The fairy tale as such emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth century as a literary
genre after a long incubation period that goes back long before the origin of books—
probably as far as Mesolithic period and perhaps as early as the Paleolithic, between
10,00 and 40,000 years ago. The traditional oral cultures that created the oral antecedent
of the fairy tale used them for ritualistic purposes. The emphasis we find in certain tails
upon the magical efficacy of repetition suggests the worldview described by Mircea
Eliade in his discourse on traditional society.
About repetition, writes Eliade, traditional humanity “acknowledges no act which has not
been previously posited and lived by someone else, some other being who was not a man.
What he does has been done before. His life is the ceaseless repetition of gestures
initiated by others. . . . The gesture acquires meaning, reality, solely to the extent to
which it repeats a primordial act.”
The unrivaled importance of repetition is seared into the fairy tale, where in tales like The
Talking Eggs, The Drum, The Flute, or Diamonds and Toads, the ability to follow a
meaningless set of directions confers magical power upon the initiate, or lends the ritual
object magical properties the protagonist is able to control.
Intervening between the archaic words or mantra we can never recover and the fairy tale
was something folklorists call “the wonder folktale,” or “magic tale.” Jack Zipes claims
that the “wonder tale” existed for thousands of years, but perhaps this is a bit murky,
since we have no records of wonder tales dating from the Neolithic or Bronze Age
cultures, in whose great Mid-Eastern cities writing first developed, not as a means of
persevering stories, but to keep business accounts. Perhaps “the wonder tale” was a late
decay product of the breakdown in traditional societies, in which the rituals of ceaseless
repetition that were originally meant to abolish the continual flow of profane time
became in some sense nostalgic narratives; and the gods, ancestors or other exemplary
models whose acts had established the world, slowly became the oppressed, suffering, or
merely disadvantaged protagonists.
Nevertheless, whenever it emerged, under whatever political circumstances and for
whatever purpose, “the wonder tale” generally focused on miraculous transformations
that overcame the disadvantages of the hero and enabled him or her to prevail over
perilous circumstances and/or menacing superhuman adversaries and succeed in life.
The crucial factor that midwived the fairy tale from “the wonder folktale” was writing:
“as more and more wonder tales were written down in the 14th-17th centuries, they
constituted the genre of the fairy tale—or a term Jack Zipes uses interchangeably with
fairy tale, the “literary fairy tale.” The literary fairy tale laced the old wonder tale with
new elements yet it retained the salient emphasis upon the cursed, disadvantaged,
ostracized or marginalized individual—a character whose condition we might consider in
relationship to the scapegoat—and, more significantly, it retain an emphasis upon
magical transformation and a sense of wonder—the same sense which we associate with
children—and have since the late eighteenth century.. That magic can overcome all
forms of adversity remains a distinguishing mark of the fairy tale today—although
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sometimes it is the failure of magic, and the hopelessness of our expectations, with which
we are confronted.
If it was possible in the 17th century to say that there are as many fairy tales as there are
tellers, we may now say there are as many definitions of the fairy tale as there are fairy
tale scholars. However, the definition that seems most to have acquired near consensus
among folklorists is the one posited by none other than Jack Zipes, which synthesizes the
work of an earlier 20th century folklorists, including Jens Tismar.
"In his first short monograph, [Jens] Tismar set down the principles for a definition of the
literary fairy as genre:
1. it distinguishes itself from the oral folk tale in so far as it is written by a single
identifiable author;
2. it is thus synthetic, artificial, and elaborate in comparison to the indigenous
formation of the folk tale that emanates from communities and tends to be simple
and anonymous; the differences between the literary fairy tale and the oral folk
tale do not imply that one genre is better than the other; in fact, the literary fairy
tale is not an independent genre but can only be understood and defined by its
relationship to the oral tales as well as to the legend, novella, novel, and other
literary fairy tales that it uses, adapts, and remodels during the narrative
conception of the author."
The redirection of a traditional story by a single writer is perhaps the most difficult aspect
of the fairy tale definition, because we are used to conceiving of them as ancient and
traditional works: our cultural patrimony. Who wrote Cinderella? Who wrote Little Red
Riding Hood?
