Wednesay, Feb. 11 Study Questions on “Clever Fools” and “Swindled Swindlers” from the blue book – The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (GFTT) – Ch. 1 and 2 (I’d suggest that you pencil in the chapter numbers, since the book does not use them); Grimms’ KHM 44, “Godfather Death” (CP); Irving Fetscher, “Anti-Fairy Tale” (CP) I. Clever Thieves 1. The thief in the Italian tale is clearly a sympathetic character, not a common criminal. Can you think of other clever thieves? a. Robin Hood 2. What aspects of the priest and the magistrate are noteworthy or surprising? a. They seem hypocritical of their own beliefs- the priest is suppose to save others before himself, and the magistrate is suppose to be fair and just to his citizens. 3. In the Grimms’ “The Master Thief” there is a rather clumsy pedagogical truism. What is it? a. That bad parenting can lead to a child behaving mischievously in life, such as how the thief in the story comes to be. 4. Compare the “tasks” that the thieves in both tales encounter. a. Both tales include the tasks of stealing a horse, a mattress, and a priest. However, in “The Master Thief” the thief must also steal the wedding ring from the wife of the lord he is stealing from. 5. Which tale takes a more critical view of the thief? How is this negative attitude expressed? a. I feel that the tale by the Brothers Grimm is the more critical tale because we have a taste of how the protagonist became a thief- due to his poor parental teachings by his parents. II. Swindled Swindlers 1. “The Priest Scarpacifico” contains many elements of a farce (German: Schwank). What elements of the tale are ‘farcical’? a. Most of the tricks that the priest pulls on the thieves are considered farcical, such as the bladder trick, or the selling of an “intelligent” goat to them..