Fairy tales: not orally transmitted?

[Surlethe]

Guardian

In the 19th century, Scottish author and clergyman George Macdonald said that he "should as soon think of describing the abstract human face" as attempting to describe a fairy tale. More than 100 years later, scholars are still disputing their origins, with the latest clash arising over a new claim that, far from being passed down through an oral tradition, fairy tales actually have their history in print.

Ruth B Bottigheimer, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, disputes the idea that fairy tales were handed down orally through generations until "19th and 20th-century folklorists hearkened to peasants' words" and they were transformed into literature by the likes of the Brothers Grimm. "It has been said so often that the folk invented and disseminated fairy tales that this assumption has become an unquestioned proposition. It may therefore surprise readers that folk invention and transmission of fairy tales has no basis in verifiable fact," she writes in her new book, Fairy Tales: A New History. "Literary analysis undermines it, literary history rejects it, social history repudiates it, and publishing history (whether of manuscripts or of books) contradicts it."

She points to mid-16th century Venice as the starting point for a specific kind of fairy tale, the "rise" tale or Cinderella story, in which "poverty through magic leads to marriage and then money", arguing that the specific economic conditions and legal restrictions of the area and age gave rise to the format, today the most popular kind of fairy tale. Laws at the time forbade marriage between a noble and a commoner, while the region was also in the middle of an economic downturn.

"This was a mental environment that would have been receptive to a new kind of story line, one in which magic facilitated a poor person's ascent to wealth. This was also the age in which stories that we can identify as rise fairy tales first appear," writes Bottigheimer. "The elements that make up the fairy tale genre were all in place before the 1550s: the hallmarks of fairy tales – magic objects and sudden acquisitions of wealth – were not new in themselves. What was different was that rise fairy tales built in the kinds of generalised hopes for an improvement in their lives specific to the burgeoning populations of upward striving young men and women in early modern cities."

Bottigheimer believes the "rise" genre was invented by Straparola, author of the circa 1550 collection Le piacevoli notti (Pleasant Nights), which contains the earliest known version of Costantino Fortunato (Puss in Boots). "You just don't get that story before the 1550s," she said of the "rise" tale in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. It "beggars belief", she added, that if there were existing oral templates for the "rise" tale before this time, they wouldn't have been recorded. "It seemed to me that if I wasn't seeing any stories like this, it was because there weren't any stories like this."

Her book goes on to suggest how "rise" tales could have passed from Straparola – whose collection sold well in Italy – to France, to Germany and eventually to the Brothers Grimm, emphasising the central role of print in the journey. But her views haven't been received well by some of her fellow folklorists, according to the CHE, which reports a "hue and cry" at a meeting in Milwaukee in 2006, and an audience "up in arms against her" in Estonia in 2005. "She's turning things upside down. Oral tradition is one of the fundamental tenets of folklore, and here she comes to upset it, and that is one of the reasons we reacted that way to her paper and her book," Dan Ben-Amos, the University of Pennsylvania's folklorist, told the CHE.

Other academics, however, suggest that the belief in an oral tradition owes a lot to nostalgic Victorian folklorists equating orality with authenticity, while still others say it is wrong to divide the complex history of fairy tales into either oral or literary, claiming they are likely to have had a multitude of sources.

George Macdonald, author of At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin, perhaps still puts it best, over 100 years on. "Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful."

No time for comment.

[Johonebesus]

If we discount fairy tales, then Western Europe seems to have had a real poverty of folk stories by the early modern period. If the stories collected by the Grimms had no authentic folk tradition, then where were the folk tales? Of course, they collated, corrected, and cleaned the many stories they found, so what was published was more of an impressionistic overview than a highly detailed collection of records.

It is silly to draw a clear cut line between published literature and folk tales. Stories pass between social strata very easily, and it can be hard to strain out the influences of each author and audience. For example, there is (or was) a bit of a controversy as to whether the Robin Hood stories came from dissatisfied peasants or the rising gentry. Entertainers like troubadours and bards usually came from the peasantry or artisan/merchant classes, and they entertained nobles. When educated authors wrote down stories, they rarely made up stories out of whole cloth, the way modern authors try to do, but rather they took stories that were already in circulation and recast them for their intended audience. Stories can have long histories passing back and forth between books and oral tales. Romeo and Juliet is startlingly similar to a story written by Ovid. And of course Ovid did not simply invent most of the tales in the Metamorphoses, but took traditional stories and molded them to fit his theme. Then his versions passed back into the folk tradition and shaped future versions. That's the way folk traditions work.

