[Gary Wassner]

this topic came up in another thread and i think it would be interesting to pursue further on its own. fairy tales often are formulaic. they are moral oriented. children are frequently the heroes and/or 'questors'. odd beasts and unusual characters populate them. magic objects and magical people are popular themes. what distinguishes fairy tales from fantasy or are they just another type of fantasy? also, many people seem to disparage the 'boy and his quest to save the world' theme that is so prevalent in fantasy series. i wonder if that same critic would find fault with that story line in fairy tales. is it possible that the fantasy author is trying to convey the same message to an adult audience that the fairy tale author was trying to convey to children? if so, perhaps the fairy tale format may be, structurally or thematically, a most conducive way to do that. has the fairy tale evolved into the fantasy series?

[Caly]

Wow. You have a lot of deep and meaningful questions there, and I have a hard time being deep and meaningful these days.

I just had to respond though b/c I love fairy tales and I am one who does not usually enjoy the "boy goes on a quest to save the world" type fantasies.

I've done some studies of the history and origins of fairy tales, and a few points need to be made to start of the discussion.

Disney does not do fairy tales the way fairy tales were meant to be. The Grimm Brothers didn't even write fairy tales the way fairy tales were meant to be. In some of the older editions you can find some good fairy tales, but overall they took a woman's art and re-vamped it into stories for a patriarchial society.

Fairy tales were orignally told by women to younger women to train them in the way the world works. Some of this training was moral, of course. No sex before marriage or horrible consequences will happen, that sort of thing. A lot of the messages were actually teaching the younger women how to survive in a world ruled by men. If you read some of the orginal tales (or at least older than the tales the Grimm Brothers wrote down) you will often find very clever girls, solving their own problems without the help of a handsome prince. Even fairy god-mothers are rarer in these versions. The women of the time had to learn to survive, and survival often meant weilding subtle power over the men that ruled their lives. The men couldn't realize the women were holding the power, or the consequences would get ugly.

The main problem with the orginal fairy tales is that they are part of the oral tradition. Women simply were not educated, or if they were they weren't respected as authors. "Real" writing was done in Latin, and even if the women could read and write their native language it was quite unlikely that they could write in Latin. Even if they could, women were not supposed to be writers. That was a man's job. Thus the Grimm Brothers came along, wrote out handsome prince hero versions to women's tales, and the misconception of what a fairy tale is is prepetuated on and on throughout history.

In regards to how fairy tales relate to the fantasy genre. In my mind, fairy tales are sort of the pre-cursor of fantasy novels. They aren't the only pre-cursor, but they definetly influence the genre. Now fairy tales have become a sub-genre in the field, often associated with children's literatue. There are some very good children's fairy tales out there, many excellent YA fairy tales available, and, happily for me, a growing number of adult fairy tales on the fantasy shelves (Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier, Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, Deerskin by Robin McKinley, Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister by some guy. .. and more that I can't think of right now). Of course, there are many bad ones out there as well, esp after the HP craze has made anything remotely fantasyish so popular.

I hope this touches on what you were trying to ask at least a little. As you can tell I get a little passionate about this topic and start rambling up a blue streak with little regard to the orginal point.

Caleyna, http://www.fantasyfreaks.org

[Bardos]

The women of the time had to learn to survive, and survival often meant weilding subtle power over the men that ruled their lives. The men couldn't realize the women were holding the power, or the consequences would get ugly.

In other works, older women teached younger ones how to manipulate people.
But before you come down biting at me Caly ( http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif), I think this was provoked by men, b/c they excluded women from everyday life: as you say point out: Even if they could, women were not supposed to be writers. That was a man's job.

And --as usuall-- I'm off-topic. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif
And to get back to the topic: I think that fairy tales were an old form of fantasy; fairy tales are actually where fantasy has it's roots --the same as the old epics, like Homer's Eliada and Odyssia, the Epic of Gilghames, of Beowulf, and so on.

Today, to write a fairy tale, would mostly be for children, IMO. And it's simply light fantasy. "Normal" fantasy originates more from the epics I refered before.

[Gamlemshagen]

"Fairy tales were orignally told by women to younger women to train them in the way the world works. "
Huh? Yes, some stories was like that. Others were about other things. Its not only a womens art. All of society told these stories. In Norway fairytales are called "eventyr", from the word "adventura" I think I read somewhere.

"Women simply were not educated, or if they were they weren't respected as authors."

Very few people knew how to read in the country. It was mostly the priest and very few important men. And nobody "wrote" an fairytale, it was old stories someone heard from someone and they "wandered" over the world changing from place to place. Ofcourse stories were made up, but its oral, they get spread by getting told. Nobody needs to know about the person in a village they never heard about being the writer of the story, its not important.

[Gary Wassner]

well, at least we seem to agree that fairy tales are not totally dissimilar from fantasy and that there is a realitonship between them over time. does anyone know the derivation of the term 'fairy tale'? was it in fact originally an oral tradition? yes, most people were illiterate centuries ago, but there were always authors who did put their thoughts down on paper or papyrus. what are some of the 'original' fairy tales? have they been codified sufficiently so that one can point to a beginning of the genre? i always assumed that the grimms brothers are to fairy tales what tolkein is to fantasy. though they were in fact written during a time when women's and men's roles were quite different than today, it is difficult to condemn them for being chauvinistic before the parameters within which chauvinism is defined even existed.

[Penumbra]

There are a lot of threads that seem to try and justify what fantasy is and is not. I don't see that defining it serves much of a purpose because it is such a broad genre, one that doesn't particularly require precise characteristics. Logically, fantasy redefines itself with every new novel, a constantly evolving enterprise.

[JohnH]

If you go back far enough, you will find that almost every 'fairy tale' evolved from an oral tradition. Certainly the roots go back farther than the printing press. Some of these oral traditions were rooted enough in actuality to perservere to the written media. Gilgamesh, The Illiad and The Odessey, The Nieblung, The Tale of the Genjji. How many others were lost or reformed beyond specific recognition? Cinderella has roots that go back to early Minoan period. But it also can be seen in aspects of Chinese tales that go back over 4,000 years. Certain aspects of heroism and human struggle captivate us and will continue to do so. We like to laugh and we like to cry and we like to go 'OH!' at the unexpected. Since every culture has its own form of 'fairy tale' it would be impossible to determine exactly where, how, when, why and who established the form that we currently define them by.

[Gary Wassner]

does anyone know the derivation of the term 'fairy tale'?

[jbcohen]

You know, fairy tales are often the start of many fantasy litterature tales.

[alison]

Folk and fairy tales all come from oral traditions, and so they vary. I had a book of Gypsy fairytales that were written down from the telling - amazing for how they made leaps (...and then Jack was at the castle) because the logic of the story lies in its imaginative connections rather than rational connections, and also for their concentration on eating. The hero in all of them was called Jack. And they were extraordinarily rich, and funny.

Oral traditions are by no means confined to women. And they come from so many sources, and are told for so many reasons, and hold traces of many hidden histories. Impossible to pare them down to simple morals: they have a lot to show about the human need for stories, how stories illuminate and explain the world and our relationships to it.

If fantasy doesn't draw from these sources, it reads pretty empty to me. It's not the surface which counts, dragons or elves or Sidhe, but the deeps: what the dragons or elves or Sidhe _mean_.

Best

Alison