[HN Gopher] The first fairy stories were never intended for chil... ___________________________________________________________________ The first fairy stories were never intended for children Author : lermontov Score : 29 points Date : 2022-01-17 21:46 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.spectator.co.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (www.spectator.co.uk) | [deleted] | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/7MrSM | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | >> Fifty years ago, the cheapest way to keep your child quiet was | to sit down and dredge up your memory of Rapunzel, Snow White or | (in my grandmother's case) the fairy tale-like plot of The Sound | of Music. | | Well, I got The Return of The Jedi. Only my mother didn't | remember Luke Skywalker's name so I knew him as "the handsome | prince" until I watched the movie X) | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Yeah, I think he's wrong by 25 years or so. The cheapest way 50 | years ago was still TV. | pixl97 wrote: | Heh, 50 years seems like a long time ago, until I recite my own | age. Honestly that's probably more of 70+ years now. | wolverine876 wrote: | Tolkien had strong opinions on it. He regretted the attempts in | the Hobbit to talk down to children and condemned all such | approaches, including versions of old tales that removed the | unseemly parts. There is an entire section on the topic in his | essay, _On Fairy Stories_. | | _Let us not divide the human race into Eloi and Morlocks: pretty | children - 'elves' as the eighteenth century often idiotically | called them - with their fairytales (carefully pruned), and dark | Morlocks tending their machines. If fairy-story as a kind is | worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by | adults._ | | Also, he says the following. Remember that Tolkien served in WWI, | losing most of his friends and his unit, and he says that during | the war is when he became deeply interested, as an adult, in | 'fairy stories': | | _If adults are to read fairy-stories as a natural branch of | literature ... what are the values and functions of this kind? | ... First of all: if written with art, the prime value of fairy- | stories will simply be that value which, as literature, they | share with other literary forms. But fairy-stories offer also, in | a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, | Escape, Consolation, all things of which children have, as a | rule, less need than older people._ | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | I would argue that they were, and in any sense, saying stories | were or were not intended for children is a modern anachronism. | | In preliterate times, in which many of these stories originate, | these stories were passed orally, likely around a fire or | during/after a meal, where the elders told these stories to the | youngers. There was likely not much segregation by age, which | meant that children would be among the audience, and very likely, | may have even been the target of the storyteller (if you ever | watch grandparents with grandkids, even when the parents are in | the room, much of the conversation may be addressed to the | grandkids). | | In addition, "childhood" as we have now is relatively recent. | Likely as soon as they could walk, children were being involved | in the adult activities of farming/gathering/hunting/fighting | etc. Girls were often married shortly after puberty (so early | teens). Young men were often inducted into the tribe of men early | and trained as warriors (see Sparta for an extreme example, or | the Jewish Bar Mitzvah where a boy is seen as an adult member of | the community at age 13). | | In addition, I don't think there was the concept of shielding | children from the unpleasantness of life. Death was all around | them. Many of them had lost mothers in childbirth. Many if not | most had at least lost 1 sibling in infancy. Thus the violence | and horror in the old fairy tales which we consider "adult" | today, was likely not all that different from everyday life and | thus not considered unsuitable for children. | | As an example, think of the Roman practice of crucifixion. You | could be a kid headed to market, and come upon a bunch of naked | men, who were screaming in agony as they were being nailed to | crosses by soldiers. Even in the modern age, hangings at Old | Bailey in London were public affairs. | | Thus, just because a story contains themese and/or scenes that we | would consider not suitable for children today, does not mean | that children were not an important part of the audience when the | story was actually a folk tale being told in communities. | chongli wrote: | You said exactly what I wanted to say but far more eloquent and | thorough. | | I totally agree. I see so many of these articles judging the | past according to modern values. It's absolute anachronistic | nonsense if you ask me. I have no idea why people keep writing | articles like this, except perhaps as some kind of signaling. | rhacker wrote: | Totally agree. The phrase "Spare the rod, spoil the child" is | GONE. | [deleted] | taylodl wrote: | _As an example, think of the Roman practice of crucifixion. You | could be a kid headed to market, and come upon a bunch of naked | men, who were screaming in agony as they were being nailed to | crosses by soldiers. Even in the modern age, hangings at Old | Bailey in London were public affairs._ | | My grandmother told a story of a hanging she went to when she | was 4 years old. That's here in the U.S. in the early 1920's. | She says the whole town was there, children and all. That's | totally possible seeing how today the town has a population of | 6,200 - back then it was probably 2,000 or less. It's ironic | that the gross coddling of children began with the Baby Boomer | generation - the generation my grandmother helped raise. I | guess between seeing public hangings and enduring both the | Great Depression and WWII they wanted to make life easier for | their kids. | [deleted] | pixl97 wrote: | On a side note that's totally unrelated, just because your | town is 6000 now doesnt mean it wasnt larger in the distant | past. There is one of these little crapsack towns built along | the highway by where I used to live. Really annoyed me | because of the low speed limit for the 1000 or so people that | live there. Looked it up one day and it turns out that in the | 1910s-1920s it had a population of around 15,000 based on a | large coal mine that existed at that time. Once the mine | closed it shrank, and you would never know it was so large. | zokier wrote: | > saying stories were or were not intended for children is a | modern anachronism | | Well, modern is relative but quick reading of wikipedia points | out that people have been writing stories specifically for | children since late 17th century, and definitely solidified as | a category in the early 19th centuryt: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_literature#Early-... | | Picking a slightly more scholarly source we find this statement | | > Already during the 1690s, Fenelon, the important theologian | and Archbishop of Cambrai who had been in charge of the | Dauphin's education, had written several didactic fairy tales | as an experiment to make the Dauphin's lessons more enjoyable. | However, they were not considered proper and useful enough for | the grooming of children from the upper classes to be | published. They were first printed after Fenelon's death in | 1730. From that point on it became more acceptable to write and | publish fairy tales for children, just as long as they | indoctrinated children according to gender-specific roles and | class codes in the civilizing process. The most notable example | here, aside from Fenelon's tales, is the voluminous work of | Madame Leprince de Beaumont, who published Magasin des Enfants | (1756), which included "Beauty and the Beast," "Prince Cheri," | and other overtly moralistic tales for children. | | (When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their | Tradition 2nd ed., p16-17) | Rygian wrote: | "Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. | They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. | Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. | They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. | The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a | snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words | that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. | Elves are bad." | | (Quote from Terry Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies") | technothrasher wrote: | > "if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that | have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. | Elves are bad." | | Wait, so he's saying that words can change meaning but mythical | creatures cannot change character? It would seem to me that | those are two sides of the same phenomenon. | dcminter wrote: | Bad, at least in British slang of a moderately recent era, | can mean cool. | ludston wrote: | It's a quote from one of his ficticious Discworld novels that | introduces elves in his specific universe. | monkeydreams wrote: | I think the commentary is that people who twist the meanings | of words in order to charm and beguile are "bad". Like most | of Pratchett's work, the subtext is pretty heavy. | Koshkin wrote: | Nor is _Carnival Row_ , incidentally. | melony wrote: | Carnival could have been a great show considering the | ridiculously well-made set and fairly large budget (for an 8 | episodes TV show). It is a pity that the storyline and plot was | so dry and unexciting. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-19 23:00 UTC)