Looking Back

Looking back on the semester, I got more out of the class than I was expecting. Before starting the class I had presumed that it would focus solely on European folk and fairy tales. I was pleasantly surprised to find material from all sorts of cultures, from China to Native Americans.

Overall I enjoyed the materials. Seeing folk and fairy tales from other cultures that I had never seen before was an enjoyable experience. It was interesting both to see tales I am familiar with in greater depth and to see unfamiliar ones. The different classifications of story motifs and narratives was one of my favorite parts, as it provided an interesting glimpse into the core functions of folk and fairy tales and how they influence stories today.

Logistically, it was somewhat challenging to approach the stories with different interpretational styles. The Freudian approach we used early on was particularly frustrating for my, as I am in general not a fan of its simplistic "everything is sexual" interpretations. In terms of reading it wasn't so bad. The amount of reading required was comparable to the average class and didn't pose too much difficulty, though a few rereadings were needed for certain works in order to get all the details.

All in all I greatly enjoyed this class. I learned a lot about stories I already knew and stories I'd never read before, in the process learning about greater cultural contexts and derivative ideas.

Arabian Folktales

Though stories may contain similar elements, motifs, and characters, they are different the world over. An English fairy tale is different than a German one, and these differences are only more pronounced the farther you look. So when looking at Arabian folktales, you can bet they're quite different that the typical European ones.

The most prominent difference is the use of a framing device. For example, 1001 Nights is presented as a series of tales told by the wife of a king, all ensuring he had to wait until the next night to hear the end of her story and thus delaying her execution. This is a marked difference from the likes of Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, which were simply stories presented on their own. This framing story adds another metalayer of narrative, elevating the tales of 1001 Nights beyond ordinary fairy tales into somethign else. It also blurs the line with legend, as it adds setting details that root the stories in a aprticular time and palce, yet does not actually affected the framed stories themselves.

Another point of difference is the connection to religion and spirituality. Much like the stories of the Native Americans, these tales are connected to the beleifs of the area. 1001 Nights contains references and praises to Allah, distinctly connecting it to a particular setting and culture in a way most stories would leave to subtext and interperetation.

Tales of Hans-Christian Andersen

Folk and fairy tales come in many types and varieties, often unique to the teller. Those of Hans-Christian Andersen are no different, bearing a connection to both traditional fairy tales and more modern writings.

Andersen's tales are different than most European folk and fairy tales simply by their length and design. Stories that we looked at previously tended to be rather short, with the occasional exception, but all of Andersen's stories are of a style that lends itself to longer stories. The method of laying out actions and characters has more in common with modern day novels than the likes of Little Red Riding Hood, which depended on a minimalistic writing style.

Logistical storytelling mechanisms aside, his stories also differ from traditional folk and fairy tales due to their manner of conflict. Rather than being driven by outside agents, the conflicts of Andersen's stories is primarily driven by the inherent flaws and personalities of its protagonists. In The Little Mermaid, it is the titular character's obsession with the prince that leads her into a bargain that ends in her own death. In The Red Shoes, it is the girl's pride and vanity that curse her to dance forever. In The Emperor's New Clothes, it is the emperor's arrogance and pride that lead him to be tricked. In all of these stories there are secondary characters who could be considered antagonists, but act more as plot devices than active forces of malevolence. The sea witch in The Little Mermaid makes it expressly clear that she wishes the little mermaid harm but herself makes no action against her, simply providing her to tools for her own destruction. The angel in The Red Shoes may appear threatening, but he never actually does more than deliver to the girl the news of what has befallen her, and at the end of the story he even serves as a beneficiary to her. The two swindlers in The Emperor's New Clothes are undoubtedly criminal, but while they attempted to scam the emperor it was only the emperor's pride that not only allowed them to get away with it but made him a fool before his people.

The Red Shoes also has the distinguishing feature of being overtly religious. Its mention of church, confirmation, eucharist, and other Christian rites and symbols connect it to faith in a way unseen in other folk or fairy tales. In a way this would make it a separate sort of story, save only for its lack of geographic connection. Tales like the Lambton Worm and the assorted saints are all connected to specific locations as well as religious faith, but The Red Shoes has none of that, leaving it in a nebulous limbo between the two story types.

