Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales - explanation

Purpose

Fairy tales were originally intended for adults and children. They were passed down orally to amuse and to convey cultural information that influences behaviour, such as where it is safe to travel and where it is dangerous to go. 

Origin

Fairy tales are found in most cultures and many derive from the oldest stories ever told. Some modern fairy tales could be included in the more recently categorised genre of ‘fantasy’.

Theme

The familiar themes of many traditional stories are prevalent in fairy tales:

• magic and skill
• safe and dangerous
• good and evil
• weak and strong
• rich and poor
• wise and foolish
• old and young
• beautiful and ugly
• mean and generous
• just and unjust
• friend and foe
• family/home and stranger/far away
• the origins of the Earth, its people and animals
• The relationship between people and the seen or unseen world around them.

Character

Fairy tales consistently include some of the most familiar and traditional archetypes of all folk tales (hero, villain, mentor, trickster, sage, shape shifter, herald). 

Human characters are simply the people who lived in the castles, cottages and hovels of the original stories: kings and queens, princes and princesses, knights and ladies, poor farmers, youngest sons, wise old women, beggars, tailors, soldier, a goose-girl. 

The main character is often humble, melancholy or hard-working and wants to make life better. 

Characters also include a wide range of magical folk including animals or creatures who may have mystical powers yet behave with human characteristics. 

Interestingly, the presence of fairies or talking animals is not necessarily the best way to identify a traditional tale as a fairy story. Many fairy stories do not include fairies as characters.

Plot and Structure

The setting and details about when events took place are nearly always vague. (Once upon a time… A long, long time ago… It happened that… )

The stories tell the adventures of people in the land of fairy folk so plots usually include the use of magic, fantastic forces and fanciful creatures.  

Often the hero or heroine is searching for something (a home, love, acceptance, wealth, wisdom) and in many tales dreams are fulfilled with a little help from magic.

‘Fairy tale endings’ (where everything turns out for the best) are common. 

Style

Fairy tales include good examples of the repetitive, rhythmic and patterned language of traditional stories. Phrases or expressions are repeated for emphasis or to create a magical, theatrical effect (so she went over the gate, across the meadow and down to the stream once more… not once, not twice, but three times…).

Fairy stories use:

• rich, evocative vocabulary
• the language of the fairy world (magic spells, incantations, charms)
• the spoken language of the ordinary people (dialogue, regional accent and dialect vocabulary, informal expressions)
• memorable language (rhyme, alliteration, assonance, repetition)
• Formulaic openings and endings; imagery: simile, metaphor and symbolism.

Fairy tales are commonly presented as implausible but it is important to remember that in cultures where the inhabitants of the magical world are perceived as real, the stories may be interpreted more as legends, so that storyteller and reader/audience understand them to have some historical, factual basis.