Well, studying the collections of fairy tales transcribed from the folk, we can see how
they are authored, even if the collector-transcriber could not. The fairy tales of Grimm,
for instance, represent the work of individuals rather than a community, culture or nationstate. Jacob Grimm was persuaded that the tales were remnants of an ancient German
culture; but, in order to ‘restore’ the contemporary tale to its ‘original state,’ he
communicated anthropological data to his brother, Wilhelm, who then smoothed the
language of the tales he collected. He artificially created a self-consciously archaic prose,
one that, while it came to seem the uninflected oracular language of the ancient tale,
really represented the best guess of an educated German citizen of the 19th century.
Zipes describes this kind of authorship with scholarly finesse: “the definition . . . of the
fairy tale,” he writes, “depends on the manner in which a narrator/author arranges known
functions of a tale aesthetically and ideologically to induce wonder and then transmits the
tale as a whole.”
Vladimir Propp, another scholar whose work is foundational in 20th century fairy tale
studies, provides a list of other defining characteristics which the fairy tale derived from
the wonder tale, in his The Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928). While these elements are
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not all present in every fairy tale, the represent a pattern or grammar that can help us to
recognize the fairy tale and discuss distinctions among tales.
“Most plots will follow a basic pattern which begins as the protagonist is confronted by a
taboo which he or she violates in some way; which leads to banishment or to the
assignment of a task or tasks.” In the story of Cupid and Psyche, for example, first
recorded in the second century, after violating the interdiction against gazing at Cupid,
her immortal lover, Psyche is assigned a set of tasks by Cupid’s vengeful mother,
Aphrodite: this includes dividing a pile of mixed grains into tidy piles (in which, having
heard Le Guin’s fairy tale you will be interested to learn, Psyche is assisted by friendly
ants), gathering wool from a flock of golden sheep (which she is again luckily assisted in
accomplishing), filling a bucket of water from the River Styx, and, ultimately, fetching a
box of beauty from Queen Persephone, the dark mistress of the Underworld.
Psyche has help with all of the tasks—in fact, she is strikingly different from the heroic
youngest daughter of Gifts, and with each task her thoughts tend immediately to despair
and suicide: Psyche’s responses are uncharacteristic of protagonists in fairy tales, but the
divine or supernatural assistance she receives is very typical. Zipes notes that
protagonists will have “encounters with all sorts of characters: a deceitful villain; a
mysterious individual or creature, who gives the protagonist gifts; three different animals
or creatures who are helped by the protagonist and promise to repay him or her; or three
different animals or creatures who offer gifts to help the protagonist, who is in trouble.
The gifts are often magical agents, which bring about miraculous change.” Eventually,
and you can read this in Zipes’s introduction on page roman numeral seventeen, “The
inimical forces are vanquished [and] the success of the protagonist usually leads to
marriage and wealth,” as, indeed, it does in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, as well as the
tale of the four daughters.
The conclusion in marriage is typical of Greek comedy as it is of Old and New Roman
and all comedy through Shakespeare, so we can say that the fairy tale suggests affinities
with the conventions of Comedy rather than Tragedy.
Again, while these elements tend to be present in fairy tales, they are not always so, but
the one ‘constant’ in the structure is that of “transformation” or “miraculous
transformation.”
The transitioning of wonder tale to fairy tale truly seems to gain momentum in the early
modern period: While “the growth of towns, religious conflicts, and peasant uprisings
[against Feudalism] affected both the subject matter and the use of the [wonder] tales,”
the introduction of printing from movable type,” was the single most important factor.”
As more and more [tales] were printed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries, they began to constitute . . . the literary fairy tale, which gradually took on its
own conventions (rooted in its oral antecedents) that appealed to a smaller and more
aristocratic reading public. It was first in Giovan Francesco Straparola’s Piacevoli notti
(translated as The Facetious Nights and The Delectable Nights, 1550-1553) and then in
Giambattista Basile’s Lo cunto de li cunti (better known as The Pentamerone, 1634-36)
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and Pompeo Sarnelli’s Posilecheata (1684) that wonder tales were fully adapted and
transcribed to amuse educated readers. . . . “ (JZ)
Despite the ingenuity of Italian authors, because they formed no social network to
support the spread of this new literature, it was in France that the literary fairy tale truly
took form. “By the mid-seventeenth century, aristocratic women had established literary
salons and were promoting a type of parlor game that incorporated the use of folk motifs
and narrative conventions. The participants were expected to show their wit and
expressiveness by inventing wondrous tales (contes de fees) that dealt with such subjects
as tender love, courtship, proper comportment, and the use of power. As these games
grew increasingly popular in Paris, players often wrote down or rehearsed the fairy tales
at home so that they might appear précieux (unique) or as natural as possible when asked
to recite. By 1690, authors such as Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy and Catherine Bernard
began first to incorporate fairy tales into their novels and then to publish entire
collections of fairy tales. The most famous writer from that era is Charles Perrault, who
in 1697 published his collection Histoire ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of
Times Past),” subtitled and thence translated into English in 1729 as Tales from Mother
Goose.” (JZ) Perrault designates the tales as having been told “by governesses and
grandmothers to their children” (MT).
