I bet you have read and heard several fairy tale, Is not it? Fairy tales are usually our first contact with literature, and even before learn to read, we were invited to discover the playful universe that permeates stories from other times. We always have a fairy tale on the tip of our tongue and we are able to reproduce them without necessarily having a book in hand, such familiarity with these stories.
But you know the origin of fairy tales? How did they come about and why did they spread throughout Western culture? well, the fairy tale they go back to ancient times, coming from the oral tradition of different cultures around the world. These were stories told from father to son and, in this way, they ended up perpetuating themselves in the collective imagination. They only began to be recorded in books in the Middle Ages, when the child actually began to be treated as a child. Until then there were no major distinctions between adults and children, as there was not what we know today as childhood, which is the period related to the development of the little ones.
In the beginning, the tales were not yet of fairies. The original stories hardly resemble the stories we know today and, for the most part, presented frightening plots that would hardly be successful today. This is because today we respect and know the meaning of the word childhood and because, for some time, some writers, such as Frenchman Charles Perrault, adapted some short stories so that they could be better accepted by the society. Later, the Brothers Grimm and the Dane Hans Christian Andersen gave segment to the proposal. by Charles Perrault, with softer narratives, whose endings culminated in a “moral of the story". To cite an example of how the tales were modified, in the story “Goldilocks”, the girl who invades the house of three teddy bears and mess with all their things did not exist, the character was actually a fox, which in the end was played by the window. Other versions bring a tragic outcome, in which the “teddy bears” decided to devour the intruding animal.
In the original story, the Golden Curls character did not exist, in fact, whoever entered the house of the three teddy bears was a fox
Current tales demonstrate a concern about the impact they can have on children and the influence their stories can have on the lives of little ones. Therefore, themes considered violent and not very playful were completely abolished, although remnants of a somewhat frightening universe in the main fairy tales are still noticeable. Today fairy tales can make us dream, but back then they were stories worthy of our worst nightmares!
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters