Talk:Brothers Grimm
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So why is Sleeping Beauty in this list when the article says it's one by Perrault?
- Maybe because they didn't invent the tales? Most fairy tales and folk tales are pretty old and have multiple origins (with different versions in different regions). Even the article you quote says "[e]lements of the story are contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone (published 1634)" -- 63 years befpre Perrault's publishing.
- This problem partially arises from the idea of intellectual property being pretty modern. Even the famous book by Knigge on manners suffered from problems regarding the identification of authorship as it was edited and re-released by several different authors -- and heavily modified as well. In this case we know the author but we can't clearly identify his original work.
- Folk tales like these are de facto in the public domain. Everyone can write their own version down without having to pay anyone royalties. They predate the modern idea of intellectual property, which is why there are so many different variants of them around (and it gets worse with the local, less well-known folk tales). -- Ashmodai 00:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
- Less well known is the Brothers Grimm's work on a German dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch.
Do we know whether theirs was the first in Deutsch?
- Hah! Probably not. -- Ashmodai 00:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Another apparently common theme in the fairy tales is that old women tend to be actual witches who can put spells on people and commit other assorted acts of evil. Does anyone have any explanation for this? I'd be very interested to see the meaning behind it. -Branddobbe 6:19 PM PST, Dec 8 2003
Try consulting a dictionary of mythological archetypes: old women and what they represent. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz might have something. --ArcticFrog 20:00, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)ArcticFrog
It's not too different from the "old witches" in modern-day kids movies -- just that they usually don't have any actual magical powers, they are just stereotyped to be evil. -- Ashmodai 00:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey what about a reference to Grimm's Law. -- 203.150.193.11
That's only Jakob. -- Toby Bartels 01:20, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Collecting information
I'm trying to gather as much information on the Brothers Grimm as I can, and if anyone has any information at all (e.g. what inspired their work, what other little known accomplishments they had etc.) I would be very grateful!
[I'm trying to collect info for a report next wednesday!]
-John Schellhase 9/23/04 4:06 pm
I am just a high school English teacher, but I see in my notes from college that many, if not most, of the tales published by the Grimm brothers were actually the stories they asked German country-folk to tell them in order to listen to and record the actual phonemes/pronunciations/colloquialisms the German people used. The reason they did this was to have their subjects tell stories, thus relaxing them and freeing them from self-consciously pronouncing (and changing) their every-day spoken language.
As their studies on the German language became more complete, the Brothers Grimm published the tales.
Can anyone with more scholarship than I speak to the veracity of this history and perhaps make a change to the main page?
- edit* I now have a wiki-account.
--Matt Ford, 8/23/05 3:30PM
[edit] Copyvio?
This page currently smells quite badly of copyvio -- I think it's the references to tables or pictures that aren't there. When did those get in? I would revert, but a lot has happened since then, so I am wondering if an admin rollback is more appropriate. Also, the stuff is credited to the person who appears to have added them in. Strange. Will be back in a few days to see what happens. --Jacqui ★ 05:11, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
- Actually unsnarled the edit history and, I think, removed the right things. Please correct me if I am in error. --Jacqui ★ 05:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I'm quite offended that my editions have ust been removed! Noone discussed this with Jacqui and yet she removed it anyway? I'm new here, and I didn;t realise that was how it works. My work definitely does not violate any copy rules!! I wrote that as a summary of my dissertation! The picture references were mine too, but I didn't realise the pictures didn't appear on the Wikipedia pagem if I'd had a chance to read this comment before the whole lot was removed I could have either removed my references to my pictures, or added in the pictures I used, which are, incidently, all properly referenced, and I've put my sources in the 'literature' section of the page .. so how can I be accused of "copyvio"??? I'm quite offended actually! I'm new here and thought I was making a useful contribution, since my text focused on aspects not previously given attention on the page! Please tell me what more you expected, so that I can avoid my work siply being rudely disregarded like this in future!||||Clare
Indeed - I've just noticed that someone has also viewed my referencing as 'over the top' and removed them! Well .. if I don't reference my work its copyvio, but if I do they get removed anyway .. what's going on here?!! Clare