“These aristocratic and bourgeois women and men performed their tales in the salons and
published them so that they might demonstrate their individuality, their eloquence, and
their wit or espirit. The tales were intended not just to amuse the listeners but also to
establish the conventions of a discourse on manners and civilité, with an implicit code
that corresponded to the standards of propriety. The resulting tales differed radically in
content and style from their originals, whether those had been heard from nurses,
governesses, or servants or had been read in books such as those by Straparola, Basile,
and other Italian writers. When these tales were adapted from the salon to the page they
were adapted even more, for the author could employ even more florid language and
invent even more extraordinary events. In addition, the literary fairy tales had a serious
undertone. Many, particularly those by women, criticize the policies of Louis XIV, whose
wars and conversion to orthodox Catholicism had ended France’s dominance as the
ruling power in Europe. The utopian projections of magnificent courtly life, where a just
ruler guarantees peace and happiness for his subjects, reveal the discontent of the writers
and their desire to change French society during the latter days of the Sun King’s rule . .
..” (JZ)
It is useful to keep in mind the subversive aspect of seventeenth century fairy tales
because we see it again and again in later tales, as we know from our reading in Block
and McKinley, among others.
It is important to remember, also, that “these fairy tales were written explicitly for adults,
even those by Perrault”—a point Zipes stresses so that we do not suppose Charles
Perrault was in any sense a children’s author. However, while he may not have intended
his tales to appeal to children, we know that they were read by children—or at least
young adults.
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During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, “fairy tales were printed in a
series of chapbooks called the Bibliothèque bleue that were sold by peddlers
(colporteurs) throughout France, central Europe and England—[where the sellers were
called chapmen.] In this format the tales were often translated and shortened, and their
language simplified.” (JZ) It was through these chapbooks that an increasingly educated
population of children became familiar with fairy tales and the tales, themselves, could
begin to claim a nostalgia appeal and the authority of tradition. (MJ)
Beginning in the mid eighteenth century, “despite the hostility of puritan censors,”
English authors “began to incorporate some fairy tales in volumes intended for children.
The most notable examples are found in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess: or, Little
Female Academy (1749) and in Magasin des enfans (translated in 1757 as The Young
Misses’ Magazine) by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Both Fielding and Leprince
de Beaumont use a larger frame tale of schooling to hold stories that illustrate lessons of
morals and manners. Often such embedded tales were later published separately.” (JZ)
“During the eighteenth century, the notion that fairy tales could be written and published
for children emerged against the usual hidebound conservative resistance. Although a
specific children’s culture was developing, in North America and much of Europe, fairy
tales were generally considered to be” inappropriate for children, and dangerous for
“promoting a sense of wonder based in superstitions, magic, and fantasy.” (JZ) A class
division began to act upon children’s literature: “while most poor children—the modern
peasantry—continued to hear oral wonder tales, children of the upper and educated
classes were urged toward reading material that would [help] them live rationally, in
accordance with Christian ideas and foster proper manners. The fairy tales of Fénelon,
Sarah Fielding, Mme Leprince de Beaumont, and other traditional writers of the
eighteenth century gradually wrested approval from the censorious only because they
were overly didactic and moralistic, and sustained patriarchal notions of power. Though
pleasurable to read, the literary fairy tale for children was clearly intended to instruct.
Amusement was secondary,” (JZ). although this would change dramatically within a
relatively brief period of time.
The nineteenth century saw several major changes to the nature, orientation and reception
of the fairy tale. E.T.A. Hoffman and other German Romantics utilized the adult fairy tale
to contain “sophisticated dialogues about social and political issues,” broadening the
critical component developed by the French salon authors. Fairy tales were published for
children during the early years of the century in inexpensive illustrated toybook form,
much like the chapbook form of previous decades, although these were regarded with
mixed feelings; some adults continued to regard them as not “healthy for the
development of children’s minds.” (JZ)
The cultural struggle over the fairy tale in Europe is nicely exemplified by the efforts of
Wilhelm Grimm, who, “began in 1819 to revise their collected tales, Kinderun
Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household tales, first published in 1812 and 1815), to
make them more suitable for children:” he added “Christian sentiments and removed
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erotic, cruel, or bawdy passages.” But, withal the sanitizing of the tales, “the fantastic and
wondrous elements remained;” (JZ) and, therefore the publication in England of Edgar
Taylor’s translation of the Grimms’ tales under the title German Popular Stories (1832)
signaled the determination of those who perceived underlying affinities between the
wonder of childhood and the magic of the fairy tale.
