What are Fairy Tales

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What are Fairy Tales?
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There are Two Types of Fairy Tale

• Tales from Folklore
• Literary Fairy Tales
• Scholars prefer the term Märchen, meaning wonder
  tale, to the term fairy tale
• The popular term fairy tale comes from the
  French term Les Contes de Fées, which
  originated in the literary salons of 17th-century
  France

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Folklore is

• The original, oral, communal literature of a
  culture. 
• A body of traditional belief, custom, and
  expression, handed down largely by word of mouth

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Fairy Tales from Folklore

• Usually take place in an undefined time and place
• Tend to have static, flat characters (they do
  not develop and are not complex)
• Tend to have a prohibition that affects the plot
  (dont stray from the path, etc.)
• Some kind of magic
• Some kind of transformation
• Are called Volksmärchen by scholars

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Fairy Tales from Folklore

• Do not typically have fairies
• Do not have individual authors
• Were not originally developed for children

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Literary Fairy Tales

• Have individual authors
• Originated centuries ago as an art form of the
  upper classes
• Are more sophisticated than folkloric tales
• May modify conventions of folkloric tales
• Were originally intended for adults
• Are called Kunstmärchen by scholars

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The distinction between the two categories
sometimes blurs

• Oral storytellers have borrowed from written
  sources
• Literary writers have adapted oral stories
• Many of the best-known fairy tale collectors,
  like Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, drew from
  middle-class or aristocratic story tellers,
  rather than directly from the peasantry
• Collectors often altered what they didnt like in
  the original tales
• Collectors sometimes added their names to folk
  talesor they were added later by others

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