Folklore of the First Nations

In a way, folklore is much like a living species. A story begins and spreads, changing ad adapting as its introduced to new environments, until many years later there are many different stories all derived from the same tale. Also much like living creatures, when stories arise in isolated areas they remain contained away from others and evelop in thier own unique way that is completely different from those of other areas. This is the case with the folklore of the Native American people, which arose in North America and remained entirerly self contained and separate from European stories until the 15th century. 

One major difference between the folklore of the Native American people and that of Europe is that the Native American folklore was not, strictly speaking, folklore. Going by our definitions earlier in the semester, it falls under the umbrella of myths due to its focus on creation stories and mythological entities held to be real. It may actually even be considered religion, as the populations of Native Americans on reservations still practice their cultures, which includes the performing the practices and telling the stories included in these myths.

Another particular  feature of note was the recurring use of the number four. Whether used to describe the number of beings or as a size comparison, many things come in fours or are four times as large or small as something else. This is a result  of Native American beliefs regarding four as a highly important number. Within select cultures of native Americans, there were four ages of man, four corners of the world, four winds, four seasons, and four cardinal directions, each with an associated color, bird, and sometimes even gender. This also shows up in the earth symbols of certain tribes, such as the Dakota, Lenape Algonquin, and Sioux.

One last major difference is the nature of the cultures involved. All folklore carries with it a particular timeless quality, in which details are delibaratly sparse and thus do not pin down a story in any particular region or time. Native American stories, on the other hand, are directly connected to the cutlures in which they originate. The dances and songs they mention in stories are practiced by particular tribes, making them specific to particular peoples.

I greatly enjoyed reading the Native American stories, as it provided an interesting glimpse into a culture often ignored or minimalized by most popular media. My favorite of the tales we read was How Mosquitos Came to Be. I read the story once before when I was in elementary school, though that version was different. In the one I read when I was young, the blood-drinking giant was formed from stone and immune to all weapons When the elders met to discuss how to kill him, a child tending the fire watched how one of the stones in the pit cracked from the heat and suggested a way to kill the monster. A hunter lured him to fall into a pit, where they lit a fire to break him apart, and with his dying breath he combined his body and the smoke to creat mosquitos and feed on blood forever. I do not know whether or not this story was from a different tribe's interpretation or a mangled version altered by publishers and retellings, but i findd it to be interesting nonetheless.

Blog Review: Caroline

In the Folk and Fairy Tale Class, we post a new blog entry every week. While the subject is the same for all students, the execution and decisions we make vary wildly between us. One of these blogs is made by Caroline Kurtz, who does quite well with quotations and summaries.

One of Caroline’s strong points in her blog is her use of summary. She does not make presumptions about what her audience does or does not know with each post, always making sure to summarize the stories she is discussing. These summaries are mindful of length, never more than a paragraph long in order to avoid dominating the post and leaving plenty of space for analysis. This makes her blog easily accessible and useful for people who have not heard these stories before and serves as a refresher for those who have.

Another strong point is her use of direct quotes. Taken right from the source material, discussion texts, and class speakers, these quotes lend the writings legitimacy and reinforce their merit. Quotes are effectively used and are cited to ensure the reader can locate the source. My one issue with them is that those who quote our class texts will identify the author and a page number, but nowhere in the post will it mention what book is being cited. This is not an issue to those in the class who know what books would be used for these blogs, but it creates a disjunction for outside readers.

The blog also has good images, wit at least two per post. The images are always relevant to the material being discussed in the blog post and are not there simply as filler, depicting either the story being discussed or some crucial part of the culture surrounding them.

All in all, Caroline Kurtz’s blog is an excellent analysis tool that makes effective use of quotation, summary, and images.

Child Heroes

"Know your audience" is the advice given to every storyteller from Homer to Spielberg, and it is no less applicable to fairy tales. For a story to work, it but be understood and well-received by those who hear it. So what audience could be pandered to with the use of children as main characters

The answer is a simple one: children. children hear these stories of other young characters going on adventures and accomplishing deed and they can see themselves in it. As such, children in fairy tales play two roles, that of the hero and that of the victim. Look at Hansel and Gretel for example. As victims they are abandoned by their cruel stepmother in the forest and let to starve, but as heroes they slay a witch and return to their father with the key to future prosperity. In Little Red Riding Hood, LRRH is a victim when she is led astray by the wolf and tricked into his lair, while as a hero she outwits and escapes him. The role of children is thus for the children listening to put themselves in the shoes of the character. Children understand and fear being abandoned by their parents or threatened by something in the dark, but they wish and dream that they can defeat these evils that seem to loom so large.

