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Author
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Comment
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snigglefaerie
Unregistered User
(4/27/05 2:53 pm)
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Fairy Tales = Adult Entertainment?
I heard that originally, fairy tales were intended for adult entertainment. My question is (roughly) when the shift occurred and why.
Thanks! (To anyone who knows)
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(4/28/05 9:41 am)
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Re: Fairy Tales = Adult Entertainment?
It wasn't adult entertainment but general entertainment. Some are more suited to adults and some are more suited to children. It's as if one took everything on TV (as a whole) and tried to classify it as children or adult.
Part of it too has to do with the age of the characters. Many of the characters are teens, and it's common that the hero or heroine of the story is often the youngest.
I don't know for sure, but the "childification" of fairy tales seemed to start during the the Edwardian/Victorian period. It would seem to have come from the attitude that fantasy in general were for the young. Adults needed to come to terms with the demands of reality.
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/28/05 10:23 am)
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Re: Grimm
The Victorians "cleaned up" a lot of things (including Shakespeare!). There's also quite a bit of scholarship on how the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales were progressively edited to be more child- and family-appropriate.
If interested, check out One Fairy Story Too Many by John
M. Ellis.
Best,
Erica
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(4/28/05 12:43 pm)
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Re: Grimm
The mainstream conventional wisdom was that the normally legal/biographer Grimms were acting as cultural historians for the whole range of stories--as part of the new cultural nationalism to identify/tie "Indo-European culture", after Burton's discovery of "Arabian Nights"--and the tellings were adjusted accordingly after they caught on...
One of the few times we see a Grimm collection identified as "Children's" tales, it was tied to collections of tales about Mary and the saints, as most of the "untold" stories from "Dear Mili" were cannibalized from.
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/28/05 1:47 pm)
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_The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales_ by Maria Tatar
Here's a good source on the various editions the Grimms did; what changes they made and why.
_The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales_ by Maria Tatar
Here are some interesting notes from the book.
ttp://tinyurl.com/cdn5r
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/28/05 8:39 pm)
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Re: Grimms
I think the Ellis and Tatar (thanks for mentioning that one, Rosemary) books do a good job of pointing out that the Grimm brothers were in fact under certain pressures to make the tales more palatable for families, and, of course, for other reasons. People really were having conversations about what literature was fit for children way back when.
Best,
Erica
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snigglefaerie
Unregistered User
(4/30/05 12:47 pm)
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Re: Grimms
Thank you so much! As soon as I saw the posts, I went out and read "The Hard Facts of the Grimm's Fairy Tales," and it was helpful.
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