On Fairy Stories Sparknotes

There are numerous genre’s in literature, but the level of importance and influence on an individual will differ. Exposure to books and stories is especially important for children because it their chance to acclimate themselves to written language and in turn create their own visuals for the toneless words. “Why Fairy Tales Matter: The Performative and the Transformative”, by Maria Tatar contains an ample amount of textual evidence from author’s research into fairytales, as well as writer’s personal experiences with fairytales. Although Tatar supports her claims with evidence, her resources are not concrete, and seems excessive at times. Also, her assertions are weakened by her failure to defend her conclusion against competing beliefs.

Fairytales and fantasies have existed to tell children’s stories because of their ability to bring a child

Maria Tatar’s “An Introduction to Fairy Tales” discusses the impact on how the stories help guide the children from their younger age. The first five paragraphs of the article mentioned about how the children can overflow with imagination, and can vividly see their reality of desire and also, fear. The fairytales can also corrupt the naïve minds of the child in a way of making them realize the reality of the world is unjustified, and people can be harsh. Moreover, Tatar gives an explanation on how people grow up with the same fairy tales with different versions; which gives an entirely different personal idea. Fairy tales also develop the child’s intellectual mind by reading various kinds of genre.

Thesis: John Ronald Reule Tolkien’s life experiences influenced his writing, beginning as a student, then a soldier, lexigrapher, professor, and then a writer to his own children; Tolkien’s life created the place known to most as Middle-Earth.

Fairy Folk Tales are the most popular types of literature. The tale is an orally transmitted tradition by generations through the time; some events are changed to fit reality and society. Folk fairy tales deal with the dualism of the good and the evil. They are basing on a conflict between the good and the evil forces. The conclusion comes from aspirations of the human desire to achieve the justices. There are no known authors and sources for ancient literature. We have many versions of the story; they are credited by many authors later. Each tale is very like some other culture’s tale. Each culture has own tales, but all the tales are similar and different in some points. This essay will compare between two

He also maintains that “fairy tales have been in existence as oral folk tales for thousands of years and first became what we call literary fairy tales toward the end of the seventeenth century [emphasis in the original].” For Carter, while folklore emerges from oral “unofficial” culture, the fairy tale is the product of a literary “official” culture. Whereas folklore results in “stories without known originators that can be made and remade again and again by every person who tells them,” literary fairy tales “transformed an oral tradition into texts that become middle-class

In Tatar’s article, An Introduction to Fairy Tales, she draws us in by describing childhood books as “sacred objects.” She takes a quote from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. describing how the stories give lessons about what a child subconsciously knows - “that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy - and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self,” (Tatar 306). She describes how many adults long for the simplicity of enjoying those stories in their childhoods, only to realize that they outgrew them, and instead have been introduced to reality. The original stories were more for adults rather than for children. Nowadays, stories have been adapted to be more suitable for children. Fairy tales may allow a kid to wonder due to their charm, but they also can

Triumphant reward in spite of unjust punishment is a universal sentiment that transcends languages and cultures. There are thousands of folktales and fairy tales that are firmly rooted in individual cultures, yet the tale of Cinderella has been told through many centuries and throughout the far corners of the world. With thousands of versions of this classic tale in print worldwide, the tale is believed to have originated with the story of Rhodopis, a Greek slave girl who is married to an Egyptian King. The story of Rhodopis, which means rosy-cheeks, dates back to 7 BC and is attributed to a Greek geographer named Strabo. The Chinese variation of this fairy tale is named Yeh-hsien. The Chinese version is traceable to the year 860 and appears in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang by Duan Chengshi. Yeh-hsien is a young girl, motherless and in the control of her stepmother, who befriends a treasured fish. The jealous step-mother kills the fish, but it’s bones provide Yeh-hsien with magical powers, eventually enabling Yeh-hsien to escape the control of her step-mother for a royal life. The Story of the Black Cow which is found within the pages of Folk Tales from the Himalayas by John Murray, published in 1906, the child who is mistreated by a stepmother is a male and the role of savior is portrayed by a snake, with a cow serving as the moral of the story, faithfulness. These two versions of Cinderella carry many common threads that are

