CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The recent SBS three-part documentary Fairytales Exposed: Facts Behind the Fiction (the link on SBS has gone but the series is available for sale from Enhance TV) took an appropriately Germanic view of the origins of many fairytales such as Snow White, The Pied Piper and the notion of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. True crime, true people, true events – passed down from generation to generation to become the stories we know today.

A new book from US academic Ruth Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History sort of agrees and disputes the long-held oral history theory, claiming ‘folk invention and transmission of fairy tales has no basis in verifiable fact…’

Bottigeimer is particularly interested in the rags-to-riches tradition, exemplified by Cinderella, which she calls the ‘rise’ tale, tracing this type of story back to mid-16th century Venice.

That the fairytale remains such a powerful force in literary tradition is a fascinating concept to explore and as this article in the Guardian concludes:

George Macdonald, author of At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin, perhaps still puts it best, over 100 years on. “Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.”

Image of The Brothers Grimm courtesy of The British Library

This entry was posted on May 20, 2009 at 10:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Tagged: fairytales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.