Her thesis seems a little simplistic to me. Social mobility has always been somewhat fluid in Western Europe. In the Middle Ages great warrior could aspire to knighthood and an estate, maybe even a title and a heritable fief. Merchants could always buy some measure of power and prestige. By the late Mediaeval period the untitled but landed gentry was growing in wealth and power, and by the early modern period there was a rising Bourgeois merchant/middling class. The ability of a poor commoner to become "gentle" was a prominent theme in the Victorian age, both a cause for celebration and concern. Throughout the ages the titled aristocracy fought tooth and nail to maintain their prestige and power based on blood rather than wealth or even martial prowess. It is absolutely predictable that stories in Western Europe would be greatly concerned with social mobility, either in commoners gaining access to the upper classes, or in élites reinforcing the nobility of blood over success. In fact, many fairy tales have protagonists that are revealed to be of noble or even royal descent. Rather than telling of commoners elevated by magic, several famous stories describe nobles or princesses being rescued from illegitimate servitude and restored to their proper station.

[Bounty]

Good idea, sloppy execution.

She could very well have an excellent point about the popularity or even the origins of "rise to station" tales, and perhaps even as to how they ended up in print en masse. But why then does she extrapolate the origins of one subgenre of folk tales to describe the origins of all folk tales, even though the vast majority of them are neither thematically or stylistically related?

Discounting oral tradition simply because one particular type of story only partially originated through oral transmission is running really roughshod over the issue.

[LadyTevar]

Where's Lagmonster when we need the Folklore expert?

Did you know the first known Arthurian Romance was composed in 1170 by Chrètien de Troyes?
Erec et Enide was a chanson de geste, a French epic poem. Other chanson de geste topics were Charlemagne and his knights, Greek or Roman heros, or the Rebel Barons. Also in the 12th Century was Marie de France, who composed several lais on the theme of human cruelty or evil being exposed or remedied by supernatural beings or means. Both Troyes and de France drew on Breton/Celtic legend handed down orally in story and song, as well as Latin and contemporary social and literary culture.

[Akkleptos]

Did you know the first known Arthurian Romance was composed in 1170 by Chrètien de Troyes?
Erec et Enide was a chanson de geste, a French epic poem. Other chanson de geste topics were Charlemagne and his knights, Greek or Roman heros, or the Rebel Barons. Also in the 12th Century was Marie de France, who composed several lais on the theme of human cruelty or evil being exposed or remedied by supernatural beings or means. Both Troyes and de France drew on Breton/Celtic legend handed down orally in story and song, as well as Latin and contemporary social and literary culture.

Yeah, these epics are old, for example -though not containing much in regards to supernatural beings other than the Christian god- El Cantar del Mio Cid, dating from the end of the 12th Century or beginning of the 13th.

In any case, isn't it strange that these supernatural beings seem to be always:

1) Underground dwellers (from Morrigan to Rumpelstiltskin to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, oh and the seven dwarves) whose realms can only be accessed through caves, holes in the ground, holes in old trees, the bottoms of lakes, etc.
2) Always obsessed with human reproduction: in all old legends, they seem to have a penchant for stealing babies (e.g. the changelings of the wee folk of Ireland) or seducing young girls and boys under the guise of attractive members of the opposite sex.
3) Actively searching to meddle in human ruling bloodlines: The tales of supernatural beings always involved in securing deals with ruling human bloodlines, either through marriage to supernaturals (fairy princes or princesses) or through adotion (when not kidnapping) of royal princelings.

Blah blah... I know, I know... all this reeks of David Icke-ish insanity, but I think the similarities in the legends throughout the ages and around the world might be telling of an interesting psychological phenomeon, at the very least.

[charlemagne]

Yeah, these epics are old

Yeah, but Arthurian epics are not "real" folk stories in the sense that they've been composed/written, not just a written down story that was handed down the generations orally before. What I mean is, even while they surely contain elements drawn from oral tradition (or, in some cases, from ancient texts like the Illias etc.) they're not relevant to the fairy tale tradition. I think for that purpose you have to look back farther than early/middle medieval times, more like the older epics like those in the Edda or the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf etc.

[Akkleptos]

How about Homer's The Illiad and The Odissey. It is widely accepted now that these were legendary epic tales that had been carried on through oral tradition until Homer (that is, if a real living person named Homer ever even existed) consigned them to written word.

[Edi]

How about Homer's The Illiad and The Odissey. It is widely accepted now that these were legendary epic tales that had been carried on through oral tradition until Homer (that is, if a real living person named Homer ever even existed) consigned them to written word.