- Clare1fielder, I'm sure Jacqui meant no harm, but I can understand you feeling that way. It's quite easy to restore the removals though. Here is the text by that was removed from the Revision as of 02:56, 2005 October 27, which was added to the article at 15:20, 2005 October 23. I've also added the references that were added at 18:18, 2005 October 25. I'm not a Grimm expert, but I reckon some or all of this could be brought back into the article and wikified. Maybe the references could stay in the Talk, with only one or two in the article. If you have illustrations or pictures that are under a free license, or in the public domain (as a 1905 illustration ), they would be most welcome. -Wikibob 04:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
- While this material is interesting and its contribution is generous, it is not very encyclopedic. It really is a history of the analysis of fairy tales, some of which fits the definition of Wikipedia:original research. What there is that just describes the historical interpretation of fairy tales should be added to fairy tale. Also, it really should go without saying that all text must be in English for it to have value to readers of English Wikipedia. --Tysto 09:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Political and Ideological Interpretations
author C Fielder 2004
Fairy tales, including the KHM, were originally oral narratives, but now their most common form is written, as different historical periods have seen them transformed to produce versions relating to contemporary social climates, and interpreted from various viewpoints, often underpinned by political assumptions. No single approach offers a ‘correct’ interpretation, as each depends on the context in which it was developed, and most attempt to find meanings compatible with their philosophies. An example of this political colouration occurred in Hitler’s Germany, where folk tales and ‘Volkskunde’ were accommodated to Nazi ideology. This chapter discusses a sample of political treatments of the Grimms’ KHM, to demonstrate another ‘use’ of the tales, which has helped extend their appeal.
Socio-historians have long maintained that stories have context-specific meanings, and that interpretations are determined by the cultures in which they are formulated. Zipes (1975) believes stories’ hidden meanings can be understood by considering the socio-historical influences distinguishing them as a pre-capitalist oral tradition. From his Marxist stance, Zipes discusses the tales’ political symbolism for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He explains that this period strongly advocated man’s perfectibility, but believes this was permeated by class bias, disregarding the lower-classes and their customs. As the bourgeoisie established itself, folklore was deemed suspicious and inferior. Because symbolic aspects of class conflict in pre-capitalist stories contradicted the utilitarian principles of the developing bourgeoisie, they were suppressed and made to seem irrelevant. Although a Marxist view, this corresponds to the fact that bourgeois writers vigorously produced moralising stories, advocating compliance to the laws of social class. These ‘Kunstmärchen’, however, borrowed heavily from German folklore. Folk traditions, including the Grimms’ tales, were also employed by other Romantic writers, for example Novalis and Tieck, in their symbolic works, scrutinising the restrictions and hypocrisy of bourgeois codes. The endings of stories were not simply liberating, but illustrated the confines of social mobility: fairy-tale worlds are populated by kings and queens, or peasants and supernatural creatures, but hardly ever by intermediary upper classes; signs of industrialization are rare, and characters and their concerns are portrayed within feudal societies. This is why the ‘Volk’ retell the stories; their ambitions are indulged, allowing them to believe they too could become valiant knights or beautiful princesses (Zipes, 1975).
Zipes (1975) analyses Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt (KHM 71) from this socio-historical perspective. The story, one of the less well-known KHM, is about a common man who serves in a war and is discharged with very little reward. He meets new friends, each with a special talent, and together they use these powers honestly to earn the king’s riches, overcoming several malicious obstacles and challenges he sets them and finally sharing their wealth so that each may live ‘vergnügt bis an ihr Ende’ (p. 149 ). Class struggle is typical of folk tales, but Zipes explains that in the nineteenth century, following the American and French Revolutions, the quest was no longer for riches, but for an amelioration of social relations. Told from the perspective of the common man, class struggle is evident in this story, illustrated by a ‘commoner’ proving himself equal to a sovereign. The talents and magic powers of the man’s friends symbolise hidden strengths in him and in the peasantry generally, and the story teaches that if such talents are used appropriately, to achieve due justice, the peasantry are invincible, a lesson Zipes (1975) sees in many tales, e.g. Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (KHM 27). Many KHM, Zipes explains, portray class conflict in light of pre-capitalist society, revealing biases and inequalities of feudalism. He believes stories of the last three centuries, including KHM, preserve designs imitating pre-capitalist societies because they continue to address the circumstances of the people and prevailing ideologies, and therefore continue to be popular.
