Thumbelina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 1835 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. For other uses, see Thumbelina (disambiguation)

Thumbelina
Vilhelm Pedersen illustration
Author	Hans Christian Andersen
Original title	Danish: Tommelise
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Genre(s)	Fairy tale
Publisher	C.A. Reitzel
Publication date	16 December 1835
Media type	Print

"Thumbelina" (Danish: Tommelise) is a fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. Like the English folk tale "Tom Thumb" and the French literary fairy tale "Le Petit Poucet" by Charles Perrault, "Thumbelina" tells the story of a tiny human being. For some, the tale demonstrates Andersen's identification with the social outsider. Thumbelina was one of Andersen's earliest fairy tales and was first published in 1835. The tale was republished during the author's lifetime. The earliest English translation is dated 1846. The tale has been adapted to various media including animated film.

1 Plot
2 Analysis
3 Publication
4 Early translations
5 Adaptations
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Plot

When the story opens, a tiny girl emerges from a flower. She is named Thumbelina and is carried off by a toad. She escapes the toad and drifts on a lily pad until becoming the captive of a beetle. Eventually, she is given shelter by a field mouse who suggests she marry her neighbor, a mole. Thumbelina finds the prospect of being married to a mole unattractive and escapes the situation by fleeing to a far land with a swallow she nursed back to health during a severe winter. In a field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a fairy prince just her size and they wed. Thumbelina receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower.

[edit] Analysis

According to Jackie Wullschlager^[1], the tale was inspired by "Tom Thumb" (and its similar tales) as well as "Meister Flak" by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was the first of Andersen's tales to "dramatize the sufferings of the outsider who is different and therefore an object of mockery". It was also the first to use an identification or presence of the swallow "the migratory bird whose pattern of life his [Andersen's] own traveling days were coming to resemble".

Others^[2] have suggested the tale is a possible "distant tribute" to Andersen's confidante, Henriette Wulff, the hunchbacked daughter of the Danish translator of Shakespeare.

[edit] Publication

The tale was first published by C.A. Reitzel 16 December 1835 in Copenhagen as part of Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. Second Booklet. 1835. (Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Andet Hefte. 1835.). "Thumbelina" (Tommelise) was the first tale in the booklet which included two other tales: "The Naughty Boy" (Den uartige Dreng) and "The Traveling Companion" (Reisekammeraten). The tale was republished twice during Andersen's lifetime: 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850. ), and again 15 December 1862 as a part of Fairy Tales and Stories. First Volume. 1862. (Eventyr og Historier. Første Bind. 1862.).^[3]

[edit] Early translations

Boyle illustration, 1872

Mary Howitt was the first to translate the tale into English and published it as Tommelise in Wonderful Stories for Children (1846). However, instead of the opening consultation between the childless woman and the crone/witch as found in Andersen, Howitt had the childless woman rewarded with the magic barleycorn after providing a hungry beggar woman with bread and milk.

Charles Boner also translated the tale in 1846 and gave the heroine the name 'Little Ellie' while Madame de Chatelain, in her 1852 translation, christened the child 'Little Totty'. The editor of The Child's Own Book (1853) called the child throughout, 'Little Maja', the name she usually receives at the end of the tale from the fairy prince.

It is likely H.W. Dulcken was the translator responsible for the name, 'Thumbelina'. Dulcken's widely published volumes of Andersen's tales appeared in 1864 and 1866.^[2] 'Tomme' means 'inch' in Danish and the tale is sometimes published as "Little Tiny" in English.

[edit] Adaptations

H.C. Andersen, 1861

Thumbelina in Jesperhus, an Andersen theme park, on Mors, Denmark.

Andrew Lang retold it as "The Strange Adventures of Little Maia" in his eleventh collection of fairy tales, The Olive Fairy Book, published in 1907.
The first films version of Thumbelina was a black and white 1924 production directed by Herbert M. Dawley.
Danny Kaye sang "Thumbelina," a song written by Frank Loesser, in the 1952 musical biopic Hans Christian Andersen.
Lotte Reiniger directed a 10-minute short film adaptation, released in 1954.
Classics Illustrated Junior, a 1950s American comic book series, published Thumbelina as issue #520.^[4]
Toei Animation released a feature-length anime version in 1978, titled Sekai Meisaku Dowa: Oyayubi Hime (World's Famous Children's Stories: The Thumb Princess), with character designs by Osamu Tezuka. Harmony Gold released it in the U.S. with English dubs.
The family television series Faerie Tale Theatre featured a live-action version of Thumbelina in 1984, starring Carrie Fisher and William Katt.
Japan's Enoki Films adapted the story into a 26-episode TV series in 1992 titled Oyayubi Hime Monogatari (The Story of the Thumb Princess)(on the Japanese Wikipedia).
The second most widely-recognized animated adaptation of the story was produced by Diane Eskenazi for Golden Films in 1993. Thumbelina featured an original plot without altering the essence of the original Hans Christian Andersen tale and featured a wide variety of classical compositions instead of an original sountrack. The classical pieces included work from Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky among many others.
Thumbelina, directed by Don Bluth and released in 1994. The movie is alternatively titled Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina although the story deviates from the source story in a number of ways. It is the only animated film to win, (and first even to be nominated for, Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film) was second), a Razzie, which it received for Worst Song.
The 2002 direct-to-DVD animated movie, The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina Thumbelina was voiced by Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Thumbelina appeared in Shrek 2 as a guest in Princess Fiona and Prince Charming's wedding.
Thumbelina is a song by the band Nightmare of You, from their 2005 self-titled album.