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Author
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Comment
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linste
Unregistered User
(1/19/06 10:07 am)
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fairy tale adaptability!
For my dissertation on fairy tales I have been looking at different variations of sleeping beauty and snow white in poetry, film, feminism, adult novels e.t.c. I am now looking at why they are so easily adpated and work so well in different contexts other than as children's stories.
I would love to hear anybodys views or comments. please reply ;)
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(1/19/06 12:16 pm)
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flexible stories
I tend to think the susceptibility of fairy tales to infinite readings is part of the job description. They wouldn't be so persistent and pervasive if they weren't so flexible. The actual plots are skeletal and archetypical, the characters tend to be one dimensional-- even single traits embodied (Good and Evil, Wise and Foolish). That allows a lot of freedom on the audience's part: they can map personal experiences onto the bare bones of the story. I think fairy tales *work* because we get out of stories what we take to them. Which literary versions are you working with? I was just reading Ann Sexton's Transformations, and I was curious about the way she interpreted some of the fairy tales-- particularly Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel describes an incestuous mother-daughter relationship, and a controversial biography of Sexton released by one of her therapists mentions, among other things, her sexual abuse of her daughter. I think it's clear our experiences inform the way we read/hear stories. Didn't Freud write something about how we're all playing out characters from fairy tales-- the witch or the maiden or the lost child?
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(1/19/06 4:37 pm)
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Re: flexible stories
Plot. Plot and archetypical characters. Fairy tales are based not on the particular prose or telling of one person but on the elements. Stories are remembered by their elements, not words (as one would with a poem).
Sleeping Beauty
Introduction
-Beauty is cursed
Rising Tension
-Beauty discovers spindal and goes into coma
Climax
-Prince finds and "kisses" Beauty (varies according to form) to bring her back to "life."
Anti-Climax
-Happily ever after
Snow White
-Snow White escapes death and finds dwarfs
Rising Tension
-Snow White is persued by Queen to the point of death
Climax
-Snow White is (accidently) saved by prince and comes back to life
Anti-Climax
-Happily ever after
It's been a while (maybe a score) since I did this sort of analysis, so I'm not certain if I've left anything out. These aren't exactly the best examples either, since the heroine isn't in control of their destiny. Even in Cinderella it's the help of either a fairy godmother or the spirit of her late mother (or some other outsider) who helps her to win the prince. In fact many of the old folkstories involve the help of others (but that's another story).
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(1/19/06 9:02 pm)
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protagonists being helped
[[ the heroine isn't in control of their destiny. Even in Cinderella it's the help of either a fairy godmother or the spirit of her late mother (or some other outsider) who helps her to win the prince. In fact many of the old folkstories involve the help of others (but that's another story). ]]
I think this is an interesting difference between many popular tales and the sort of thing that modern 'how to write' experts tell us.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/20/06 12:12 am)
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words
"Stories are remembered by their elements, not words "
I disagree with this--the plain but often rhythmic language is a huge part of why fairy tales are remembered. For instance, does anybody think of Snow White without remembering "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all," or of Little Red Riding Hood without the call and response with mounting tension of "Oh, Grandma, what big eyes you have," "All the better to see you with, my dear," etc. One of the most memorable parts of SW and Rose Red is the Bear's chant "Snow White, Rose Red, don't beat your lover dead." The language of fairy tales is often very memorable because it's rhythms, patterns, and repetitions sound very ritualistic.
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linste
Unregistered User
(1/20/06 6:07 am)
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fairy tale adaptability
Thankyou for your comments! Fristiw, thanks for your comments on the way in which fairy tale characters are pretty one dimensional, it is something I havent actually thought about until now.
Anyone else have any thoughts/opinions about why fairy tales are so adaptable?
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(1/20/06 11:33 am)
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Re: words
Although those are poetry within the stories. I was referring more to how the storyteller remembers the story. It's a lot easier to remember the elements of a story than to try to memorize the exact text. That's why there are often so many variations.
And even the poetry can change, for instance it's not "Mirror, mirror..." in the version posted on SurLaLune but "Looking glass, looking glass..."
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/20/06 2:54 pm)
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Re: words
How storytellers remember the stories is interesting. For a paper I did a few years back, I read a bit of folklore scholarship on the subject, and from what I can remember, it seems as though your genuine storytellers do recreate and re-piece together the story every time they tell it--but they do so out of set phrases and chunks of words (which in part explains the Homeric epithets--they were set phrases with a set number of syllables that scanned in a certain way and could be interjected when the teller needed to fill that amount of space). So it's really a bit of both.
While I would never wish to question HAH, "looking glass" doesn't scan!
But then, both words and plot elements change over time.
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