Fairy tales, Monsters, and Myths

1. Fairy tales, Monsters, and Myths

2. Purpose: Create communal bonds Explain the inexplicable (forces) Provide hope Humanize the bestial and barbaric forces which threaten to destroy freewill and human compassion Written in metaphors – Allows for individual interpretation Closely tied to rituals, customs, beliefs in tribes and communities Instructed, amused, warned, initiated, enlightened Leave traces of the human struggle for immortality

3. Tales are formed like musical notes of composition except that letters constitute words and are chosen individually to enunciate the speaker/writer’s position in the world, including his or her dreams, needs, wishes, and experiences. The speaker/writer posits the self against language to establish identity and to test the self with and against language.

4. Hero’s Journey SEE PAGE 3

5. Features of a fairytale: End happy Triumph over death Lack geographical specificity Utopian connotations Plays on the imagination Introduce wonder – cause astonishment See definition of wonder on page 5 Motivate people to look for signs of fulfillment and emancipation

6. “In wonder tales, those who are naive and simple are able to succeed because they are untainted and can recognize the wondrous signs over those who use words intentionally to exploit, control, transfix, incarcerate, and destroy for their benefit.”

7. Oral Tradition - Signs that Christianity would squash the fairytales… Most people were non-literate – strong oral culture Didn’t interest the ruling classes because it hadn’t been changed enough for them Until Latin was dominant – there were no standards in vernacular Couldn’t distribute because of technology (printing press in 5th century)

8. First published fairytale for mixed audience of upper class men and women 1550

9. Started in Italy Spread through Europe Puritan hostility killed it. France(where fairytales thrived) Most powerful country in Europe Printing Press evolution – inspired new genres Great cultural creativity and innovation 17th century = widely accepted in literary saloons particularly in theatrical form.

10. Part of the civilizing process that story telling developed in the 17th-18th centuries. The Spread in France To every age and social class – but with NEW FUNCTIONS Represent glory and ideology of French aristocracy Symbolical critique aristocracy hierarchy Introduce norms and values of the bourgeois civilizing process Amusement Self parody Literary genre for children

11. French Revolution – things changed… for the worse. Germany…. Petty tyrants / Napoleonic Wars Tales didn’t end happy – protagonist goes insane or dies Means to maintain dialogue about social and political issues with in public sphere

12. Church/Educators favored: Realistic, sentimental, didactic stories Brother’s Grimm Started revising stories in 1819– started cleaning them up Hans Christian Andersen – messages both adults and children can understand

13. 19th Century Flowering Alienation Industrialization – structured life – no time for day dreaming Fairytales provided room for amusement, nonsense, recreation Parodies came about – end of 18th century

14. “Although many of the fairytales were ironic or ended on a tragic note, they still subscribed to the utopian notion of the transformation of humans, that is, the redemption of the humane qualities and the overcoming of bestial drives” (Zipes 22),.

15. 20th Century – Institutionalization Means of production, distribution, reception – Regularized WWII – Political Post WWII – Combat Terror “…demented and perverse forms of civilization that had cause atrocities and threatened to bring the world to the brink of catastrophe” Disney-fied Saccharine (sak-uh—reen) sugary Sexist Illusionary stereotypes Feminists Musical theatre