Little Red Riding Hood - 1695 - French - Charles Perrault
Cinderella - 1697 - French - Charles Perrault
Rapunzel - 1812 - German - Brothers Grimm
Snow White - 1823 - German - Brothers Grimm
The Little Mermaid - 1836 - Danish - Hans Christian Andersen
The Frog Prince - 1842 - German - Brothers Grimm
The Gingerbread Man - 1890 - English - Joseph Jacobs
"A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids, or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies. The stories may nonetheless be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables.Fairy tales are found both in oral and literary form. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace because only the literary forms can survive over time. Still, the evidence of literary works at least indicates that fairy tales have existed for thousands of years, although not perhaps recognised as a specific genre.
The older fairy tales were intended for an audience of adults, as well as children, but they were associated with children as early as the writings of the précieuses; the Brothers Grimm titled their collection 'Children's and Household Tales'; and the link with children has only grown stronger with time.
FILM:
Fairy tales have been enacted dramatically; records exist of this in com media dell'arte, and later in pantomime. The advent of cinema has meant that such stories could be presented in a more plausible manner, with the use of special effects and animation; the Disney movie Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs in 1937 was a ground-breaking film for fairy tales and, indeed, fantasy in general. Disney's influence helped establish this genre as a children's genre, and has been blamed for simplification of fairy tales ending in situations where everything goes right, as opposed to the pain ad suffering - and sometimes unhappy endings - of many folklore fairy tales.
I chose to research this genre of film and form of literature because as a child I was very keen in this field of work and upon seeing Rupert Sanders' 'Snow White and The Huntsman' which is based upon the original story by the Brothers Grimm. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth and Sam Claflin, and had a budget of $170 million which made $389,560,660, at the Box Office. The film trailer initially appealed to me because of the casting and I was interested to experience the darker twist to the film and storyline which was perhaps intended by the Brothers Grimm originally.
*Additional Note* 11.September.2012 - Following on from last year, I am interested in pieces that derive from famous pieces of music, art, literature etc. This is similar to the short film that I watched at the University of Westminster, 'For Elsie', which focused on Beethoven's 'Für Elise'. Even in a minor sense I like the film 'Beethoven' in which a Saint Bernard dog is named Beethoven, this is why I particularly like the idea that we came up with about Banksy.