The early twentieth century saw numerous research projects into aspects of folklore that were not so innately national; the emphasis was on ‘gesunkenes Kulturgut’ (Bausinger, 1994a, p. 13), where culture was important, rather than individual nations. Nazi ‘Volkskunde’, however, did not continue this research. Any nationalistic aspects of earlier stories were merely undercurrents until 1933 when National Socialists discovered folklore as an instrument for educating people in the new ‘Weltanschauung’. The Nazis determined the values of conclusions from folkloric research according to their usefulness in demonstrating the Party’s aims: Panzer’s essay illustrates how dismissively findings were regarded if they contradicted official interpretations, dictated by guidelines in Böhme’s Die deutsche Volksseele (both in Kamenetsky, 1977). Nazism highlighted the existing primary themes and symbols of ‘Germanness’ within the discipline, and Dègh argues the Romantic-sentimental vocabulary, depicting German peasants as bearing Germanic purity, stemmed from the Grimms and their followers. However, Nazi concepts of ‘Volk’ and ‘Gemeinschaft’ differed significantly from those in the Grimms’ writings. Terms common since the days of the brothers were assigned new meanings and semantic accents in Nazi usage (Almgren). The ‘Aufnordung’ of the German people was important in the Nazi effort against decadence. The Reichskulturkammer, led by Goebbels, was established to censor literature, art and music, but also sought to revive Nordic-Germanic traditions including folksongs and crafts, as they apparently exposed true folk heritage. In Frau Holle (KHM 24), the girl’s fall into the well and her journey to Frau Holle’s house was taken to symbolise the path to eternal regeneration and primeval strength (Haacke, in Kamenetsky, 1977). Haverbeck, the first leader of the Reichsbund für Volkstum und Heimat, is quoted as stating that Nazism aimed to capture this folk heritage, the ‘blood and soil’, and mould the homeland culture and future from it (Bausinger, 1994b). The Party was to function as interpreter of the people, and not even tradition was to be allowed to conceal genuine ‘Volk’ identity. Regardless of a custom’s age, Nazism taught that its authenticity should always be questioned; this did not require specialists and scholars, but genuine peasants, ‘authentic’ Germans (Bausinger, 1994b).
The atrocities of the Holocaust demonstrate that Nazi anti-Semitism went far beyond traditional racial conceptions in severity and brutality. This was partly because race was used to explain negative traits; Jews were used as a counter-image from which ‘true’ Germans could be distinguished (Zipes, 1975). This imagery was ‘discovered’ in folklore; an aspect hitherto unacknowledged, not only emphasising national characteristics but demeaning non-Germanic parallels. The Party funded editions of KHM and distributed the stories widely in appealing, low-priced books. As Kamenetsky underlines, folk tales were ‘transformed into an ideological weapon…to serve the building of the Thousand Year Reich’ (1977, p.170): to this end representations of defeat and doom were converted into symbols of fertility and national longevity. Interpretations of the tales were both specific and general, for example, Aschenputtel’s general character (KHM 21), was valued as the ideal truthful and devoted Germanic woman. In Allerleirauh (KHM 65) the different dresses have specific meanings; the golden dress symbolises a sense of being, the silver one inner spiritualism and the starry one knowledge about natural laws (Fischer). In Von dem Machandelboom (KHM 47), the exact phrase ‘so rot wie Blut’ apparently exposed knowledge of racial origins, and the father’s ‘racially inferior’ second wife has an ‘evil spirit’ which is punished (Schäfer, in Kamenetsky, 1977). These examples highlight the nature of meanings Nazi folklorists found in the Grimms’ tales, and show the stories’ malleability, which has aided their lasting appeal, but the totality with which such interpretations were applied and propagated cannot be demonstrated within the scope of this dissertation.
