ENGL387: Fairytale Assignment (10 %)
Due Date: January 20, 2012
Length: 750 words (approximate)
For this assignment you will choose either the “Red Riding Hood” or “Sleeping Beauty”
stories from your book Folklore and Fairytales. You will read the stories in the section
and do some research into the history of either the “Red Riding Hood” or “Sleeping
Beauty” tradition. Then you will use that information to write a three-to-four page
response to the fairytale you have chosen.
This response will take into account the social and literary history of the tale you have
chosen, but it will also offer an analytic argument. I have given some guided questions
below. You may choose to base your response on these questions. You will be marked
on your writing, clarity of thought and use of both one or more versions of the story
and historical information.
1. Compare one or more of the tales from your book with a modern “politically
correct” version. How has the history of the tale influenced this version? What are
some of the problems with attempting to make a text suit modern standards of
class, gender and morality?
2. Anne Sexton has poems on both of these tales in her poetry collection
Transformations. Consider how Sexton adapts the tale by using voice, tone and
form. (These poems are available online).
3. You may want to consider the way this tale has been illustrated. Often illustrators
fill in details or interpret story elements in unique and unexpected ways. Choose
between three and five illustrations from different versions of the tale and parse
them for the way they have tackled the story. (You may want to focus on dress,
gender representation, etc.) Please provide print outs of the illustrations with your
response.
4. Choose an element of this tale (the villain, for example) and offer a compare and
contrast within the various versions. What about this element changes over time
and location? What about this element stays the same? Why? What are the
antecedents of this element?
Reading questions to help guide your exploration of these tales:
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
1. Why is the antagonist of the story represented as an animal? If the story, on one level,
is a warning to children not to talk to strangers, would not that message have been more
clearly articulated by representing the antagonist as a human being? Why is the animal
customarily a wolf? Why not an animal more familiar to a child, such as a dog?
2. To what extent does the character of the wolf differ from version to version?
3. Examine the nature of the grandmother’s role in the different versions.
4. Do you see any clear distinction in emphasis or attitude between the older versions of
this tale and the newer?
6. What insights into the tale do you find in the illustrations reproduced on pages138ff.,
Fi?
SLEEPING BEAUTY
1. How does the opening episode in Sun, Moon, and Talia compare with that in the two
versions that follow?
2. The behavior of the king who discovers Talia is very different from that of the princes
in the other versions. What conclusions can we draw?
3. To what extent can the king’s wife in Sun, Moon, and Talia be compared to the King’s
mother in The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood?
4. What similarities of design can you see between Sun, Moon, and Talia and The
Sleeping Beauty in the Wood? What are the significant differences?
5. Note the contrast in the gifts that the wise women/fairy godmothers offer to
Brier Rose/Sleeping Beauty. Is there a connection here with the different audiences
anticipated by the Grimms and Perrault?
6. What other evidence can be found in these two versions that reflects this difference in
audience?
7. In what respects is The Neapolitan Soldier the “odd man out” among the older
versions of the tale represented here?