They were interested in regional dialects and pronunciation as much as the stories themselves. If the same story were told in three different places, they could compare the choice of words used, the way the same word was pronounced in the different areas, and draw linguistic conclusions. Grimm's law on sound shifts in German was a watershed moment for linguistics.
True. I didn't focus on that in the beginning in order to reserve more space for later comments.
they had as their target audience adult German readers, particularly the educated burgher class, who would (so they hoped) treasure these tales as written survivors of Germany's rich oral historic past. Instead, what happened was within a generation, these tales had passed into the province of children, where stories such as "The Frog Prince" (quoted above), "Rumpelstiltskin," and "Tom Thumb," among others became viewed as being mere childish fantasies, doomed to fade just as juvenile attitudes wilt in the strong heat of maturity.
Where are you getting this idea from? The name of the book is Kinder- und Hausmärchen and they were intended to be for children all along, just like Perrault's stories were very clearly for children. A bit more grisly and graphic than we are used to reading to children, yes - Perrault's wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood. The End. Full stop. Even by the Nineteenth Century they were considered a bit unsuitable for children, but the Grimms collected stories told to and for children.
Several monographs that I've had to read over the years have mentioned explicitly that the Grimms' collection was part of their larger collation of folklore, a topic of interest that was directed more to adults than to children. Considering also that the stories were still then being shared between adults and not just adults-to-children and it's hard to justify that the original audiences were solely or even predominantly children.
I should also note that I'm familiar with dozens of variations, including some from Italy that vary even more from the bowdlerized editions that were printed centuries later. Some of what I said in the latter half of the review is based on that exposure and not just the edited form that the Grimm brothers chose for their collection.
Consider the darker implications behind a tale such as "Little Red Riding Hood." While several other cultural historians have argued that this tale serves as a metaphor for the (de)flowering of a maiden, I believe the key lies in element of the cakes and wine. In the older, French-derived versions of the tale, the wolf kills the grandmother and serves Little Red Riding Hood her blood as wine and her flesh as cakes, a sacrilegious reference to the Eucharistic Host. It is telling that by the time that the Grimm brothers have recorded this story, the Eucharistic element has been diminished into nothing; the Wolf has eaten whole both grandmother and granddaughter before each is rescued by the huntsman. Yet the imagery still persists nearly two centuries after the Grimm Brothers' version: vulnerable girls are still stalked each and every day and the guileless may be powerless against the guileful.
I have Perrault in French and Grimm in German. The Perrault French version does not serve blood as wine or flesh as cakes. Little Red Riding Hood is carrying a galette, or flatcake, and a pot of butter, to her grandmother. While the first may contain an allusion to the Eucharist, the second certainly does not. She is merely told to put the food on a chest near the bed and to get in. The sexual element is clear - she takes off her clothes when she gets into bed with the wolf. The Grimm version does have wine in place of butter, but the wolf doesn't make Little Red Riding Hood eat and drink the grandmother's blood and flesh. While the sexual element is obvious, the religious is arguably not even there.
It's present in several other versions; Perrault chose one of the tamer forms of the story for his edition. I was nice and didn't note the "path of pins or the path of needles" reference, since that reference to prostitution isn't found in latter forms of the story.
I think your deep reading may be reading into the stories things that are not meant to be there. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Not in this case. I just have had the experience of encountering several other variants that for obvious reasons are not as readily available. Also some of these points were (I believe) raised in Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre, although other parts come from monographs I read in grad school. There are certainly "code elements" that are present in certain tales that denote more than just that wolves are bad and that feasts are great.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales
- 09/02/2011 01:15:09 AM
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Of course, the Grimms wanted to listen to how the people told the tales, too.
- 09/02/2011 05:39:39 AM
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That and they were after specific German examples
- 09/02/2011 10:33:27 PM
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I think you need to modify your review.
- 10/02/2011 06:03:26 AM
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Not really
- 10/02/2011 07:02:15 AM
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Well, in that case your review sucks.
- 10/02/2011 04:08:21 PM
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I won't get into your debate with Tom. It looks like it is about to degenerate.
- 10/02/2011 04:37:34 PM
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Re: I won't get into your debate with Tom. It looks like it is about to degenerate.
- 10/02/2011 04:51:36 PM
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Re: I won't get into your debate with Tom. It looks like it is about to degenerate.
- 10/02/2011 04:58:30 PM
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I had to see the approximate numbes when I was taking some social history courses
- 10/02/2011 05:25:06 PM
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