Tartar explains how a little Fairy Tale can affect someone’s life, it could be by their personality, or even just little things such as how they see life. She then explains that even reading the same stories as people got older, like for example The Little Red Riding Hood, each person will see it with a different message. On Maria Tatar work she explains some of the psychological aspects that are involved in knowledge development of children; she makes an emphasis on how some “fairy-tale characters always seem to be lying, cheating, or stealing their way to good fortune.” (Paragraph-10, Pg. 231); most parents do not want their children to steal things from other people. Tatar states that as people get older, they are more likely to forget the strong messages that a simple

As a child, I was told fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs every night before I went to sleep. Fairytales are an adventurous way to expand a child’s imagination and open their eyes to experience a new perspective. Modernizations of fairytales typically relate to a specific audience, such as adolescence, and put a contemporary spin on the old-aged tale. Instead of using whimsical themes heavily centered in nature, the contemporary poems connect with the reader in a more realistic everyday scenario. Also, many modernizations are written in poetic form to help reconstruct a flow in the piece and to develop or sometimes completely change the meaning from that of the original fairytale. Comparing Grimm’s Fairytale Snow White

Bruno Bettelheim and Maria Tatar both composed articles on the effects that fairy tales have on people’s lives. Bruno Bettelheim wrote the article “Fairy Tales and Modern Stories.” In that article he believes that fairy tales are considered “safe” stories and provide mental stability to children when they find themselves in tough situations. When Maria Tatar wrote her article “Introduction to Fairy Tales” she also elaborates on his point, but also explains these fairy tales have different effects on all ages. While both authors agree that fairy tales have mixed effects on people, they also have many disagreements in between. Both authors do ultimately believe that fairy tales are important in children’s lives, but there are similarities and differences between these two articles that need to be established.

In the lecture Tolkien tells the readers that the man has the power to create stories in order to describe the events of what people are going through. They can express these stories as “satire, adventure, morality, and fantasy” and “causes it to take living form and colour before the eyes.” This makes the readers understand that the fairy stories are created with the intentions to relate to existing events happening, but can be seen in different ways and told by different personifications.

"Once upon a time," the most used introduction phrase in common fairy tales used to start an adventure. These adventures have been around for years. The importance of some tales might be more significant than others, also based on culture. My goal for this paper is to educate my readers with the importance of fairy tales, especially for younger children. Fairy tales have been around for centuries from generations to generations. Different cultures, such as the Japanese and Western, have also expressed them differently. All these fairly tales teach children different aspects of life, which make these tales so important.

American mythologist, scholar, and author Joseph Campbell popularized the study of patterns within heroic narratives in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell’s theory, born from a lifelong study of heroic myths and narratives from around the world, is that the hero’s journey inevitably follows a common pattern of experience. By describing the universal stages (i.e., elements of the hero’s journey/story) that transcend temporal and cultural differences, Campbell’s theory manifests itself as the literary blueprint for the heroic narrative. Campbell’s theory of the narrative structure of the hero’s journey can be applied to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Tolkien’s

The article, Overview of "The Hobbit" written by Don Akers, examines John Tolkien's influential work and informs the reader about the impact that Tolkien aimed for while writing fantasy novels. The author begins with explaining Tolkien's philosophy on the importance of fantasy and mythology within a culture; stating that his main purpose is to link the cultures of the past and present and thus making myths more credible. Myths from the past were borrowed by Tolkien and used to develop his worlds, as mentioned in the article. Acknowledgement bestowed upon Tolkien for laying the strong foundation for future fantasy writers. He then goes on to explain how Tolkien's influence branches beyond writers and even into fantasy role-playing games. To