English Fairy Tales
Andrew Lang &
Joseph Jacobs
Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916)
Born in Australia
Educated in England
Died in USA (citizen after 1900)
Jewish historian and scholar
English Fairy Tales 1890
Celtic Fairy Tales 1892
More English Fairy Tales 1894
More Celtic Fairy Tales 1894
Indian Folk and Fairy Tales 1912
European Folk and Fairy Tales 1916
Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books
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Scottish writer and critic
Twelve collections of fairy tales
Published between 1889 and 1910.
437 tales from a broad range of
cultures and countries
• Extremely influential!
• First time in English for many tales
• He and his wife did a lot of
translating and retelling
Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books
The Victorian Era
• Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.
• It was a long period of local peace,
prosperity.
• Refined sensibilities
• National self-confidence for Britain
• Height of the British colonial Empire
• Very conservative morally
• Industrial revolution
• Technical advances
• On the heels of romanticism
• Coincides with the first Golden Age of
Children’s literature
Jack and the Beanstalk
What do you think?
1. What is Jack like? What are
his main qualities (at different
places in the story)?
2. Why does Jack return a
second and third time?
3. Is it wrong for Jack to steal
from the ogre?
4. What do you think about the
ending?
5. How can this story relate to
real life?
More about the story
• Jack. common name, from fool to clever trickster
• Cow stopped giving milk. Weaning. Jack needs to grow
up.
• Man knows Jack’s name. implies a bigger story.
• Beans. A common person’s food.
• No dinner. Childish punishment. Relates to crime
• A stairway to heaven. Like Tower of Babel, Budha’s
Bodhi tree, Yggdrasil the South American world tree.
• Ogre’s wife seems to like Jack. Charmed by him?
• Hides in oven. Womb. Transformed. Resurrected.
More still
• Some version make Jack righteous by saying that the
giant murdered Jack’s father and stole his treasure.
• Jack returns the second time for money, the third time
because he is not satisfied.
• Story alludes to other Jacks. Jack Robinson and Jack
and Jill from the nursery rhyme.
• The story recalls the Bible story of David and Goliath (a
giant defeated by a youth)
• Most versions do not end with Jack marrying a princess.
The foolish trade
The beanstalk
In the ogre’s/giant’s home
The giant climbs down
Death of the giant
Jack and the goose
The Arabian Nights
or
1001 Nights
Western Traditions
•Antoine Galland
•Richard Burton
•Andrew Lang
What do you think?
1. What do you like about the story?
2. What do you think is Scheherazade's greatest
accomplishment?
3. What do you think about Scheherazade's sister and
father? Do they deserve praise?
4. How do you think westerners view Asian cultures? Are
there any general tendencies?
5. Do you like the story structure of having stories inside
stories inside stories?
6. How are these stories unique compared to Grimm and
Perrault's?
Background
• The stories of the Arabian Nights were written by many
people over the course of hundreds of years.
• Early 8th Century: Core stories from Persia and India.
• Translated into Arabic and given the name Alf Layla or The
Thousand Nights (although the number of stories wasn’t
close to that).
• 9th or 10th Century in Iraq: Arab stories were added.
• 13th Century, tales were added of Syrian & Egyptian origin.
• 18th Century: Galland adds tales in the first major European
(French) translation.
Background
• First collected stories written AD 800–900
• Stories come from the Middle East and South Asia. The
roots of many tales can be traced back to mythology and
the cultures of such areas ass Arabia, Yemen, India,
Persian, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor.
• Some of the most famous stories appear to have been
added to the collection in European editions by Galland.
– "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp,"
– "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and
– "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.”
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These particular stories are probably genuine Middle
Eastern folk tales but were not part of the "Nights" in its
Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection
by its early European translators.
Important Versions
• The first European version of the Book of the Thousand
and One Nights (1704-1717) was translated into French
by Antoine Galland from an Arabic text and other
sources. This was a 12-volume book.
• Edward Lane: 1839. First major edition in English.
• The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) by
Sir Richard Francis Burton, was ten-volume translation
of Galland (he added six more volumes later). Though
printed in the Victorian era it contained erotic nuances of
the source material. He avoided strict Victorian laws on
obscene material by printing a private edition for
subscribers only.
• The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, edited by Andrew
Lang (1898), was one volume, heavily edited for children
and illustrated by H. J. Ford.
The Frame Story
• Details differ, but Scheherazade is always the
daughter of the Grand-Vizier and willingly
marries the sultan, thus beginning the stories.
• The different versions have different individually
detailed endings (in some Scheherazade asks
for a pardon, in some the king sees their
children and decides not to execute his wife, in
some other things happen that make the king
distracted) but they all end with the king giving
his wife a pardon and sparing her life.
Ford’s Illustrations from The
Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
Frontispiece
Scheherazade, Dinarzade,
and the Sultan
The Sultan pardon’s Scheherazade
Ford’s illustration (1898)
The Genius
and the
Merchants
The Princess
veils herself
when she
sees the
Monkey
Images from Sinbad’s
Voyages
More of Ford’s illustrations
The
genius
comes
out of the
jar
The king of China looks at the
ring on the princess's finger.
Ford’s illustrations from
Aladdin
The slave of the
ring appears to
Aladdin
Aladdin's mother
brings the slaves
with the forty
basins of gold
before the sultan.
Exotic Otherness
• The US and other Western
countries have a history of
viewing people of color
differently, often assuming them
to be closer to nature,
theoretically “better” because
they are less civilized. (In much
the same way Rousseau
viewed children as “wise”).
• Edward Said calls this
“Orientalism”
Orientalism (Edward Said)
• patronizing Western attitude
toward middle eastern, north
African and Eastern cultures.
• Tends to portray “eastern”
cultures as
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Less civilized, less developed
More pure, closer to nature
More barbaric, dangerous
Exciting, exotic
Feminine, sensual, erotic
A collection of memorable images
from The Arabian Nights
Exotic imagery excited
Western minds
The Sultana
Held
Conversation
with a Man.
Arabian Nights Illustrated by
Virginia
Frances
Sterrett. Penn
Publishing
Company,
1928.
Disney’s Aladdin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPUAhSGZtvU
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Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place;
Where the caravan camels roam
Where it's flat and immense, And the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home
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Original first verse (1992-93):
Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear, If they don't like your face
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home
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When the wind's from the east
And the sun's from the west
And the sand in the glass is right
Come on down
Stop on by,
Hop a carpet and fly
To another Arabian night
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Arabian nights
Like Arabian days
More often than not
Are hotter than hot
In a lot of good ways
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Arabian nights
'Neath Arabian moons
A fool off his guard
Could fall and fall hard
Out there on the dunes