The Importance Of Fairy Tales - 782 Words

With this essay, I’d like to convey what fairy tales mean to me as an artist, which is everything. (Ever since I was a child I have been happiest living in the sphere of a story. That in itself is a fairy tale.) I’d also like to demystify the idea that fairy tales are of use only to writers of fantasy or fabulism. I’d like to celebrate their lucid form. And I’d like to reveal how specific techniques in fairy tales cross stylistic boundaries. For while the interpretation of fairy tales is a well-traveled path among writers, fairy-tale techniques remain little identified and appreciated. â€Å"The pleasure of fairy tales,† writes Swiss scholar Max Là ¼thi, â€Å"residesin theirform.† I find myself more and more devoted to the pleasure derived from form†¦show more content†¦Sometimes our conversations lead them to incorporate new motifs in their work, or to intensify others, in direct homage to fairy tales. Yet a critical underappreciation of the art of fairy tales sometimes leads to the misinterpretation of these beautifully deliberate gestures as rather unfortunate accidents or diminishments to the verisimilitude of the work at hand. (There are many reasons for this underappreciation, of course, and they are strange reasons and sad. Part of the problem is that many interpretations of fairy tales are burdened with clichà ©s. But that’s a topic for a different essay. For now, let’s simply say that their association with women and children, with the nursery story, has perhaps played a part. Also, wolf-girls simply alarm.) So: instead of looking at how fairy tales have been disparaged, let’s celebrate their form. To do this I’d like to focus on four elements of traditional fairy tales: flatness, abstraction, intuitive logic, and normalized magic. I believe that these formal components (though there are others) comprise the hard logic of tales that Italo Calvino refers to in one of the epigraphs to this essay. Many authors who love fairy tales refer to this hardness as contributing to their love of the form—but I’d like to go one step further and examine these four components as they relate specifically to the reductive spectrum of mainstream and avant-garde writing. That is, these four technicalShow MoreRelatedThe Importance Of Fairy Tales717 Words   |  3 Pagespurpose of including a moral into a fairy tale is that it teaches the reader a valuable lesson that one may not have understood before. Sometimes children do not listen to their parents when it comes to right versus wrong, but instead look up to fairy tales. For example, in the story, Little Red Riding Hood, the story ends with the girl saying, â€Å"As long as I live, I wont go out of the road into the forest, when mother has forbidden me† (Lus atia). The importance of this story is for young childrenRead MoreThe Importance Of Fairy Tales1397 Words   |  6 PagesFairy Tale’s Favorable Information Fairy tales are important due to the ability to enhance a child’s imagination and artistic intellect. On a deeper note, however, they allow for the development of critical thinking skills, which, in turn, allow for children to make logical decisions based on the choices that the characters make within the tale. They see the actions that the characters engage in and, as a result, the consequences that follow, which allows them to analyze what happened and why. InRead MoreThe Importance Of Fairy Tales952 Words   |  4 Pagescertain control over the popular reception of fairy tales by determining to a great extent not only the nature of the tales that are made accessible to children, but also the context of their reception† (445). Haase believes that teachers are the problem why children are having a hard time claiming their power over fairy tales. Apparently, teachers hold the power over what children can observe in fairy tales. The perception of teachers who read the f airy tales to children can maneuver through the storyRead MoreThe Importance Of Fairy Tales1754 Words   |  8 Pagesmovies. These stories provide an escape from reality for children and adults alike. Many fairy tales were originally thought to be enchanting and were meant to please a child’s endless imaginations and presents different teachings and morals (Moore 175). In the society seen today, many aspects of life are changing and fairytales have not been adapting consistently to these changes. The biggest contributor to fairy tales today, is Disney. Disney utilizes their popularity by shaping and dominating the worldRead MoreThe Importance Of Fairy Tales1065 Words   |  5 PagesExpository All fairy tales continue to be relevant in today’s world. The adventurous stories are continually thriving through the different techniques that writers use including the themes that each tale embraces to draw their readers in and remember them. This allows for the fairy tales to be prevalent to the world today. Before fairy tales were the sources of many movie adaptions, they were only spread word of mouth, where story tellers would share them with their communities. These story tellersRead MoreFairy Tales : A Child1739 Words   |  7 Pagesgoing to read your child fairy tales as you did for me when I was a child. As a child I, remember sitting on your lap and listening to you read me fairy tales in funny accents as you tried to put me to sleep, and even adding your own twist to them. By the time you were done with the first story I would want another and another until I was actually asleep. By you reading me fairy tales, when I was a child, it made me closer to you and gave us a special bond. The fairy tales you read to me as a childRead MoreThe Deeper Meanings that Lies in Fairy Tales1121 Words   |  5 Pagesin 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 cu lture. 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 childrenRead MoreEssay about An Analysis of Fairy Tales1684 Words   |  7 Pagesprincesses, beauty, magic, and love, fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella among others have become children’s favorite bedtime stories. However, as parents tuck their sons and daughters in, they fail to realize that there is a much more daunting purpose to these stories. American writer and poet, Jane Yolen suggests that fairy tales indicate life values. Furthermore, Yolen insists that these tales are â€Å"thumbprints of history† (Yolen 27). Studying fairy tales in depth, she proves that the â€Å"functionsRead MoreFairy Tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm1359 Words à ‚  |  6 PagesIntroduction: Fairy tales were a big part of my childhood. I started my research on fairy tales written by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Fairy tales often have a character that goes on a journey or an adventure. During his journey he encounters mystical beings that help or hurt the characters success. When I was a child, my grandparents would tell my sister and I stories like â€Å"Jack and the Bean Stalk† and â€Å"Little Red Riding Hood†. My grandfather would always act out the part of the wolf or the giant,Read MoreEssay Fairy Tales Shape Our Childhood and Our Future1252 Words   |  6 Pageswhen each story is told orally, something changes. Each story becomes a little more unique and has a different moral each time it’s told, depending on the storyteller. They teach us about life and help us tell whether or not the story is really a tall tale. Stories have been entertaining us since the beginning of time and they make life just a bit more interesting. Telling fairytales gives us something to do to pass the time and without a story every so often people would become bored and unimaginative