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FAIRY TALES: a CONTINUAL WORK in PROGRESS a Thesis Submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in Partial Fulfillment

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FAIRY TALES: a CONTINUAL WORK in PROGRESS a Thesis Submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in Partial Fulfillment FAIRY TALES: A CONTINUAL WORK IN PROGRESS A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors by Krystal Krajcovic May, 2017 Thesis written by Krystal Krajcovic Approved by ________________________________________________________________, Advisor ______________________________________________, Chair, Department of English Accepted by ___________________________________________________, Dean, Honors College !ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT…..……………………………………………………………iv SECTIONS I. INTRODUCTION....................................................…………….………1 II. THE ORAL TALES.....…………………………………………….…….9 III. BLUEBEARD.........................................................................................13 IV. BLUEBEARD: ANALYSIS....................................................................32 V. THE PIG PRINCE...................................................................................40 VI. THE PIG PRINCE: ANALYSIS..............................................................54 VII. THE LITERARY TALES........................................................................62 VIII. SAND-MAN...........................................................................................66 IX. SAND-MAN: ANALYSIS.....................................................................83 X. MINES OF FALUN................................................................................90 XI. MINES OF FALUN: ANALYSIS.........................................................107 XII. AUTOMATA.........................................................................................113 XIII. AUTOMATA: ANALYSIS...................................................................127 WORKS CITED.........................…................................................................................134 !iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would really like to thank Dr. Don-John Dugas for all of his help and guidance throughout the creation of this thesis. I truly could not have created something I'm so incredibly proud of without him. I would also like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Howard, Dr. Radd Ehrman, and Dr. Susan Sainato for taking the time to be a part of my thesis committee. And last, but certainly not least, I need to thank Dr. Tammy Clewell for stepping in as a replacement committee member at the last minute. I hope everyone enjoys this as much as I do. !iv !1 Introduction Scholars have defined the fairy tale in a number of ways. Some believe that they are specifically children's stories about magical and/or imaginary places. Others believe that they are idealized and happy stories. And still others believe that they are stories meant to deceive. Fairy tales do not belong to the fantasy, weird fiction, horror, or science fiction genre. They are their own entity. Although fairy tales have no true definition, they are all defined by one distinct trait: magic. Maria Warner and others have theorized that fairy tales1 were originally told orally by the women in a community for entertainment and then retold with embellishments added in order to outdo the last storyteller. According to folkloricist Donald Haase, the oral origin of the genre can cause us "to imagine the original tellers as simple folk endowed with infallible wisdom and, in some cases, divine inspiration" (Haase 353). Consequently, modern audiences sometimes regard "tampering with the classic texts...to be tantamount to sacrilege" (Haase 353). This tendency could not be more antithetical to fit the tradition. Fairy tales, rather, are more like living beings; they grow and adapt to new cultures and times as needed. To prevent fairy tales doing so by confining them to their pages would, according to Vladimir Propp, doom them to extinction. According to Propp, "everything that is out-of-date and incongruous with new !2 attitudes, tastes, and ideology will be discarded" and "will affect...what will be reworked and supplemented" as the oral tradition demands (Propp 380). Fairy tales are meant to go through "as many" retellings "as possible" as they are meant to "exist... in constant flux" (Propp 381). In other words, collecting and writing a tale down does not mean that tale is finished. Someone else inevitably will still learn and retell the tale. For my thesis, I have chosen to study and retell five tales, most of which have fallen into obscurity in America. The first two tales, "Bluebeard" by Charles Perrault and "The Pig Prince" by Giovanni Straparola, are oral tales. Oral tales are distinguished by a unique set of characteristics developed by their nature. Oral tales were told out loud, making them intended for a public audience, allowing the community to unite through entertainment. They are void of unnecessary descriptions, literary references, and editorializing, making them comprised only of the most necessary details to tell the story. Since these tales were told out loud, the language used to tell the tales is not as polished as a literary tales would be. The narrator tells the tale using colloquialisms. Characters in oral tales often lack names since the cast of characters only included the characters it absolutely had to. Literary tales, in contrast, were created through the written word, making them intended for private audiences and intended to demonstrate the literary knowledge of their creators. I have chosen three literary tales, "The Sand-Man," !3 "Mines of Falun," and "Automata" by E.T.A. Hoffman. These tales were originally written and were always meant to be read, making them meant for private entertainment. They were created by Hoffman for his godchildren, but the format would have allowed them to have reached a wide readership. I selected these tales for several reasons. The first is my desire to expand the number of fairy tales that are household titles. Disappointingly few fairy tales make up this canon and even fewer of them have attracted the scholarly attention necessary for my purposes. Another is that I wanted to steer clear of any fairy tale Disney has used or may use in the near future. Disney princesses have become household staples. As a result, the characteristics of the Disney protagonists have become set, thereby defying the fairy tale tradition of reinvention. More obscure tales also present a challenge. One can only assume that if the oral tales were written down that at one point they were popular. They reflected the fears, concerns, ideas, and values of that culture. Eventually, this stopped being true for all of the tales. Tales fell into obscurity because they were no longer relevant or because they could not be adapted for an appropriate audience, namely children. This thesis will build off of the tradition described by Haase by taking five tales that have fallen out of time and renewing them to make them relevant, effectively re-starting these stalled the fairy tales. Not only will these tales be brought back to life, but they will also be adapted for an older audience, breaking away from their classification as children’s literature. !4 Haase famously responded to this traditional need by issuing a call to action for anyone who has ever read, heard, or seen a fairy tale: "by actively selecting, discussing, enacting, illustrating, adapting, and retelling the tales they experience, both adults and children can assert their own proprietary rights to meaning" helping to affirm the fairy tale tradition of updating tales as society changes (Haase 363). The goal is to "reread and reinterpret the tales in new ways" in order to "renew the tale" (Haase 363). Haase calls on everyone to do this - teachers, students, adults, writers, anyone that has ever experienced a fairy tale. This plan asks us to reject the "growing tendency to stress private ownership," that cements them into defined roles (Haase 361). Private ownership occurs when the name of its creator becomes synonymous with the tale. For example, "Cinderella" has actually become Disney's Cinderella because it is privately owned by the Disney Company. Meanwhile, "Little Red Riding Hood" is a publicly owned tale, residing in multiple collections but not being owned by one person or organization. Being part of a collection allows the tale to continue to grow. A collection is like a home: it holds the tales in one place but they can still grow and move. Ownership restricts the tale, confining it to one role determined by one person. Instead, each of us should claim "fairy tales in every individual act of telling and reading," allowing new life to continuously be breathed into the tales by retelling and collective ownership (Haase 361). This practice denies definite ownership while allowing individuals to take ownership of the ability to !5 tell fairy tales back and to restore relevance to the work, thus allowing the tradition to continue. This thesis contains creative and analytical portions. The creative portion will consist of my five tales. The analytical portion will contain an analytical component for each tale that directly relates to the retelling. The analytical portions will be paired with the tales to better organize the thesis. They can be read with the tales or after the tales. The tales have been retold in a way that I believe will make them relevant. The characters' names have been modernized and changed so they sound familiar. Nameless characters have been named. Technology was introduced to each tale to bring it into our century. Technology has become an integral part of our everyday lifestyle so naturally the constant
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