This new liberalism or progressivism can be traced in part to the ideas of “philosophers
and educators, such as the Swiss-born French philosopher and political theorist JeanJacques Rousseau, the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and the
German educator Friedrich Froebel,” the inventor of the “Kinder-Garten,” which
“emphasized liberty and play in learning.” The playful elements of the fairy tale were
thus accorded a pedagogical and conceptual value they had previously lacked.
Amusement was crucial for the well being of the mind of the child as a child.
“With the Industrial Revolution and the explosive growth of the middle classes between
1830 and 1900 the fairy tale for children came into its own.” From 1835 onwards Hans
Christian Andersen began publishing his tales, which won great acclaim throughout the
world; almost all were immediately translated into English and published in England and
America.” (JZ)
[and] during the first half of the nineteenth century, the majority of fairy tale writers for
children—Catherine Sinclair, George Cruikshank, and Alfred Crowquill,” [for example],
“emphasized lessons that were in keeping with the Protestant ethic. These were
industriousness, honesty, cleanliness, diligence, virtuousness-and male supremacy.” (JZ)
I’m skipping over the first part of the nineteenth century, but you can read these notes, if
you’d like in E-Companion.
“By 1830, most educators as well as the clergy had come to believe that children needed
fantasy in their lives. . . . It was preferred, of course, the imaginative literature would
serve a didactic goal, and tales of the Grimm Brothers other rehabilitated folktales were
valued both for their elements of fantasy and because they seemed to lend traditional
support to Protestant acculturation. However, as we know, of course, this began to
change dramatically after the middle of the century. Fairy tale writers began to make
dramatic demands upon the conceptual abilities of children—or, to say this is another
way, fairy tale writers began to credit children with a greater capacity for sophisticated
thought than had previously been considered; and they began to construct a notion of
childhood that was compatible with leaps of intuition, sophisticated humor, and a
fundamental sense of what was real or true. Jack Zipes writes that authors began “to turn
the [fairy tale] upside down and inside out, to question the traditional value system, and
to provide new endings—endings that appeared to contradict the notion of wonder and
transformation that had been so dominant in the wonder folktales.” These authors, who
heralded what has been called the Golden Age of Children’s Literature, included
William Makepeace Thackeray (The Rose and the Ring, 1855), George MacDonald
(“The Light Princess,” 1863), Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865),
Jean Ingelow (Mopsa the Fairy, 1869), Juliana Ewing (Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales,
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1822), Andrew Lang (Princess Nobody, 1884), Oscar Wilde (The Happy Prince and
Other Tales 1888), Kenneth Grahame (“The Reluctant Dragon,” 1898), Edith Nesbit
(“The Last of the Dragons,” 1899). These, and other writers began to experiment with the
fairy tale in ways that encouraged young readers not only to question their expectations
of literary experience, but to question the world around them, as well. They did not offer
prescriptions on good housekeeping and clean living.” Instead, they suggested that
conventional living could be stifling, boring, overly safe and predictable-and hinted
alternatives were at hand. (JZ)
If, as Steven Greenblatt as said, “the work of art is not the passive surface upon which
historical experience leaves its mark, but one of the creative agents in the fashioning and
refashioning of experience,” then it is here that the fairy tale begins to recast the mental
lives of children in ways that we might call liberating.
Perhaps the most important fairy tale of this period, and certainly the most influential,
was The Wizard of Oz (1900), a work modeled after the late nineteenth century European
model. “In his fourteen Oz books, Baum created an American fairy-tale saga; its use of
political and cultural commentary profoundly influenced the later direction taken by the
genre, as can be seen in the works of twentieth-century authors in England (e.g., J.R.R.
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) and Germany (e.g. Michael Ende) as well as the United States
(e.g. T.H. White). The Anglo-Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie, who has
himself written a fable for children (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1990) acknowledges
a long fascination with The Wizard of Oz a work that continues to shape books and films
today.” (JZ)
[Sidebar comment: Joel Chaston, a Wizard of Oz scholar, has called the popular 1939
movie “the most influential movie of all time.”]
