Aesop and Grimm: contrast in ethical codes and contemporary values

Abstract

People often think of Aesop's fables and the folk tales of the brothers Grimm together, since both are collections of traditional folklore, classics of children's literature, and important sources of American popular culture. Both are retold in elementary school readers; both are regularly selected by artists for reinterpretation and reissue as picture books. Political cartoonists and advertising campaign designers take advantage of the public's familiarity with Aesop and Grimm for purposes of their own. Aesop and Grimm appear to have been adopted by and incorporated into our culture, to the degree that few children grow up today without somewhere along the way absorbing the plight of Cinderella and the fate of the tortoise and the hare. Sometimes these stories are first encountered in library books or school texts, but more often they are introduced through the popular culture, by way of animated cartoons, Sesame Street or Walt Disney adaptations, mass marketed books like those published by The Golden Press, and in the most traditional manner, by word of mouth.