Twelve Dancing Princesses

Alfred David

Description

Alfred David and Mary Elizabeth Meek have compiled a collection of fairy tales that ranges from the Grimm brothers' inimitable recreations of archetypal folktales to the modern prose charm of James Thurber's Many Moons. The appeal of the stories is wide and varied: the refined intelligence of Perrault, the wondrous imagination of Andersen, the descriptive power of Ruskin, the bittersweet melancholy of Wilde. These are but a few of the artists represented in this remarkably inclusive selection of works from Germany, Russia, France, Scandinavia, England, and America. Many are in new translations in the modern idiom and all testify eloquently to the unceasing vitality of this literary genre.

Sujets

• General officer
• General
• Fiction
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 mars 1974
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253013248
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES and other fairy tales
THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES and Other Fairy Tales

SELECTED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ALFRED DAVID AND MARY ELIZABETH MEEK
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
First Midland Book Edition, 1974
Copyright 1964 by Alfred and Mary Elizabeth David
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
David, Alfred, 1929- comp.
The twelve dancing princesses.
CONTENTS: Grimm, J. W. The twelve dancing princesses. The goosegirl. Rapunzel. The devil s three golden hairs. Briar Rose. Snow White. Our lady s child. The Bremen town musicians.-Asbj rnsen, P. C. and Moe, J rgen. East of the sun and west of the moon.-Asbj rnsen, P. C. The companion. [etc.]
1. Fairy tales. [1. Fairy tales] I. Meek, Mary Elizabeth, 1924- joint comp. II. Title. PZ1.D2673Tw9 [PN6071.F15] 808.83 8 [398.2] 73-16517 ISBN 0-253-36100-1 (cl.) ISBN 0-253-20173-X (pbk.)
17 18 19 20 21 11 10 09 08 07 06
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following:
Pat Shaw Iversen for The Tinderbox, The Swineherd, The Princess on the Pea, The Ugly Duckling, The Nightingale, and The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen, and East of the Sun and West of the Moon, by Peter Christen Asbj rnsen and J rgen Moe.
Pantheon Books for Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf and Vasilisa the Beautiful by Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanasiev, from Russian Fairy Tales, translated and edited by Norbert Guterman. Copyright 1945 by Pantheon Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Mrs. James Thurber for Many Moons by James Thurber. Copyright 1943 by James Thurber. Copyright 1971 by Helen W. Thurber and Rosemary Thurber Sauers. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Dreyers Forlag (Oslo) for The Companion, by Peter Christen Asbj rnsen and J rgen Moe, from Norwegian Folk Tales, translated by Pat Shaw Iversen and Carl Norman.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES
THE GOOSEGIRL
RAPUNZEL
THE DEVIL S THREE GOLDEN HAIRS
BRIAR ROSE
SNOW WHITE
OUR LADY S CHILD
THE BREMEN TOWN MUSICIANS
Peter Christen Asbj rnsen and J rgen Moe

EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON
Peter Christen Asbj rnsen

