The Literature Book

117

See also: One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ Fairy Tales 151 ■

Kalevala 151 ■ The Bloody Chamber 332

ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

in their Children’s and Household

Tales, represents the greatest body

of stories collected in Europe and

is the most widely translated and

read. W. H. Auden declared Grimms’

tales “among the few common-

property books upon which

Western culture can be founded.”

The methodology for gathering

stories did not include sorties into

the woods, as is often picturesquely

believed. The Grimms’ sources

generally came to them, and some

stories were already written down,

such as “The Juniper Tree,” sent to

them by painter Philip Otto Runge.

In their first edition, the Grimms

wrote for a mainly adult audience.

It was only after Edgar Taylor’s

English translation of their work in

1823 was successful with children

that they made revisions to sanitize

the German stories. For example,

their first version of “Rapunzel”

openly referred to her pregnancy

(outside marriage), but in the

revised version she simply fattens.

Yet violence was not necessarily

minimized. The French Cinderella,

Cendrillon, in Charles Perrault’s

tale, forgives her stepsisters and

finds good husbands for them. But

in the Grimms’ punitive version,

Cinderella’s helper birds blind the

sisters by pecking out their eyes.

Violence notwithstanding, the

popularity of the Grimms’ collected

tales has endured, and they have

sustained multiple interpretations

and rewrites in various media over

the years. The romantic depiction

of “Once upon a time” continues to

manifest inextinguishable truths,

which, along with the allure of a

happy and harmonious ending,

appeal across the generations. ■

In the Grimms’ version, Cinderella weeps by her

mother’s grave, marked by a hazel tree that then

gives her an outfit to go to the ball (Perrault has a

fairy godmother instead of the tree).

These characters were mothers in the

Grimms’ early versions: the sanctity of

motherhood was preserved by changing

the texts to “stepmother.”

This archetype creates opportunities for shifts

in plot and for the triggering of magical but

often terrible events.

This archetype creates menace and obstacles

in a story to challenge the natural order.

Grimms’ tales are littered with characters

that have been transformed into birds and other

animals and that might become human again

under the right circumstances.

The magical

helper

The wicked

stepmother

The witch

or sorceress

The

trickster

The

transformed

animal

Archetypal characters in folklore

Jacob Grimm and

Wilhelm Grimm

Known as the Brothers

Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863)

and Wilhelm (1786–1859) were

celebrated German academics,

cultural researchers, linguists,

and lexicographers.

The oldest surviving sons

of a family of six children, they

were raised in Hanau, Hesse.

Despite poverty following the

death of their lawyer father,

they were educated at the

University of Marburg, thanks

to a well-connected aunt.

The Grimms are credited

with developing an early

methodology for collecting folk

stories that is now the basis

of folklore studies. They were

also notable philologists

(studying the language in

written historical sources).

Both brothers also worked

on a monumental (32-volume)

German dictionary, which was

unfinished in their lifetimes.

Other key works

1813–16 Old German Forests

1815 Poor Heinrich by

Hartmann von der Aue

1815 Songs from the

Elder Edda

1816–18 German Sagas

1852–1960 German Dictionary

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