i am reading the fables comic book right now, and it got me thinking about all of the “the original fairy tales by grimm and anderson were really gory” stories, and i was wondering if anyone could tell me some good books on the subject, as well as good books that tell the original stories?
thanks
The Uses of Enhancement by Bruno Bettleheim (I think)
Who should rot in hell, but not for that book.
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a fantastic book on the subject of archetypes in old fairy tales. It details many of the gorier stories, such as The Red Shoes, Little Match Girl, and Blackbeard.
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a fantastic book on the subject of archetypes in old fairy tales. It details many of the gorier stories, such as The Red Shoes, Little Match Girl, and Bluebeard.
Here is a link to the table of contents:
Sorry, guess I didn’t catch it in time. :smack:
I picked up “Complete Works” of both (all three?) authors at Barnes & Noble a while ago for under $15 each. I spent this past weekend reading through the Grimm Fairy Tales, and yes–they are fairly gory. Not by today’s standards, but all the same…
For instance, Sleeping Beauty’s wicked stepmother is made to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies.
H.C. Andersen isn’t quite as gory, but he’s fairly morbid. I would recommend his (original) version of The Little Mermaid, but it’s really depressing. No spoilers here, but I’ll tell you one thing: Disney was way off.
If you’re interested in going beyond Grimm’s and Andersen, I recommend English Fairy Tales, collected by Joseph Jacobs.
I have three different printings of this, it’s one of my favourite collections. (I have a whole shelf of fairy tales, and no children. Go ahead, laugh.)
I mention this one because it has some of the goriest english folk tales ever.
Sweet dreams, sleepyhead! 
I have two comments and two questions.
The Grimms’ project was actually to study the deep beliefs of the German people in order to determine their influence on beliefs about jurisprudence. This information comes from the introduction of the Zipes translation.
Also, once the books began to sell (!), the Grimms bowdlerized their own books to get them to sell even better. In the first edition, it is generally not the stepmother who is evil to her child but the mother. Also they improved the flow and entertainment value of the stories.
Question: Does anyone know where I can get a first edition?
Next, whistlepig, why should Bettelheim rot in hell?
gtbiehle, Bettelheim is generally known for cooking his statistics to suggest that poor people are poor because of an innate lack of intelligence. (That’s right, the “Bell Curve” isn’t simply stupid, it’s unoriginal.)
Also, with regard to the later editions of Grimm being bowlderized, I recall that in the original The Three Army Surgeons, the man with the pig’s eyes was explicitly compelled to roll in “Scheisse” – later changed to a more generic sort of filth. :eek:
“Bowlderized” is a typo, not a spelling error. I swear.