From a Freudian perspective they  serve much the same purpose, save that they are representative of the mental journeys of the children rather than the children themselves. In this perspective, Hansel and Gretel tells the story of children who must separate themselves from their parents, only to find themselves endangered as their puerile oral fixation leads them to fixate on one who reminds them of the safety of home. Thus, these children are only safe when they shuck off this fixation and return to their true family. In LRRH, the protagonist's journey represents an awakening sexuality and how her voyage away from the shelter of her parent's home is the only way she can begin this journey.

Thus, in all perspectives, the child heroes represent the children hearing the story, but whether they represent the children from the child or adult perspectives is dependent on the reader.

Bluebeard

Everyone knows the story of Bluebeard. Perhaps the most infamous pirate who ever lived, Bluebeard's real name was Edward Teach and... Wait, no, that's Blackbeard. Bluebeard was a wealthy recluse with an unusually colored beard, and also a pattern serial killer who murdered his wives and hung their bodies in a special murder room. So, just a few minor differences.

The original Bluebeard story tells the tale of a woman who marries the titular character and later discovers the bodies of all his former wives. Frightened for her life, she manages to buy time for her brothers to arrive and kill the murderer. The same basic story is told in tales like Fitcher's Bird, the The Robber Bridegroom, and Mr. Fox. These stories are all similar, but my favorite is Mr. Fox.

The other stories lost the popularity contest for various reasons. Bluebeard had a decent chance thanks to the sway of being the best-known version, to the point the story archetype is named after it, but Perrault's hamfisted and sexist moral at the end robbed it of its chances. Besides that, the main character lacked any real initiative. While she did discover the fate of the previous brides, she depended on her brothers to save her without any real action on her part besides sending someone for help. The Robber Bridegroom was better, but the main character also ignored several major hints that there was something wrong with her husband, including outright verbal warnings from wildlife. Fitcher's Bird came the closest, as it involved cunning on the part of the protagonist in multiple parts, but Mr. Fox won out for me because of its presentation.

A common part of all these stories is the death of the Bluebeard character. In Bluebeard this occurs when the protagonist's brothers arrive and kill him, in Fitcher's Bird it's when he's trapped and burned in what he thought to be a wedding reception, and in The Robber Bridegroom it's when he's captured and executed by authorities. In Mr. Fox, it comes as a culmination of a buildup created by the protagonist. Before the wedding, she's witnessed her fiancé, Mr. Fox, carrying a dead body to his home. She'd collected a severed hand and ring from the body and prepared for the wedding the next day. There she recounted a peculiar dream she'd had, one that bore a peculiar resemblance to the scene she'd witnessed the night before. But it was only a dead, she repeated, even as she repeated "Be bold, be bold," the inscription from the archway to Mr. Fox's castle where's she'd seen it. At the climax of the tale she revealed the hand and ring, and Mr. Fox was cut down by her brothers and friends.

The heroine of this story was brave, cunning, and had a taste for theatrics. She was brave enough to uncover her husband's misdeeds, as with all the protagonists of these stories. She was cunning enough to avoid being found out and set a trap, as with the protagonists of all but Bluebeard. But only the protagonist of The Robber Bridegroom has the same type of theatrics as her, and between the two, Mr. Fox's heroine pulled it off better. She gives Mr. Fox chances to interject, where he says "It is not so, nor it was not so. And God forbid it should be so." He continues to dig his own hole of denials as she builds up to the reveal, a reveal she could have made easily at any time but decided to drive in. She wanted him to know that she knew, letting the dread build before the final reveal. It's not often that our protagonists get to pull off such smug gloating, and it's satisfying in both a narrative and a schadenfreude sense to read.

Rags to Riches

The rags to riches trope is a popular one, driven by everyone desire to be able to become wildly successful no matter where they are in life now. Two examples of this motif are Disney's Cinderella and the film Pretty Woman.

Cinderella is a classic story that most people know, and the Disney version is the most common version you'll see referenced in the present day. In it, Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters who abuse and neglect her. Eventually she manages to escape with the help of her fairy godmother and the grace of a prince, and goes on to live happily. Pretty Woman is a notably more risqué version of the trope, as the female lead Vivian Ward is a hooker on the streets of Los Angeles. Eventually she manages to rise above her current station when she's hired by wealthy businessman Edward Lewis, who falls for her.

