Fable Narrative Assignment

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, two brothers, published a book of folktales based on material gathered, for the most part, from storytellers in central Germany. The two distinguished German philologists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a collection of two hundred and ten tales in 1812. They included copious notes giving details of the sources and significance of these narratives which they believed represented an untainted expression of an ancient heritage, the authentic voices of the German volk, The volume Kinder und Hausmärchen, (Children's and Household Tales) was not an immediate success (Bettelheim: 69). In 1823 an English translation by Edgar Taylor and David Jardine with illustrations by George Cruikshank appeared. The illustrations made all the difference and the tradition of embodying these tales as images in books and advertising had begun. In 1825 a German version produced by Jacob and Wilhelm and illustrated by their brother, Ludwig, was produced just in time for the Christmas market and the commercialisation of Grimm's Fairytales was underway.

The collection contained a mixture of wonder tales, animal fables, rustic farce, and religious exempla. Best known are undoubtedly the wonder tales (commonly called fairy tales) full of such well-loved characters as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and some favourite villains such as Rumpelstiltskin andthe Wolf (Ellis: 81). Here is a world in which wicked stepmother's prowl the palaces and witches lurk in the woods, but the hero or heroine always wins out in the end. Known in English as Grimm's Fairytales, its worldwide popularity rivals that of the Bible and is in some ways equally as controversial.

The term 'fairy tale' means something to nearly everyone and many people even know that it contains not fairies but stories of magical adventures in a world governed by the ...