Some critics blame KHM for the atrocities that occurred under Hitler. Nissen reports Birkenfeld’s critique of folklore’s relationship with Nazism, stating German affection for fairy tales depicting cruelty as one cause of characteristic immorality and the development of the concentration camp extermination method. Nissen explains, ‘Grausamkeit im Märchen, speziell die “Grimmschen Märchengreuel”, wurden in Zusammenhang gebracht mit den Greueltaten, die sich auf unserem Boden und in unserm Volk zugetragen hatten’ (p. 59). Birkenfeld was not alone; Maus wanted to discontinue ‘Volkskunde’ in universities, due to its entanglements with Nazi ideas (Bausinger, 1994a). McGlathery (p. 6) believes that growing up during the French Revolution heightened the Grimms’ interest in the Germanic past and that excessive nationalism motivated them to collect KHM, and sees these patriotic stories as inspiring Nazi ideology and, consequently, atrocities that occurred under Hitler’s rule. In fact, directly after the Second World War, Allied governments banned KHM from being published and read in schools because of their ‘contribution’ to Nazism; this resulted in many folkloric debates and research pursuits being rekindled (O’Neill). Despite the number of critics holding this belief, the claim that the Grimms are in someway responsible for anti-Semitic, homophobic and other nationalistic policies of the National Socialists seems a largely exaggerated assumption, which is likely to have been influenced by the fact that KHM were used in propaganda to support Nazism. Indeed, several scholars, more plausibly, believe the Grimms’ motivation for collecting tales was not excessive nationalism, but literary and historical enthusiasm. Michaelis-Jena explains, for instance, that Jews depicted in KHM are typical of folk literature, and were not intended to exemplify racial inferiority. Dègh (p. 332) agrees the Grimms cannot be blamed for KHM being used as National Socialist handbooks, and Beek explains that ‘[v]ölkisches Vokabular, nationalistische Expansionsansprüche und rassistische Überheblichkeiten wurden in das Werk der Brüder Grimm hinein interpretiert, denen es doch nur um die Bewährung des kulturellen und insbesondere des sprachlichen Erbes der Deutschen gegangen war’ (p. 10).
Zipes concludes on the KHM’s popularity: ‘the reason for our continual return and attraction to folk and fairy tales: breaking the magic spell in fairy realms means breaking the magic hold which oppressors and machines seem to hold over is in our everyday reality’ (1975, p. 135). As discussed here, KHM have been employed to support and illustrate various politics and ideologies, and their adaptability is confirmed by the numerous interpretations formulated. Hence, alongside Zipes’ suggestion that the tales’ popularity arises from satisfying dreams of freedom from social restrictions, their openness to interpretation is also important in explaining their enduring appeal. Kamenetsky (1977) concludes that the ethnocentric Nazi view of folklore suppressed studies of universal and international topics and scholarly aspects of ‘Märchenforschung’. However, Nazi reappraisal of German folklore and use of KHM as tools for converting people to Nazi world-views, undeniably succeeded in bringing the treasures of what would otherwise have been an antiquated collection of Nordic-Germanic folk stories back to people’s attention and back into contemporary culture, thus helping to revive and prolong the appeal of the tales.
[edit] Psychological Interpretations
author C Fielder, 2004
From the early twentieth century, psychologists have studied folk tales, regarding them as ‘Träger menschlicher Weisheit und Wahrheit’ (Lutz, §3) and attempting to find meanings in them relevant to contemporary living. The emergence of Freud’s psychoanalysis sparked studies into symbolism and meanings in the Grimms’ ‘Märchen’, based on the principles of dream interpretation. Since then several schools of thought have been dominant at various times, but the most recent psychological treatments of the Grimms’ tales have reverted to Freudian analysis. This chapter provides a review of the main ideas of psychological interpretations and attempts to explain, from a psychological viewpoint, why the Grimms’ fairy tales have been, and continue to be, so popular.
The first significant psychological examination of folklore was Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie, which concentrated on primitive peoples’ tales. Wundt reports that mythological characters typical of primitive fairy-tale fiction symbolise natural events, such as the changing of seasons. Drewermann acknowledges the need to appreciate tales’ mythological origins in interpretations: he refers to characters in KHM who embody mythological symbols, for example the sisters Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot (KHM 161) embody winter and summer respectively, and the prolonged sleeping of Dornröschen (KHM 50) and Rapunzel (KHM 12) is symbolic of death. Shortly after the Grimms published KHM (1812), investigations into meanings and symbols in the stories began. Psychological treatment of folklore took off during the 1900s, when Freud (1856-1939) published his theory of psychoanalysis, provoking interpretations of KHM from this perspective.
