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sowalsky 's review for:
Grimm's Fairy Tales
by Jacob Grimm, Ludwig Emil Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm
Reviewing any book as seminal and classic as "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is probably a fool's errand. What can be said which reams of scholarship have not already said better? This particular edition collects about half of the tales which the Grimm's eventually published in their ever-morphing collection. They were drawn not just from folk sources, but from literary sources as well, then honed and polished by the authors. Thus, their value as pure ethnographic artifacts is dubious, although taken with a grain of salt, it can be argued that they still fulfill their stated purpose reasonably well. In addition to the more familiar stories, which, thanks to Disney and others, have become commonplace within our culture, there are dozens of more obscure, often bizarre, tales as well, many of which are of equal quality as the well-worn chestnuts.
When reading an entire collection of these tales from cover to cover, there is a tendency for them to all blur together, and this is because so many motifs, archetypal characters, and situations recur incessantly. These include the evil stepmother; the dwelling in the woods, frequently occupied by groups of robbers, or else by witches; the good Old Woman, whom we have come to recognize as the "fairy godmother;" the three sons who face a challenge which the elder two fail at, but the supposedly dim-witted youngest succeeds at; princes and princesses turned into animals by means of enchantment; one in a group of siblings escaping from some evil, common fate and later saving the rest of them from that fate; a princess who will only marry a suitor who masters some seemingly impossible challenge... the list runs long.
These stories were originally collected for adults, not children, and this gives us an important clue about their cultural significance. At some point anyone who has a vested interest in storytelling and, particularly, with the stories we tell within our culture, should probably read through a collection such as this.
When reading an entire collection of these tales from cover to cover, there is a tendency for them to all blur together, and this is because so many motifs, archetypal characters, and situations recur incessantly. These include the evil stepmother; the dwelling in the woods, frequently occupied by groups of robbers, or else by witches; the good Old Woman, whom we have come to recognize as the "fairy godmother;" the three sons who face a challenge which the elder two fail at, but the supposedly dim-witted youngest succeeds at; princes and princesses turned into animals by means of enchantment; one in a group of siblings escaping from some evil, common fate and later saving the rest of them from that fate; a princess who will only marry a suitor who masters some seemingly impossible challenge... the list runs long.
These stories were originally collected for adults, not children, and this gives us an important clue about their cultural significance. At some point anyone who has a vested interest in storytelling and, particularly, with the stories we tell within our culture, should probably read through a collection such as this.