Both of these stories focus heavily on the idea of someone rising above their less than favorable station through the aid of a romantic beneficiary. Of the two, Pretty Woman focuses much more on the characters involved, with Edward Lewis serving as a deuteragonist rather than a plot device wrapped up as a character. Though both feature love as the primary factor through which the female lead rises up, but this is a substantially more significant role in Cinderella where the prince falls in love over a single night, abiding by fairy tale-esque rules.

The rags-to-riches motif is, at its core, wish fulfillment. Everyone wants to become wealthy and successful beyond their wildest dreams, and often wish to do so with little effort on their part. The lottery is a perfect example of this, where people seek to gain great wealth purely through luck, and this mindset is reflected in tales like Cinderella where the prince falls in love after a single meeting and then goes out of his way to help her.

This is not impossible in real life, and Wikipedia even has a page dedicated solely to tracking instances of this. However, this is far less common than it once was. Economic and social factors in modern day America make it very difficult for someone to rise out of the economic segment they were born into, much less become rich. That is not to say it is impossible, but such cases are usually dependent on factors that cannot simply be overcome through hard work alone.

Sonne

Snow White is a story that has been adapted in many different ways by many different people, often in outright contradictory ways. One of the more out-there interpretations is the music video of the song Sonne by Rammstein.

It combines a number of details from the more common interpretations we read with some rather unique ideas. The most notable is the interpretation of dwarves as modern miners, making use of hydraulic picks and drills to mine their gold. But there are parts it keeps consistent, like the traditional description of her appearance in clothes that near perfectly mimic those of Disney's version of Snow White. The apples appear as a motif, but the gold is given more prevalence as the cause for her "death."

The characters are the most distinguishable. In most tales the dwarves are secondary characters, but in Sonne they are the focus. They are presented in a much grimier, down-to-earth manner than miners typically would be in this story, living in a rather utilitarian place and covered in the dust of the mine. Snow White is only a secondary character, and actually seems more like an antagonist. She forces herself into their home and makes them serve her, punishing them on a whim. Despite this, the traditional dynamic of the relationship between Snow White and the dwarves seems to remain, as they don't seem antagonistic towards her and genuinely seem to mourn her death. Instead, she serves more like a cruel tyrant or mother who they obey even as they fear her.

Of our readings, the story this version most resembled was Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman. In both Snow White is a monstrous figure, a vampire in SGA and a cruel sort of dominatrix in Sonne. Rather than being her friends or allies the dwarves are her subjects and serve her out of fear or deference to her power. However, Sonne is a much more self contained version. Done away with are the stepmother and the hunter, leaving Snow White's temporary death in her own hands. In SGA these things are actually given even more focus, with the stepmother serving as the viewpoint character, protagonist, and hero. Also in both Snow White still gets her "happy ending" even as it's not-so-happy for the other characters.

Of all the versions we read, my favorite was the Brother's Grimm's Snow White. Due to its use or interesting structure like the sevenfold repetition with the mirror and the rule of three with the stepmothers attempts on Snow White's life, it was quite good in form. As for function, the characters were rather well done and I enjoyed the manner in which the story progressed in an understandable way.

The Frog King vs. The Pig King

In class we read several fairy tales that abide by the same basic plot where a beautiful woman is married to an ugly beast. Two of these were The Frog King and The Pig King. These stories both had several differences, as well as rather complementary titles, but there is one particular facet of these stories that I wish to focus on and how it differs between them: the transformation of the beast.

In The Pig King, the beast is a prince born a pig who will only become human when he has married thrice. The catch? No one knows about this condition, not even the beast himself or his mother, as the curse was placed on the pregnant queen while she slept. No one knows this curse can be lifted, and no one expects it to be. At the same time, everyone knows the pig's status as the prince and treats him accordingly, even as he acts like a pig. Twice he marries and twice he kills his bride, but the third time the marriage works and the curse is lifted. But rather than tell others that he has been transformed and is now a man,  he keeps it secret even from his wife, hiding in his pig skin and acting as if nothing has changed. He reveals the truth to his wife several days later, and only when she goes against his wishes is his transformation revealed to others.

In the Frog King, the beast is a prince who has been transformed into a frog. He knows the circumstances of his curse and the nebulous circumstances that may release him from it. Unlike the pig, no one else knows he is anything more than a frog, and there are no details behind the breaking of the curse besides that the princess may do it. He is freed from the curse when the princess throws him into a wall in a fit of pique, at which point his true nature is immediately revealed to all.

