Tradition and Innovation in Folk Literature

Wolfgang Mieder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317376859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

In this book, first published in 1987, Wolfgang Mieder follows the intriguing trail of some of the best known pieces of folk literature, tracing them from their roots to modern uses in advertising, journalism, politics, cartoons, and poetry. He reveals both the remarkable adaptability of these tales and how each variation reflects cultural and historical changes. Fairy tales, legends, folk songs, riddles, nursery rhymes, and proverbs are passed from generation to generation, changing both in form and meaning with each use. This book will be of interest to students of literature.

1 Grim Variations

From Fairy Tales to Modern Anti-Fairy Tales

The appearance of the two volumes of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Houshold Tales) by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 and 1815 marked not only the publication of one of the true bestsellers of the world, approaching the international and multilingual dissemination of the Bible, but also the beginning of a large global scholarly field commonly referred to as folk narrative research. While scholars of the nineteenth century assembled significant national and regional fairy tale collections that paralleled those of the Grimms, serious investigations into the origin, dissemination, nature and function of these texts also began to appear in a steady flow that has not ebbed.¹ In fact, interest in fairy tales has increased considerably in the past three decades, and obviously the bicentennial celebration of the births of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm marked a high tide not only in scholarship on their fairy tale collection and their philological, folkloric, mythological, legal, and literary endeavors² but also in research concerning the fascinating question of what their work and in particular “their” fairy tales mean to people in modern technological societies.

At the present time, beautifully illustrated editions of Grimms' tales can be found in bookstores everywhere, attesting to the ongoing fascination of fairy tales even for children of the computer age. The modern child can still learn from these tales that certain problems, dangers, and ordeals can be overcome, that transformations and changes must occur, and that everything will work out in the end. They will learn to solve their problems imaginatively, and if we can give credence to psychological interpretations of the tales, the children will become independent and socially responsible citizens whose naive search for personal pleasure is replaced by an analytical understanding of social reality. Above all, children will learn from fairy tales to have an optimistic and future-oriented world view, and they will realize and understand universal human problems, which in turn will be a key to coping with their own individuality and the world at large. Child psychologists, in particular Bruno Bettelheim,³ have made a strong case for the didactic value of fairy tales for children as they go through various rites of passage in their maturation process to adulthood, and there appears to be no need to argue with the contention that these tales of times gone by seem to be appropriate literature for young and innocent children.

But what about the adult? What value and meaning do these children's stories, as they are commonly referred to, have for people who have long passed their childhood? Do fairy tales have some universal appeal to mankind of all age groups and social classes, or are they today only for children and scholars who study them for various reasons? Why is it that cultural and literary historians, folklorists, sociologists, psychologists, and others have studied and continue to investigate the deeper meaning of fairy tales? Surely not simply because they love children's literature and in a wave of nostalgia long to return to those cozy moments when a beloved family member read or perhaps even told them one of those old stand-by Grimm tales many years ago. The reason is that scholars have long realized that these tales were originally not children's stories but rather traditional narratives for adults, couching basic human problems and aspirations in symbolic and poetic language. Even though they present an unreal world with miraculous, magical, and numinous aspects, fairy tales nevertheless contain realistic problems and concerns that are universal to humanity. They are symbolic comments on basic aspects of social life and modes of human behavior. Presented are not only such rites of passage as birth, adolescence, courtship, marriage, old age, and death, but also typical experiences and feelings in people's lives. Emotions such as love, hate, joy, sorrow, happiness, and sadness are found again and again, and often the same tale deals with such phenomena in contrasting pairs, that is success versus failure, wealth versus poverty, luck versus misfortune, kindness versus meanness, compassion versus indifference, or, simply put, good versus evil.

Fairy tales present the world in black and white, but in the end this conflict is resolved, and happiness, joy, and contentment become the optimistic expression of hope for a world as it should be. This trust in ultimate justice and the belief in the good of humanity must be of significance to adults today if hope is to exist for mankind at all in an age that is anything but a fairy tale. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch talks so much about the utopian function of fairy tales in his monumental work Das Prinzip der Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope), which appeared from 1954 to 1959. For him, at least some fairy tales contain emancipatory potential for mankind, liberating people from oppression and leading to more just societies.⁴ Read and interpreted in this way, fairy tales clearly contain elements of social history from a time far removed from the present. They often camouflage the trials of oppressed people facing malevolent rulers, the ever-present conflict between the haves and the have-nots, the desire for a fairer political system and social order, and so on.⁵ The stories supposedly for children conceal in part the frustrations of adults who to this day long for a better and fairer world, where people can in fact finally live happily ever after.