Most old legends that have been written down originally passed down orally and such usually had several differing versions. If a particular written version later gained widespread acceptance, the other versions usually died out. There is a fascinating account of the oral bardic traditions that have survived in the rural Balkans to this day in the book AlphaBeta by John Mann. It's discussed in context of Homer's works and the development of the alphabet and the forces that have shaped this process.

[Darth Wong]

All of the world's aboriginal tribes must be quite shocked to discover that all of their folk tales and religious beliefs did not in fact exist until white people wrote them down on paper.

That is, after all, an extension of the same logic she's employing, whereby she argues that if a story pre-existed its written form, there should be an older ... written form.

It "beggars belief", she added, that if there were existing oral templates for the "rise" tale before this time, they wouldn't have been recorded. "It seemed to me that if I wasn't seeing any stories like this, it was because there weren't any stories like this."

PS. How does she respond to criticism about the incredibly high level of illiteracy in medieval Europe? Doesn't an oral tradition seem almost inevitable among illiterates? Why would they not develop one?

[charlemagne]

Doesn't an oral tradition seem almost inevitable among illiterates? Why would they not develop one?

Exactly, following her train of thought, mankind literally (no pun intended ) started from scratch with every new generation, it's amazing we ever even developed speech that way.

Maybe a historian should tell her that the tendency to write down pretty much everything is a relatively new phenomenon. Those few literate people had much more practical things to do for thousands of years than to write down stories.

[Kettch]

Gang, I think you're being overly harsh on Ms Bottigheimer, especially since it looks from the postings that the responses are just from the article. I took a look at the Amazon page for her book Fairy Tales: A New History. If you use the "look inside" section it has the first few pages of the introduction where she starts to lay down the differences between fairy tales, folk tales, and other tales that include magic (like epics, religious tales, etc). Also the list of tales she examines is in the index section.

Also, something she touches on, is that folk tales were being written down before 1500. Not systematicly, but there is evidence for them, so her "beggars belief" is that there are no tales in the fairy format until the 16th century that were written down.

Because I can't copy and paste from the Look Inside section, here is the back cover blurb instead.

From the Back Cover
Where did Cinderella come from? Puss in Boots? Rapunzel? The origins of fairy tales are looked at in a new way in these highly engaging pages. Conventional wisdom holds that fairy tales originated in the oral traditions of peasants and were recorded for posterity by the Brothers Grimm during the nineteenth century. Ruth B. Bottigheimer overturns this view in a lively account of the origins of these well-loved stories. Charles Perrault created Cinderella and her fairy godmother, but no countrywoman whispered this tale into Perrault's ear. Instead, his Cinderella appeared only after he had edited it from the book of often amoral tales published by Giambattista Basile in Naples. Distinguishing fairy tales from folktales and showing the influence of the medieval romance on them, Bottigheimer documents how fairy tales originated as urban writing for urban readers and listeners. Working backward from the Grimms to the earliest known sixteenth-century fairy tales of the Italian Renaissance, Bottigheimer argues for a book-based history of fairy tales. The first new approach to fairy tale history in decades, this book answers questions about where fairy tales came from and how they spread, illuminating a narrative process long veiled by surmise and assumption.

"This book will forever change the way that scholars and readers view a genre--the literary fairy tale--that remains vital today." -- Suzanne Magnanini, author of Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Tales of Straparola and Basile

(Emphasis Mine)

[Darth Wong]

Yes, but she is quoted as defending that position by saying that if any of those stories preceded the first written versions in an oral tradition, there should have been written records. This seems like really strange logic to me.

[Lagmonster]

PS. How does she respond to criticism about the incredibly high level of illiteracy in medieval Europe? Doesn't an oral tradition seem almost inevitable among illiterates? Why would they not develop one?

I'm reminded of the 1800s in America, where there are several varieties of the 'Pennsylvania coal miner ghost story' whose origins are unknown because they weren't written down until, in some cases, generations later. Ghost stories in particular are interesting because they rarely change format over thousands of years, just replacing cause of death and circumstances of the fear associated with the haunt with the tragic deaths and fears of the age in which they're told (in other words, there were no stories about haunted railways until people started getting killed by trains). Some ghost stories in particular will see the same basic tale be 'reinvented' many times over many cultures and ages.

Oral tradition of folklore is easiest to see in parents and children. We pass down cradle songs, rhymes, and romanticized family tall tales about the time uncle Ed got his toe stuck in a mule, and these things can go generations or more as long as kids grow up to tell them to the next generation.