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Author
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Comment
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cerys
Registered User
(5/2/06 9:00 pm)
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difference between folk and fairy tales
please could someone define the difference between a folk tale and a fairy tale. From looking around some say that folktales are a main genre with fairytales, myths and legends subgenres of it. Other people say that in a fairytale the character is passive like snow white whilst in a folktale the character has to do something and learn a lesson like in goldilocks and the three bears, little red riding hood and the three little pigs. I would love to get a correct definition if that is possible.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(5/3/06 6:20 am)
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folktale vs. fairy tale
According to most folklorists I've read, the difference is that a folktale is a story transmitted orally within a given culture, and a fairy tale is a literary creation. Once a folktale is written down, that particular variant becomes a fairy tale, but purely literary stories can be fairy tales too.
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searsmith
Registered User
(5/3/06 11:09 am)
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Fairy Tale v Folk Tale
As long as we are talking about stories that come out of an oral tradition, folk tale is the broader category. It's a tale told by the folk, and maybe later recorded and embellished, but not made original enough to be termed a new literary creation. Fairy tales are one type (there are others, such as the noodle story, the 'true' ghost story, and so on).
Fairy tales from this oral folk tradition are notoriously hard to
define; see the
wiki here. They aren't stories that just (or even often) contain
fairies. They are usually understood as stories that contain marvellous
elements of a traditional nature. They are also sometimes defined
by the types of narrative units they include (this after Vladimir
Propp's work). At any rate, they have a particular narrative
style, with stock and flat characters, situations, and other devices.
I find a combination of the style and substance arguments I've just
discussed to be the most convincing definitional basis for the fairy
tale.
Some people limit fairy tales to stories of class ascension or aristocratic action (princes, princesses, and the peasants who become them or rich like them), but I think this is too narrow. That would mark off a number of wonderful stories we class as fairy tales.
Others mean only European folk stories with magical elements when they say fairy tales, often because of the above assumption. But there are fairy tale collections from around the world, including the excellent Pantheon series and Andrew Lang's colored fairy tale books.
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