This element of hope for social justice, fairness, and humanity is what enables these traditional fairy tales to survive today among children and adults. Their universality in dealing with human questions as well as their universal appeal as aesthetic expressions of the resolutions of these queries have occupied more psychologists and philosophers than Bruno Bettelheim and Ernst Bloch. The scholarship on the Grimm fairy tales alone is so vast by now that an individual researcher can hardly claim to know it all. There now exist superb critical editions with voluminous notes by such renowned scholars as Johannes Bolte, Georg Polívka,⁶ and Heinz Rölleke,⁷ several detailed studies concerning the aesthetics of fairy tales by Max Lüthi,⁸ fascinating structural investigations by Vladimir Propp,⁹ significant historical studies by Lutz Röhrich,¹⁰ socio-political interpretations by Jack Zipes,¹¹ and many more.¹² Mention should also be made at least in passing of the inclusive tale-type studies that have been carried out using the Finnish geographic-historical method of analyzing the origin and dissemination of individual fairy tales. There are among others Ernst Böklen's two volumes of Schneewittchenstudien, Anna Birgitta Rooth's The Cinderella Cycle, Marianne Rumpf's Rotkäppchen: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung and more recently Michael Belgrader's Das Märchen von dem Machandelboom.¹³ But the basic problem with these otherwise excellent studies is that they document variants of these major tales only through the nineteenth century. While they present attempts at finding the archetype of each tale and discuss its historical dissemination more or less world-wide (or at least throughout the area of Indo-European tradition), they concern themselves not at all with what is happening to such well-known fairy tales in the present century. There is no immediate need for additional tale-type studies of such detail (although they obviously have their intrinsic and respected value). What is really needed is to bring the existing studies up-to-date, taking them from the Brothers Grimm to the present day.¹⁴ Dozens of variants in the form of rewritten children's stories, literary reworkings, parodies, and satires exist, and there are also many uses of fairy tales in movies, caricatures, cartoons, comic strips, advertisements, and graffiti, which all need to be documented and interpreted in regard to their function and significance.

For the incredibly popular fairy tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” there have appeared a number of studies which in fact go far beyond Marianne Rumpfs earlier tale-type study. Hans Ritz (pseud. Ulrich Erckenbrecht) published his German Die Geschichte vom Rotkäppchen. Ursprünge, Analysen, Parodien eines Märchens in 1981 and one year later Jack Zipes followed in the United States with his The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Socio-Cultural Context. Both books deal with numerous new literary versions of the fairy tale. Zipes includes various illustrations of the fairy tale and adds insightful interpretataive comments regarding its socio-political and moralistic significance. In my independently formulated study “Survival Forms of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in Modern Society” I include not only many additional texts but also modern reinterpretations of certain motifs of the tale in cartoons, caricatures, comic strips, and advertisements. In 1982 Zipes's book appeared in German translation. There have even been three major popular magazine and newspaper reports on this modern scholarly preoccupation with “Little Red Riding Hood.”¹⁵ It will surprise no one, therefore, if in this study no further mention is made of this particular tale except to say that such detailed studies of newer variants and allusions are needed for other very popular Grimms' fairy tales.

Before presenting and commenting on modern variations and reminiscences of “The Frog Prince,” “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel,” a few general observations concerning the modern survival of fairy tales are necessary. Doubtlessly traditional fairy tales are still told, read, heard on the radio, or watched on the television or movie screen, and it appears that children for many generations to come will continue to be enchanted by them. But these children are bound to grow up and mature, carrying with them consciously or subconsciously some of the archetypical motifs and structures contained in the fairy tales. In a most enlightening essay concerning the possibility of fairy tales in the modern age Hermann Bausinger argues successfully that humanity is predestined toward a type of “Märchendenken” (fairy tale thinking), that is, that we long for and strive toward the happy end so vividly expressed in fairy tales. Even though there might be moments of regression or deviation from this path, people will always try to escape the status quo of social reality in their longing for happiness. He, too, refers to Ernst Bloch's view of the fairy tale as a future-oriented departure toward utopia and to the fact that the biographical plots of many fairy tales thus become reflections of people on their path to a better life.¹⁶

On this subject, Max Lüthi speaks of the fairy tale as presenting people with “opportunities” for “purposeful motion” toward a world as it ought to be.¹⁷ Jack Zipes refers to this as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Grim Variations: From Fairy Tales to Modern Anti-Fairy Tales
• 2. The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Origin, History, and Survival of the Legend
• 3. Modern Variants of the Daisy Oracle: He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
• 4. The Proverb in the Modern Age: Old Wisdom in New Clothing
• 5. The Proverbial Three Wise Monkeys: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil
• 6. History and Interpretation of a Proverbabout Human Nature: Big Fish Eat Little Fish
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index