Freud theorised that personality consisted of the ‘id’ (seeks pleasure and avoids pain), ‘superego’ (drives moral guidance adherence to social norms) and ‘ego’ (arbitrates demands of id and superego). If the superego judges id impulses as unacceptable, they ‘müssen unterdrückt, verdrängt oder geleugnet werden’, but ‘wie alles in den Untergrund Abgedrängte, entwickeln sie dort eine unheilvolle, das innere Gleichgewicht empfindlich störende, Aktivität’ (Lutz, §11). Although this theory is heavily criticised for lacking empirical support and habitually refuted by psychologists, it provides an excellent basis for interpreting KHM. Freud’s theory of personality with three sub-structures is illustrated in many tales by several characters portraying different sides of one person: ‘Ein und derselbe Mensch, so berichten die Märchen immer wieder, kann gleichzeitig und ineins Mutter und Hexe, Engel und Dämon, Leben und Tod verkörpern und bedeuten’ explains Drewermann (p. 170), noting the example of Rapunzel (KHM 12) whose mother and the evil sorceress are the same person. It can also be identified in stories where the number ‘three’ is particularly important, such as Die drei Federn (KHM 63). It was Freud’s Traumdeutung, however, that had the greatest influence on ‘Märchenforschung’. Freud postulated that dreams originated in the id and indicated repressed fears and urges, unacceptable to the conscious superego (Cardwell). Because fears and urges are often disguised and experienced symbolically to protect the superego from awareness of underlying problems, Freud advocated the analysis of dreams. He also highlighted similarities between fairy tales and dreams, and suggested the tales’ symbolic meanings can therefore be ascertained through the principles of dream interpretation (Michaelis-Jena). Von der Leyen theorised that fairy tales were simply narrated dreams communicated through oral tradition until, in the form the Grimms presented, their original sources were untraceable. Within the psychoanalytic perspective this hypothesis is reasonable, but due to the number of transformations fairy tales have undergone over time, even before the Grimms and their contemporaries began collecting them, it is impossible to trace their real origins and judge the truth in this idea.
Figure 2: Illustration of Guerin's Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (c.1905), from Zipes (1993, p. 367).
According to Freud’s analysis, towers or pencils in dreams are phallic symbols and doors or tunnels vaginal symbols, indicating hidden sexual fears or desires; likewise large, powerful animals often represent father figures or unresolved Oedipus complexes (Reber and Reber). Using such principles, Drewermann interprets the bear in Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot as an overtly masculine sex-symbol, embodying the sisters’ premonition of their future lovers; when they ‘den “Bären” mit seinem “dicken, schwarzen Kopf” “zur Tür” hereinkommen [lassen]’ it is ‘ein phallisch-koitales Symbol’ (Drewermann, p. 37). Away from Freudian interpretations, which are steeped in sexual urges and connotations, several versions and translations of the stories have been accompanied by illustrations expressing the frequency with which these connotations are recognised by readers. Figure 2 for example, is from a French version, and depicts intimacy and longing as the girl appears unafraid of the wolf and is smiling seductively.
Figure 3 is the cover of a modern version, which is retold erotically; hence the picture explicitly portrays sexual attraction between the three characters. As these illustrations demonstrate, even those unfamiliar with Freudian ideas find sexual hints and meanings in KHM, which goes some way to supporting interpretation of the tales using psychoanalytic Traumdeutung principles.
Figure 2: Cover illustration of Loumaye's L'histoire vraie du Petit Chaperon Rouge. From Zipes (1993, p. 12).
