The theory that views fairy tales as imaginative inventions of the common people (in particular of peasant women telling tales to children by the fireplace) has been discredited. Fairy tales are cross-cultural narratives, informed by literary sources, enriched by oral traditions, told by peasants, middle-class and aristocratic folk alike. In the ongoing debate about the origin of fairy tales, it has been also largely accepted that there is no purely national fairy tale tradition.
Storytellers who Invented Fairy Tales
Ruth Bottigheimer’s work suggests that fairy tales are not reliable historical resources for the study of oral storytelling culture: peasants did not tell tales, it was writers that invented them. In fact, it was the Venetian “fairy godfather”, Zoan Francesco Straparola who invented the modern fairy tale and was central in the transmission of the tales we know today.
The Brothers Grimm tales, says Bottigheimer, are rooted in literary traditions rather than originating from the mouths of storytellers. And indeed the Grimms’ sources are not what they presented them to be. The peasant woman, Dorothea Viehmann, who they praised as their main source of folk tales, was not a peasant at all. Many of the storytellers the Grimms consulted came from their own social circle.
The Grimms worked within a literary framework which set the familiar motifs of the fairy tale and which was put in place in the 14th century in Florence, Italy, by Boccaccio. The fairy tales of Straparola of Venice and Naples-born Basile in the 16th century and especially those written by 17thC French writers were major influences for the Brothers Grimm.
Brothers Grimm Children’s and Household Tales
In the spirit of Romanticism of the time, the Grimms believed that the fairy tales in their collection were distinctly German in character and a mirror of the national identity which captured the spirit of their ancestors. However, after the limited popular appeal of the first edition of their Children’s and Household Tales in 1812, they never stopped recasting and rewriting their material.
Moving away from their original scholarly intentions the Grimms altered the fairy tales to give them a didactic and moral purpose. Far from being transcribers of oral folk tales, the Grimms became storytellers themselves by fleshing the tales (which eventually became double their original length), polishing their prose and cutting out any reference to premarital sex and pregnancy. In the 1819 second edition the fairy tale collection was heavily revised.
Five editions followed and “Wilhelm Grimm admitted that he was no longer interested in the notion of literal fidelity to oral sources but aimed to turn the raw narrative energy of folktales into a tamer cooked version, one both safe for children and more attractive for the adults reading to them”.
Origins of Fairy Tales
As Zack Zipes comments, “the split between oral and literary narrators was never as great as we imagine it to be”; writers were also storytellers, familiar with the folklore of the societies they lived in. Oral storytelling tradition informed literary culture and vice versa. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales came from middle-class sources and were “contaminated” by the great fairy tale tradition of Italy and France and part of them was invented by the Grimms themselves. However, fairy tales are still believed to be “truthful metaphorical reflections of the customs of their times”.
Related Articles on Fairy Tales
The Rapunzel Story, Origins and Versions: Let Your Hair Down or Who Invented the Fairy Tale?
What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood? Critical Interpretations of a Cautionary Tale
On the invention of another classic tale, see Story of Aladdin: Arabian Nights, the Storyteller and Forgery
Sources
Ruth Bottigheimer, Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice and the Fairy Tale Tradition, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia 2002.
Siegfried Neumann, "The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales" in D. Haase, The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions, Wayne State University Press: Detroit 1993.
Maria Tatar (ed.), "Reading the Grimms' Children's Stories and Household Tales. Origins and Cultural Effects of the Collection" in The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Norton & Co: New York and London 2004.
Jack Zipes, "Cross-Cultural Connections and the Contamination of the Classical Fairy Tale" in J. Zipes (ed.), The Great Fairy Tale Tradition. From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, Norton & Co: New York and London 2001.
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