[HN Gopher] The first fairy stories were never intended for chil...
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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.
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