Of these two, I prefer the transformation of the Pig King. Unlike the Frog King, where the truth is immediately revealed to all, he gets to reveal the truth to his wife on his own terms even if the secret is later revealed outside of his control. Additionally, the pig's transformation came about after time and tribulation in a good relationship, while the frog's was revealed when his "love interest" tries to kill him.

Little Red Riding Hood and Political Cartoons

It's common practice for political cartoons to reference popular culture and classical stories. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood is one of the best known fairy/folk tales out there, so it's inevitable that it would see more than its fair share of references and retellings. Due to the nature of the story, as well as the popularity of defying its original roles and tropes, it sees great use with a variety of topics. In this post, I'd like to look specifically at this strip:

This strip was written in 2009 by Chuck Asay, a conservative political cartoonist who worked for Creators Syndicate at the time. The story of Little Red Riding Hood has many aspects and ideas at play within it, but the one he chose to play on in this strip is naiveté. In the original story, Little Red Riding Hood's ignorance led to her grandmother's death and nearly got herself killed. In the political cartoon, she is not ignorant, but willfully chose to ignore warning signs because she is "opposed to profiling."

Decrying the left as too willing to ignore problems in favor of non-discrimination is common conservative rhetoric. In the strip this is exaggerated and overblown, where not wanting to unfairly discriminate is presented as deliberately ignoring signs of problems. This is a distortion of Little Red Riding Hood's original ignorance, presenting her as knowledgeable about the warnings signs themselves and the problems they represent, but ignorant and naïve about what to do in response.

Personally, I disagree with the message of the strip. Not wanting to unfairly discriminate against entire groups because they happen to share traits with certain problematic individuals is a far cry from ignoring problems despite all evidence to indicate them.

Folk vs. Fairy Tales

There are many types of stories in the world, and classifying them can be tricky. This is more than simply determining genre, but finding the difference between ordinary fiction, myth, legend, folk tales, and fairy tales. Within this class, it is the fairy and folk tales that we focus on.

Folk and fairy tales are stories set within a world contain fantastical but normalized elements. Within a fairy tale, no one will question a talking cat or think twice about a witch bringing winter several months early. At the same time, these phenomenon will not be contemplated or analyzed as one would a typical aspect of life. These elements of magic and fantasy are accepted as existing and not contemplated beyond that.

In terms of a role, folk and fairy tales reflect the collective subconscious of a group or society. Within it one can see reflected the values and fears of the author and their people. Forests, swamps, and frozen plains become the homes of evil, wolves and unmarried old women threaten children, and magic curses befall those who are impolite.

Collectively, fairy and folk tales are stories with normalized fantastic elements that display the cultural values held by the society in both region and zeitgeist.

Goals and Favorite Fairy Tale

I first heard about this class because it was an Honors Elective and I needed to take another one of those to complete my Honors requirements. The reason I chose it over the other options is that it was the one that interested me the most. Fairy tales interest me as they're something that was never really able to develop in America due to the time period in which it was founded, so by their very nature they give an interesting glimpse into stories from various cultures through history.

In this course, I hope to gain a greater knowledge of how these stories came about and how they functioned within a culture. I'm also interested in learning the differences between fairy tales, folk tales, myths, legends, and straight fiction, as well as where urban legends and cryptids fall among these categories.

My favorite folk tale is the story of Koschei the Deathless, though that's a bit tricky to define. Koschei is an antagonist in several Slavic fairy tales, such as Marya Morevna, Ivan Sosnovich, and Tsarevich Petr and the Wizard. These stories are not connected to one another save that Koschei is the villain or rival in all of them, but it is this character that interests me. Koschei is a creative villain, a wizard who hid his death in a needle, which was placed in an egg in a duck in a hare in an iron chest under a tree on the island Buyan, itself a mythical location said to move around the ocean and be the source of all weather. The quests the various heroes must go on to obtain his death are entertaining, and the character himself shows some interesting breath to his personality, such as both freeing a captured prince and chopping a protagonist into pieces and throwing them into the coean (don't worry, he got better). He also serves as a male counterpart to Baba Yaga in some stories, presenting an interesting dynamic between two villains. Koschei himself has never been popular enough to gain much traction in American fairy tale adaptations, but he did inspire the idea of liches in modern fiction.