Literary criticism after the Second World War reflected the political division of Europe; existentialism was dominant in the ‘free world’ whilst Marxism reigned in Eastern Europe (McGlathery). Neither ideology was particularly interested in folklore ; instead the main approach to ‘Märchenforschung’ came again from psychology, from a neo-Freudian perspective. Jung (1875-1961) moved away from Freudian psychoanalysis due to disagreements about overemphasis of sexual drives, and adapted the theory to stress other aspects of experience. This seems a sensible move, as relating all psychological experiences and problems to unconscious sexual urges seems exaggerated and highly unlikely in light of empirical research. It is equally as implausible to imply that every KHM contains hidden sexual fantasies. Instead, Jungian theory emphasises the collective unconscious and symbolic nature of dreams, although analysis is centred on life experience, not unconscious urges. Jung viewed fairy tales as ‘spontane Selbstaussagen der Seele’ (Gerstl, p. 20) and believed messages appeared in symbolic forms in dreams and ‘Märchen’. Among the symbols he documented are birth, death, and natural objects such as sun and water (Gerstl). Lutz clarifies some symbols’ traditional meanings, for example geese (e.g. in Die Gänsemagd, KHM 89) ‘galten von alters her als besonders kluge Vögel’ (§111), they also symbolise luck in marriage. She goes on to explain the connotations of the donkey in Hans mein Igel (KHM 108), which symbolises humility in Christian mythology. Although the development of the Jungian viewpoint made the interpretation of fairy tales a matter of interdisciplinary interest, inspiring works from psychiatrists, e.g. Heuscher, and depth-psychologists, e.g. Dieckmann, it eventually served simply to encourage Freudian critics back to the study of folklore (McGlathery).
It was Bettelheim who really restored the dominance of Freudian analysis in psychological treatment of folklore. Aside from personality structure and dream interpretation, Freud’s theory details ‘Oedipus complexes’, the incestuous feelings young boys develop towards their mothers and rivalries with their fathers for their mothers’ affections. As children’s personalities develop, they progress through psychosexual stages and the associated anxieties. Psychological perspectives draw on this when interpreting KHM; Lutz describes how in Die Gänsemagd, the princess’ misfortune stems from her thirst and desire to drink from the waterfall, i.e. her desire for ‘oral’ satisfaction, symbolising fixation at the oral stage of development. Similarly, in Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot ‘[a]lle räumlichen Angaben ließen sich…als Zonen einer inneren Seelenlandschaft und als Stadien eines inneren Reifungsprozesses auffassen’ (Drewerman, p. 52).
Bettelheim focuses on what KHM reveal about sexual maturation and children’s struggles to understand themselves and their environments as they develop superegos. He believes children find the information they seek about themselves and their culture in the tales: ‘[a]pplying the psychoanalytical model of…human personality, fairy tales carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious, on whatever level each is functioning at the time’ (Bettelheim, p.6). This is Bettelheim’s rather convoluted way of stating the general assumption that individuals’ deepest experiences and problems are universal and, having them as motifs, the stories speak simultaneously to all levels of personality, as several writers (e.g. Gerstl, Lutz) have acknowledged. The stories can, therefore, just as easily reach the naïve minds of children, promoting moral development, as entertain adults and provoke discussion. Gerstl explains that the agreement of folk stories with children’s uneducated thought, assures fairy tales have long-lasting impressions. If stories are broken down, it is easy to see that they express man’s deepest wishes, hopes and fears simply, with ugliness turning into beauty, poverty into riches and the weak ultimately triumphing, that is, expressing these key experiences in a way accessible to children (Michaelis-Jena). Röhrich also stresses that, although these kinds of images may seem unbelievable or even brutal, they ‘[werden] von den Kindern gar nicht so empfunden’, in fact, children find it ‘selbstverständlich, daß der Märchenheld den Drachen oder den feurigen Hund erschlägt. Keinem Kinde würde es einfallen, die armen Riesen etwa zu bedauern’ (Nissen, p. 60). Bettelheim sees fairy tales as giving the message ‘that a struggle against severe difficulties in life…is an intrinsic part of human existence’ but that problems are surmountable if faced courageously (e.g. Hans mein Igel, KHM 108). Chapter four discusses violence and cruel images in more detail.
