Fairy tale Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A fairy tale is a story, either told to children or as if told to children, concerning the adventures of mythical characters such as: fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants and others. The fairy tale is a sub-class of the more general folktale. These stories often involve princes and princesses and modern versions normally have a happy ending. Within cultures where demons and witches are perceived as real, fairy tales may merge into legendary narratives, where the context is perceived by teller and hearers as having had historical actuality.The original fairy tales were for adults who believed in the fairies then. They were often brief, and tied to a specific time and place. The story had no moral lesson to be learned. Rather, they read like a sighting or local news to the superstitious folk. They were told from generation to generation, not written down. The tales often had sad endings - the penalty for dealing with the fairy folk.
Later, fairy tales were about princes and pricesses, combat, adventure, society, and romance. Fairies had a secondary role. Moral lessons and happy endings were more common, and the villain was always punished. In the modern era, fairy tales were altered, usually with violence removed, so they could be read to children.
Sometimes fairy tales are simply miraculous entertainments but often, fairy tales are disguised morality tales. This is true for the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Collection, and much of the drily witty, dead-pan social criticism beneath the surface of Hans Christian Andersen's tales, which influenced Roald Dahl.
The fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the "Arabian Nights" collection of magical tales, in antiquity: Cupid and Psyche, Bel and the Dragon. Fairy tales resurfaced in literature in the 17th century, with the Neapolitan tales of Giambattista Basile and the later Contes of Charles Perrault, who fixed the forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
An extensive collection of European fairy tales were published by Andrew Lang in a series of books: The Red Fairy Book, The Orange Fairy Book, and so forth. These provide some excellent examples of the genre.
According to a 2004 poll of 1,200 childen by UCI Cinemas, the most popular fairy tales are:
- Fairy tales are more than true -
- not because they tell us dragons exist,
- but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
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