THE COMPANION
Aleksandr Nikolaevich Afanasiev

VASILISA THE BEAUTIFUL
PRINCE IVAN, THE FIREBIRD, AND THE GRAY WOLF
Charles Perrault

SLEEPING BEAUTY
PUSS IN BOOTS
THE FAIRIES
CINDERELLA
Madame Leprince de Beaumont

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

THE FIRST OF THE BEARSKINS
Wilhelm Hauff

DWARF LONGNOSE
Hans Christian Andersen

THE TINDERBOX
THE SWINEHERD
THE PRINCESS ON THE PEA
THE UGLY DUCKLING
THE NIGHTINGALE
THE LITTLE MERMAID
John Ruskin

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER
Oscar Wilde

THE SELFISH GIANT
James Thurber

MANY MOONS
THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES and other fairy tales
INTRODUCTION
There are traces of fairy tales in every conceivable form of literature, including the very oldest and the very best. Homer s Odysseus contends against giants and witches and makes a journey to the underworld. The story of Joseph in Genesis reads just like a fairy tale. Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and through his power of interpreting dreams (much as heroes in fairy tales solve riddles) he rises to become ruler of Egypt. The knights in medieval romances are constantly having fairy-tale adventures, and so are the saints in medieval legends. Saint George the dragon slayer is a combination of the two. The choice of the three caskets in The Merchant of Venice is a typical fairy-tale problem, as is the question King Lear puts to his three daughters. Goneril and Regan are, of course, the wicked older sisters; Cordelia, the youngest, is kind and good; and in the old versions of the tale she lives to witness the punishment of her sisters.
This is not to say that the Odyssey, the story of Joseph, and King Lear are fairy tales or that their authors were even dimly conscious of using the matter of which fairy tales are made. It does show the deep roots traditional stories have in the imagination. Fairy tales are not, as is commonly believed, a form of children s literature; they are, like fables, legends, and ballads, among the many forms of adult literature that children have adopted. Fairy tales have a special appeal for children, but they are not childish. The apparent artlessness of these simple stories is not easily achieved. It is, in fact, the product of an art perhaps older than the art of writing itself.
Fairy tales were at one time told aloud, and there is no sure way of knowing where they come from and through how many generations of storytellers they passed before they were written down. The great collections of folktales * were not made until the nineteenth century, when Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their monumental Kinder- und Hausm rchen (1812-1815), followed by similar collections by Asbj rnsen and Moe in Norway (1842-44) and Afanasiev in Russia (1855-64). Before that time, a few writers had freely adapted a number of traditional fairy tales so as to turn them, in effect, into original stories. The most important of these was the French author Charles Perrault (1628-1703), whose version of Cinderella, with the pumpkincoach and the glass slipper, is much more familiar, except in Germany, than the Cinderella of the Brothers Grimm. After the Grimms collection, a great many writers of the nineteenth century wrote literary imitations of folktales and original fairy tales, and one-Hans Christian Andersen-achieved greatness in that form.
The romantic movement aroused interest in folklore throughout Europe. In the revolt against neoclassicism, romantic writers everywhere turned with enthusiasm to themes of common and rustic life. Spontaneity and simplicity were admired as literary virtues. At the same time, the spirit of nationalism that swept Europe during the Napoleonic era was stimulating a possessive pride in native culture. In this atmosphere, the traditional ballads and stories of the people acquired new value in the eyes of the intellectual world, and the humble folktale, like Cinderella, was found to have a fresher and more natural beauty than her literary stepsisters.
The Brothers Grimm, more than anyone else, deserve the credit for appreciating that the stories told by ordinary peasants, journeymen, and nursemaids were works of art worthy of preservation in their original form. It is true that neither the Grimms nor their nineteenth-century followers transcribed their tales with the scrupulous word-for-word accuracy of the modern folklorist. Wilhelm Grimm, in particular, could not resist the temptation of perfecting his favorite stories from one edition of the tales to the next. As a result many of the Grimms fairy tales-including the most popular-are not in the strictest sense pure folktales; they are rather the stories as Wilhelm Grimm romantically conceived that they might have been told by some na ve peasant genius. The genius was, in part, Grimm s own, and in laboring to restore the tales to their archetypal form, he unwittingly polished his raw material to an artificial brilliance. Nevertheless, the Grimms had a deeply sympathetic understanding for the traditional style of the folktale, and this style they succeeded in recapturing for their readers.
The essence of the traditional oral style is the naturalness with which the story tells itself without comment, explanation, or intrusion on the part of the teller. It is told in an impersonal, matter-of-fact tone as though it were a true story. Our pleasure is not caused by its surprises and wonders but by the satisfaction of having our expectations fulfilled and our knowledge confirmed. We are in a familiar country where we can predict every turn of the way. The landscape contains signs of warning and of hope that we have learned to read long ago. The characters are all people we have met hundreds of times, and we do not need to have their histories or their motives explained to us. Magic objects are household articles like spinning wheels, combs, handkerchiefs, and keys. Talking animals occasion no astonishment. A poor cottager answers a knock at his window on a stormy night and finds a white bear who wishes him good evening. Good evening! replies the man. Such incidents are daily occurrences in the fairy-tale world.
In fact, our response to any one fairy tale depends on its similarity in style and construction to all the other fairy tales we know, and this adherence to a single proven formula undoubtedly accounts for their enduring and universal popularity. It has been suggested that fairy tales satisfy psychological needs for power, wealth, and security. A simpler explanation is that they satisfy an aesthetic need for a good story. They fulfill the universal desire for a clarity, harmony, and order that is possible only in fiction. In place of the bewildering and unpredictable everyday world, fairy tales present us with an imaginary world that is simple, orderly, and just-a fan