Many scholars’ ask why children prefer, and are more satisfied by, KHM than other types of children’s literature. This relates directly to the present aim of explaining the appeal of the Grimms’ ‘Märchen’? The view maintained by Bettelheim appears fairly credible and sees the tales’ covert psychological properties as providing an answer. He explains that growing up involves ‘[O]edipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries…feelings of selfhood [and] moral obligation’, which are all covered in fairy tales. Aside from Freudian overemphasis of sexual drives, the ultimately convincing conclusion of psychological interpretation is that KHM typically present these situations and themes concisely and simply, without superfluous detail, so children can perceive them in their most essential forms, creating rich images to learn from, without complicated storylines to confuse them. The tales appeal to all ages, as the symbolism can be read on many different levels and readers simply perceive the level most applicable to their own lives. Röhrich agrees, regarding fairy stories as mirrors, in which everyone sees their own face, that is, their own personality. In contrast modern children’s literature is rarely relevant to readers’ lives and unhelpful in coping with problems and anxieties (Bettelheim), therefore heightening the appeal of the Grimms’ fairy stories. (author C Fielder, 2004)
[edit] References from Clarefielder
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Arndt, E.M., in Fragmente über Menschenbildung, eds. W. Münich and H. Meisner (Langensalza, 1904)
Bausinger, H. ‘New Folk Ideology and Folk Research’ in in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, eds. James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Indianopolis: Indian U.P., 1994a), pp. 11-34.
Bausinger, H., ‘Folk-National Work During the Third Reich’, in The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, eds. James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Indianopolis: Indian U.P., 1994b), pp. 87-97.
Beek, W., ‘Die Brüder Grim und die deutsche Politik’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Beilage zur Wochenzeitung ‚Das Parlament’, 1 (1986), pp. 3-16.
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Birkenfeld, G., cited in Nissen, 1984
Birkhan, H., ‘Die Verwandlung in der Volkserzählung: Eine Unersuchung zur Phänomenologie der Verwandlungssymbolik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Märchen der Brüder Grimm’, Dissertation; University of Vienna, 1961.
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Gerstl, Q., Die Brüder Grimm als Erzieher: Pädagogische Analyse des Märchen (Munich: Franz Ehrenwirth, 1964)
Grimm, R., ‘Im Dickicht der inneren Emigration’, in Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich, eds. Horst Denkler and Karl Prümm (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976), pp. 406-426.
Haacke, U., ‘Germanische deutsche Weltanschauung in Märchen und Mythen im Deutschunterricht’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Bildung, 12 (1936), pp. 603-616.
Heuscher, J.E., A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1963)
Haverbeck, W., ‘Arbeiter und Soldaten in einer Front’, Volkstum und Heimat, 1 (1934), pp. 10-11.
Hess, J. A., ‘Volk und Führer’, The German Quarterly, 11/1 (Jan 1938), pp. 4-7.
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- Here ends the text and references by Clare1fielder. -Wikibob 04:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Cultural depictions of Brothers Grimm
I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 16:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] One example
"It has long been recognized that some of these later-added stories were derived from printed rather than oral sources."
A reference has been added to this. It asserts that "one example" is a given work. Unfortunately, this is inadequate. One added tale would not just "some".
Furthermore, the "derives" is ambiguous. As the sentence is phrased, it would imply that the Grimm Brothers took the tale from the book. But their first version contained "Bluebeard" which derived from Perrault's work, but did so by the tale being drawn back into the oral tradition, and they took it down from there.
[edit] Grimm's Sources
"Grimm's Fairy Tales comprises some 200 stories, most of which were adopted from oral sources." — Kathleen Kuiper, Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, Springfield, MA, Merriam-Wesbter, 1995; p. 494. Ugajin 20:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
"Other men contributed to the collection as well, of course, but the method of their involvement was different. Rather than transcribe the stories from storytellers or share ones they remembered from childhood, male contributors—who were often scholars and bookish professors—dug up old manuscripts in libraries and copied out forgotten tales to assist the brothers in tracing the history of the genre." — Valerie Paradiz, Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales, Basic Books, 2005; p. xii. Paradiz's book is somewhat lacking in objective tone; she focuses on a contrast between female (oral) and male (literary) sources. Yet the key point, that some of the later tales in the Grimms' collection stem from literary rather than oral sources, comes through. Ugajin 22:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
The obvious next question is how best to integrate this view into the main article.
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