notes on grimms' fairy tales

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected an extensive body of folklore. In pursuing these folk traditions, they helped develop the tradition of German Romanticism alongside peers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and E.T.A. Hoffmann. 

They are best known for their Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmärchen), a collection of German folk tales collected and written in Kassel and first published in 1812, commonly known today as Grimms Fairy Tales (German: Grimms Märchen).

 

Selected Tales  (per The Grimm Reader, ed. Tatar)

• The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich (text)
• The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat (text)
• The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats (text)
• The Twelve Brothers (text)
• Little Brother and Little Sister (text)
• Rapunzel (text)
• The Three Little Men in the Woods (text)
• Hansel and Gretel (text)
• The Fisherman and His Wife (text)
• The Brave Little Tailor (text)
• Cinderella (text)
• Mother Holle (text)
• The Seven Ravens (text)
• Little Red Riding Hood (text)
• The Bremen Town Musicians (text)
• The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs (text)
• The Magic Table, the Gold Donkey, and the Club in the Sack (text)
• The Elves (text)
• The Robber Bridegroom (text)
• Godfather Death (text)
• Fitcher's Bird (text)
• The Juniper Tree (text)
• The Six Swans (text)
• Briar Rose (text)
• Snow White (text)
• Rumpelstiltskin (text)
• The Golden Bird (text)
• The Three Feathers (text)
• The Golden Goose (text)
• Furrypelts (text)
• The Singing, Soaring Lark (text)
• The Goose Girl (text)
• A Fairy Tale About a Boy Who Left Home to Learn About Fear (text)
• The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes (text)
• The Star Talers (text)
• Snow White and Rose Red (text)
• The Golden Key (text)

• The Jew in the Brambles (text)
• Mother Trudy (text)
• The Hand with the Knife (text)
• How Children Played Butcher With Each Other (text)
• Hans Dumm (text)
• The Evil Mother-in-Law (text)
• The Children Living in a Time of Famine (text)
• The Stubborn Child (text)
• The Rose (text)

Related Articles

• Acocella, Joan. "Once Upon a Time: The Lure of the Fairy Tale." The New Yorker (July 23, 2012): 73-78.
• Baker-Sperry, Lori and Liz Grauerholz. "The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales." Gender and Society 17.5 (October 2003): 711-726.
• Crane, T.F. "The External History of the "Kinder- und Haus-märchen" of the Brothers Grimm. I" Modern Philology 14.10 (February 1917): 577-610.
• Crane, T.F. "The External History of the "Kinder- und Haus-märchen" of the Brothers Grimm. II" Modern Philology 15.2 (June 1917): 65-77.
• Crane, T.F. "The External History of the "Kinder- und Haus-märchen" of the Brothers Grimm. III" Modern Philology 15.6 (October 1917): 355-383.
• David, Alfred and Mary Elizabeth David. "A Literary Approach to the Brothers Grimm." Journal of the Folklore Institute 1.3 (December 1964): 180-196.
• Ellis, John M. "What Really Is the Value of the 'New' Grimm Discovery?" The German Quarterly 58.1 (Winter 1985): 87-90.
• Keely, Karen A. "[T]his Book of Odd Tales/Which Transform the Brothers Grimm": Teaching Anne Sextons Transformations." The English Journal 98.2 (November 2008): 69-75.
• Michaelis-Jena, Ruth. "Oral Tradition and the Brothers Grimm." Folklore 82.4 (Winter 1971): 265-275.
• Nodelman, Perry. "The Hidden Meaning and the Inner Tale: Deconstruction and the Interpretation of Fairy Tales." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 15.3 (Fall 1990): 143-148.
• Ward, Donald. "The German Connection: The Brothers Grimm and the Study of 'Oral' Literature." Western Folklore 53.1 (January 1994): 1-26.
• Zipes, Jack. "The Grimm German Legends in English." Children's Literature 12 (1984): 162-166.
• Zipes, Jack. "Who's Afraid of the Brothers Grimm?: Socialization and Politicization through Fairy Tales." The Lion and the Unicorn 3.2 (Winter 1979-80): 4-41.

 Related Books

• Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Random House, 1977.
• Briggs, Katharine Mary. The Fairies in Tradition and Literature. New York: Routledge, 2002.
• Davies, Peter, and Maria Tatar, eds. The Fairies Return: Or, New Tales for Old. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
• Dollerup, Cay. Tales and Translation: The Grimm Tales from Pan-Germanic Narratives to Shared International Fairytales. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1999.
• Gag, Wanda. Tales from Grimm. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
• Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 2004.
• Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 2008.
• Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Ed. Jack Zipes. 3rd ed. New York: Bantam, 1992.
• Haase, Donald, ed. The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
• Hoffmann, E.T.A. Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, ed. and trans. Leonard Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
• McGlathery, James M., ed. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Champaign-Urbana: Universiy of Illinois Press, 1991.
• Murphy, G. Ronald. Owl, the Raven, and the Dove : The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Paradiz, Valerie. Clever Maids : The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 2009. 
• Ziolkowski, Jan M. Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
• Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
• Zipes, Jack. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Related Resources

• Book, author, and quotations pages via goodreads.com
• The Aarne-Thompson Classification System, used in the study of fairy tales.
• D.L. Ashliman's comparative analysis and translation of the 1812 and 1857 versions of Rapunzel.

last modified 2016.06.20 17.20
[jcocola -at- wpi dot edu]