologies, studied by tracing specific origins through specific meanings in specific contexts. Specificity is etymology's raison d'etre. There are useful etymologies for the various contemporary English meanings of myth etc in the OED.
I, generally, like your definitions Catja (particularly the frogs :) ) but I can't think of any myths which don't fit the specific definition "about a Divine Being" but do fit your more general definition. Could you give a few examples please?
The main problem with your more general definition of myth is that if it was applied to some non-English/Anglo/European/Western cultures it would lump their non-religious stories in with our religious stories. In my experience philosophical Taoists and non-religious Buddhists often object to that sort of inappropriate scholarly cultural appropriation and categorisation of their traditions. Then we head towards arguments about who has what "rights" to use which tradition and for what purpose... aarrgghh!
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/23/05 12:06 pm)
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Re: Contemporary legends, myths, fairy tales or folktales???
P.S. Wasn't there an ancient Egyptian frog Deity? If we can find an appropriate amphibic myth then we could evolve an entirely frog-based literary theory!
;)
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dagny
Unregistered User
(3/29/05 4:20 am)
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entertainment
interesting yo put it that way, my thesis argument is based on the premis that fairy tales as well as mythologies serve a similar societal role, one that goes beyond entertainment, that they serve to hold a mirror up to life so so speak, to confront people with their desires, as well as their fears, and to attempt to define a way of living...
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