When you think of a fairy tale, often the first thing that comes to mind is Disney, and the many different fairy tales that he adapted into loveable animated classics. Right? The name 'The Brothers Grimm' probably comes as an afterthought to your mind, something you heard or read somewhere, vaguely connected with fairy tales.
If this isn't true, and you do know quite a bit about them - sorry I doubted you. You're doing better than I was before a few months ago.
The reason Disney is the first to come to mind is probably because most of us were introduced to the fairy tale as children, through the dancing cartoon animals, pumpkin carriages, and musical melodies that they're made up of. But, on the contrary, the Grimm Brothers were - while not the first - one of the leading references of folk and fairy tales that still exist today. Disney actually used their stories as a basis in many of his - though when compared side by side, they are very different indeed.
The Grimm Brothers weren't interested in sing-alongs and dancing animals, nor did these concepts probably even cross their minds - they were simply interested in preserving the German oral tradition of folk tales. In a very gory and violent fashion though, if I might add. Many of their tales were never even intended for the ears of children. They also didn't care that most of these folktales had roots going back much farther than Germany. Nor were they against altering the tales in order to insert various references and moral lessons they viewed as important. Many of their versions of the fairy tales are quite unique because of the different ways in which they were told and different elements that were added and taken away.
Most of the alterations - made mostly by Wilhelm, the younger of the two brothers - are religious in nature, reflecting their religious upbringings and beliefs. The way that he shaped the tales actually set the stage for fairy tale structures in the future. He viewed fairy tales themselves as a kind of "manual of manners" so to speak - lessons for people to shape themselves by (O'Neill), as well as "fragments of faith" (Murphy, 7).
I will attempt to argue that the religious undertones in the fairy tales gathered by the Brothers Grimm were actually inserted in there by the Grimm’s themselves during revision, in order to be a type of religious, moral and spiritual teaching. Fairy tales themselves teach a lesson, and all Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm wished to do was preserve these messages – as well as add a few of their own. Whilst being very gory and violent, and at times having very un-Christian-like behaviors in them, ultimately the Grimm’s fairy tales attempt to show the difference between good and evil – and warn against the paths that lead towards the latter.
Within this topic I want to talk about 4 things. The first, is the Grimm brother’s backgrounds and their religious upbringings – why they gathered the folktales and why they inserted religious references into them. The second, is to look at a number of specific fairy tales – case studies you could consider them – and analyse their religious themes and symbolisms as the Grimm’s presented them. Thirdly, I wish to compare the Disney versions of some of my case studies, to see whether their messages have changed like some of my sources argue, or if they have actually stayed true to the originals. And finally, I will go through some of the opposition's arguments.
Introduction