“At the same time that Baum was making history in America, J.M. Barrie helped
[popularize] the fairy tale in England with Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow
Up (1904), based on characters who first appeared in his novel, The Little White Bird
1902). . . . during the London premiere of Peter Pan, the largely adult audience shouted
“Yes!” when Peter Pan asked whether they believed in fairies. It was a “Yes” heard again
the following year in New York, and it still echoes wherever and whenever versions
appear on stage or screen. Perhaps more than Baum’s Dorothy, Peter Pan has captured
the imagination of young and old audiences throughout the world.” (JZ)
“By the beginning of the twentieth century, in Europe and America the functions of the
fairy tale had shifted and expanded. The genre had become fully institutionalized: that is,
its production, distribution, and reception gained full acceptance within the public sphere
as it played a role in forming and maintaining a given society’s cultural heritage. Such
institutionalization both preserves the genre and involves it in socializing and
acculturating readers. Thus, in every specific time and place the genre is defined by the
interaction of writer publisher, and audience. The aesthetics of each fairy tale will depend
on how and why an individual writer chooses to intervene in an ongoing discourse.” (JZ)
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Beginning with the early twentieth century, whose turning was marked by the
enormously influential Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum, Zipes identifies three
distinct and conflicting currents in the fairy-tale tradition. These currents continue to be
relevant—to teachers, writers, parents, scholars and, last but not least, librarians..



The classic or conventional fairy tales of Perrault, the Grimms, and Andersen
were increasingly sanitized and made more “appropriate.” We see this in a raft of
illustrated books, some by distinguished artists and beautifully constructed, as
well as, of course, beginning in 1937, the films of Walt Disney.
Innovative fairy tales were composed, often parodic (and frequently with a
political edge); these introduced radical aesthetic and ideological changes,
particularly after the 1960s with the outpouring of feminist tales, by writers like
Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, Francesca Block, Robin McKinley, and others.
And orally presented fairy tales of different kinds were heard in homes, libraries,
schools, and recreation centers and spaces, often through the mass media.
I want to finish this genre lecture by considering Maria Tatar; we can see that Zipes’s
latter two categories loosely correspond to Tatar’s description of differing attitudes
toward the question of “how fairy tales could be put to the task of forming new social
roles and identities.”
Critics of the social function of the fairy tale advocate “recuperation and critique of the
classic canon,” which would encompass the re-examination of traditional material in
ways that look for meanings that have been lost or eclipsed. This would amount to a
scholarly project that abandons a set of premises and expectations associated with
patriarchy and colonialism.
Another allied school of thought argues for the “revival of ‘heretical’ texts (stories
repressed or suppressed from cultural memory and the formation of a new canon);” these
would consist of tales that have fallen out of the classic canon, and their recovery would
help us gain a more diverse and controversial body of literature.
A third alternative is one that advocates “rewriting old tales,” presumably ones that
transgress against the values and behaviors the older tales had been used to valorize, and,
“inventing new ones.” Writing new tales is problematical because, as we know, fairy
tales exist within a set of conventions. As with all genres, the conventions of the fairy tale
are reinscribed with each tale, and thus, to a lesser or greater extent, the conventions
themselves re-write the tale. The challenge for authors who would “invent” new tales,
lies with finding inspiration in the way we live now, and drawing upon wonder and magic
to confront the real dangers and disasters—be they socio-political, or crises of faith, or a
sense of lost immediacy—we face today.
Children’s literature as we know will continue to incorporate all three of these
approaches.
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“A major change in the use of the fairy tale fully took hold in the twentieth century with
their incorporation into children’s formal education. . . . With the help of teachers and
librarians, the fairy tale became a staple of education throughout the West, and naturally a
canon for children was established: “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Frog
Prince,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “Beauty and the Beast,”
“Rumpelstiltskin,” Sleeping Beauty,” “Bluebeard,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Rapunzel,” and
so on.” (JZ)
“Of course, some still distrusted the fairy tale, believing (then as now) that their violence
and cruelty affect children . . . The impulse to sanitize the classic tales . . . gained force in
the United States after 1945 out of fears that the original versions might give children
nightmares or strange ideas. Some religious groups have always objected to stories
containing witches and magic and have led to campaigns to ban fairy tales (and, into the
twenty-first century, the Harry Potter novels) from schools and libraries.” (JZ) Against
this cultural censorship were published works, such as Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of
Enchantment (1976) that argued for the beneficial aspects of fairy tales. “In fact, fairy
tales are now widely used in therapy, particularly with disturbed or abused children,
because they provide a child with distance from trauma and make it possible to deal with
problems on a symbolic level, enabling the therapist to work with the child.” (JZ)
Another major shift occurred in the twentieth century with the development of animated
film and the influence of Walt Disney. “Through film, Disney has had an enormous
impact. During his lifetime, Disney produced five major animated fairy tale features:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Cinderella (1950) and
Sleeping Beauty (1959). After his death, the company he founded continued in this vein
with films such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin
(1992). Accompanying its films, the Disney Corporation has published thousands of fairy
tale books worldwide, so that today probably most children, if not adults, learn about the
classic fairy tale through something marketed by Disney. For better or worse—and some
have characterized the Disney adaptations as sexist, racist, and imperialist—the dominant
notion of what a fairy tale is and should be now corresponds to Disney’s conventions.”
(JZ)
However, while Disney popularized the conventional fairy tale, other early twentieth
century authors undercut the conventions. Authors such as Joan Aiken, Catherine Storr
and Dr. Seuss, challenged conventional notions of fairy tales, while, with the 1960s and
1970s, authors such as Ted Hughes, used the fairy tale to make overt political comment.
“The most significant development in the field came with the emergence of feminist fairy
tales for children and adults. Their evolution has been aided by anthologies such as
Rosemary Minard’s Womenfolk and Fairy Tales (1975), Ethel Johnston Phelp’s
Tatterhood and Other Tales: Stories of Magic and Adventure (1978), Alision Lurie’s
Clever Gretchen, and Other Forgotten Folktales (1980), and Jack Zipes’s Don’t Bet on
the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England (1986),
among many others, including work produced by the Merseyside Fairy Tale Collective
(Liverpool) in 1978 and by the Feminist Collective of the Attic Press (Dublin) from 1985
to 1992. . . . Well over a hundred writers and illustrators have rearranged familiar motifs
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and characters and reversed plot lines to provoke readers into rethinking conservative
views of gender and power.” (JZ)
“Ethnic and Multicultural tales have also become increasingly important. Many of their
writers seek to preserve ancestral traditions and to revise misconceptions about ethnic
identity and history. Julius Lester helped pioneer this endeavor with the publication of
Black Folktales in 1969, and other writers—notably Virginia Hamilton, and talented
illustrators, such as Jerry Pinkney have followed. Laurence Yep has been prominent
among those focusing on Chinese and Chinese American folktales, and the Native
American tradition has also received attention in the work of writers such as Michael
Lacapa.” (JZ)
Anther kind of innovation in the fairy tale has been made in the representation of
psychological realities. “Donna Jo Napoli has produced intriguing novellas, including
The Prince of the Pond (1992), Zel (1996), and Beast (2000), which explore classic tales;
similarly, Robin McKinley, Gregory Maguire, and others have undercut the conventional
view of familiar fairy tales.” (JZ)
While most revisions of classic fairy tales for adults or young adults seriously engage
with contemporary mores and values, those for children tend to be “hugely entertaining
parodies. Jon Scieska is probably the best-known parodist. .. Perhaps most important fo
this approach were the “Fractured Fairy Tales” produced for television by Jay Ward for
the animated series Rocky and His Friends (1959-61), and the Bullwinkle Show (196164).” (JZ)
“The enormous output of fairy tale films for the theater and television and the steady
growth of multimedia fairy tales on the Internet have not diminished the effect of the
genre, which can be regarded as dominating children’s literature. If anything, the new
media have provided new possibilities for this development—both orally and visually
and as literature. . . . Thousands of teachers and librarians read fairy tales to children,
sometimes as a formal part of a school’s curriculum and encourage them to create their
own versions. Children may also be exposed to the performances of storytellers of all
types and traditions in schools and libraries, as well as to television and cinematic
versions of fairy tales. They may play with and revise these or, relying on the
conventions they have assimilated, fashion new stories that enact their own family
dramas or struggles to understand existence.” (JZ)
“In short, the fairy tale in our society is part of the public sphere, with its own specific
code and forms that we use to communicate about social and psychological phenomena.
While children are expected to learn its keywords, icons, and metaphors, the code is not
static. As long as the fairy tale continues to awaken the wonderment of the young and
offer alternative worlds where yearnings and wishes may be fulfilled, it will serve a
meaningful social function, providing not just compensation but revelation.” (JZ)
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