Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales

Abstract

When did fairy tales begin? What qualifies as a fairy tale? Is a true fairy tale oral or literary? Or is fairy tale determined not by style but by content? To answer these and other questions, Jan Ziolkowski not only provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical debates about fairy tale origins, but also includes an extensive discussion of the relationship of the fairy tale to both the written and oral sources. Ziolkowski offers interpretations of a sampling of the tales to sketch out the complex connections that existed in the Middle Ages between oral folktales and their written equivalents, the variety of uses to which the writers applied the stories, and the diverse relationships between the medieval texts and the expressions of the same tales in the classic fairy tale collections of the nineteenth century. This book will be of interest to scholars in comparative medieval literature studies, folklore, and fairy tale studies, as well as readers interested in the fairy tale.