Grimm Revisions: Adaptations and Retellings HUM 2085: Film and Television Adaptation Summer 2013 Dr. Perdigao May 28, 2013.

Grimm Revisions: Adaptations and Retellings

HUM 2085: Film and Television Adaptation

Summer 2013Dr. PerdigaoMay 28, 2013

A. S. Byatt, Introduction• “What are fairy stories for? Freud gave an answer—they were related to

daydreams and wish-fulfillment fantasies, in which the questing self meets helpers and enemies, and in which the ending is always happy” (Byatt xi)

• Distinction from myths—“myth is related to the human need to know what was before, and what will be after, the individual life, the living society. Myths are concerned with origins, the fear of death, and the hope for the overcoming of death in another world” (xi)

• “The best single description I know of the world of the fairy tale is that of Max Lüthi who describes it as an abstract world, full of discrete, interchangeable people, objects, and incidents, all of which are isolated and are nevertheless interconnected, in a kind of web or network of two-dimensional meaning. Everything in the tales appears to happen entirely by chance—and this has the strange effect of making it appear that nothing happens by chance, that everything is fated” (xi-xii).

A. S. Byatt, Introduction• German-ness of the tales—the all-importance of the surrounding Wald, or forest

• Rules within the stories

• Forms of hope (Byatt xiii)

• Brothers Grimm’s inclusion of psychology in “authored” story—inclusion of motives, emotions—actions in response to grief (xiv)

• “The Juniper Tree” as related to the Tree of Life (xv)

• Multiplicity of sources, variants and continuity: ex: 345 variants of the Cinderella story collected by Marian Roalfe Cox in 1893

• Grimms as “recovering a German mythology and a German attitude to life,” “asserting what was German against the French occupying forces of the Napoleonic Empire” (xv); Allied occupying forces post World War II, attempts to ban the Grimms’ fairy tales

A. S. Byatt, Introduction• Developments in psychoanalytic criticism but limitations (xvii): overdetermined,

constraining, and limiting

• Disney’s representations of women, modern films “contrary energetic heroines” (xvii)

“Reading the Brothers Grimm”• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, born in 1785 and 1786

• Their goal, a project “that would preserve oral storytelling traditions increasingly threatened by urbanization, industrialization, and rising literacy rates”; “Hoping to preserve the ‘pure’ voice of the German people and to conserve an oracular form of what they called Naturpoesie (the poetry of nature), they described in the preface to the collection the sites at which the tales had been told: ‘The places by the stove, the hearth in the kitchen, attic stairs, holidays still celebrated, meadows and forests in their solitude, and above all the untrammeled imagination have functioned as hedges preserving [folk songs and household tales] and passing them on to one generation after another’” (Tatar xxv).

• Revelation of sources with second edition in 1815—“peasant woman,” Dorothea Viehmann, wife of a tailor, of Huguenot descent—more influence of French contes de fées than with German Märchen (fairy tales) (xxvi)

• Stories gathered from members of their own social circle

• Persisting attempts to determine sources

• Influence of French, Italian, Scandinavian sources (xxvi)

“Reading the Brothers Grimm”• Desire to preserve German poetry but also part of popular culture, stories in

multiple versions and in different literary genres (fables, sermons, chapbooks, and novels) (xxvi)

• Revision of the stories by Wilhelm Grimm—polishing the prose, some stories doubled

• Jacob Grimm’s recognition of market for children’s books

• Auden’s comment in 1944 about the Grimm’s fairy tales as “among the few indispensable, common-property books upon which Western culture can be founded” ( xxviii)

• Stories with “anxieties and fantasies that have deep roots in childhood experience” (xxviii)

“Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm”• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s work in philology, literature, and history (Tatar 283)

• “Myths and fairy tales” told about the Brothers Grimm (like Barrie)

• As cultural heroes or proto-fascists who “promoted nationalistic sentiment and values that are unacceptable to us today” (284)

• “Sense of folk unity and historical past” (284), violence to parallel twentieth century history

• Brothers launched the German Dictionary, produced the German Grammar, collected fairy tales and legends, edited Old High German and Middle High German texts, worked as professors, diplomats, and librarians, and worked as part of a group protesting the dissolution of parliament and revocation of constitutional rights (284)

“Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm”• Born in Hanau, the oldest of six children (284)

• Father a scribe and district magistrate in Steinau, near Kassel

• Death of father in 1796; mother’s attempt to support the family

• Brothers went to live with their aunt, Henriette Zimmer, to attend the Lyceum Fredericianum (286)

• Attempts to enter legal studies—special dispensation to attend the University of Marburg due to financial difficulties (286)

• Library work, interest in Romantic literature

• Jacob’s work in Paris as research assistant to Friedrich Karl von Savigny, founder of the historical school of law, who was writing a history of Roman law in the Middle Ages (287)

“Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm”• Jacob accepted post at the Hessian War Ministry in 1806, attempts to help support family

back home

• Jacob later gained appointment as royal librarian in Napoleonshöhe (288); death of their mother, responsibility for other four children

• Began collecting oral tales in Kassel and locate written versions of tales

• 1812—first installment of Children’s Stories and Household Tales (289)

• 1813 marked end of French occupation

• Jacob’s appointment to the Hessian Peace Delegation and time in diplomatic service in Paris and Vienna

• Both worked as librarian in the Royal Library in Kassel, working together, publishing works

• Continued as librarians until the first librarian died in 1829 and neither was appointed the position; resigned position

“Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm”• Jacob accepted post as professor of German linguistics and law and as head

librarian at Göttingen; Wilhelm appointed librarian and then professor (291)

• 1837 protest against King Ernst August II’s dissolution of parliament and revocation of constitution of 1833—the “Göttingen Seven” dismissed from posts, ordered to leave kingdom or go to prison

• Returned to Kassel, loss of financial security but continued success, launch of German Dictionary (German equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary) (292)

• Jacob elected to Parliament during Revolution of 1848 but then revolution waned—brothers retired from politics, Jacob retired from academic post in 1848, Wilhelm in 1852

• Wilhelm’s death in 1859 (at seventy-three); Jacob’s death in 1863

“The Juniper Tree”• Rich man and wife

• Wife prays for child

• Juniper tree

• In wintertime, wife peeling an apple, cuts finger—blood drips in snow

• “If only I had a child as red as blood and as white as snow!” (143)

• Nature responding—springtime

• Mother dies, buried beneath the juniper tree

• Second wife gives birth to daughter

• First child—son

“The Juniper Tree”• Daughter asks for apple, asks for one for her brother as well (145)

• Offers apple to son

• Boy decapitated by closing chest on head

• Disguise

• Little Marlene sees something is wrong—hits brother, head falls off

• Eat stew—made from son

• Atreus and Thyestes

• Marlene puts bones underneath the juniper tree

• Mist, flame, bird

• Goldsmith hears bird’s song (147)

“The Juniper Tree”• Offers golden chain

• Shoemaker—red shoes

• Miller’s men—millstone

• Mother feels storms is coming

• Golden chain: father

• Marlene: Shoes

• Stepmother: millstone

• Recovery—birth and rebirth

• Transformation

• Apple—offer

• Disguise

Retellings• ABC’s Once Upon a Time (2011- )

• Fairy tale world/Storybrooke, Maine

• Emma Swan: daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, sent from fairy tale world to real world when a newborn to save her from a curse, prophecy to return to save them

• Henry Mills: Emma’s son, given up for adoption, raised by Regina Mills, mayor of Storybrooke, reunited with birth mother in Boston—she takes him back to Storybrooke, remains; Henry possesses book, Once Upon a Time, given to him by his teacher, that he believes is real

• Regina Mill/Evil Queen: one of two characters to initially remember fairy tale world and curse

• Mary Margaret/Snow White: Emma’s birth mother; Henry’s teacher

• David/Prince Charming: love interest for Mary Margaret but married

Retellings• Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin: Other character to remember fairy tale world, curse;

power in both worlds; “beast” of “Beauty and the Beast” storyline

• Ruby/Red: Little Red Riding Hood character; works at Granny’s diner

• Sidney Glass/Magic Mirror: Editor of Daily Mirror, works for the mayor

• Season one, episode eleven, “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree”

Hypertext• http://www.askthemagicmirror.com/