TRADITIONAL LITERATURE
Every culture has stories, songs, and poems that came out of the oral tradition and were passed down for generations by word of mouth. Traditional literature includes nursery rhymes, playground rhymes, ballads, folktales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables, legends, myths, and epics. Although traditional literature (even so-called nursery rhymes) was originally intended for adults, children often enjoyed it, too. Fairy tales are folktales with magical elements. Folktales were compiled by writers—called collectors— who recorded the stories after hearing them aloud.
Fairy tales are a subgenre of traditional literature that typically have brief once-upon-a-time introductions, long-ago settings, archetypal characters, magical motifs, and happy, good-conquers-evil conclusions. Folktales and fairy tales also often feature patterns of three. The fact that there are three pigs, three bears, three stepsisters, and three guesses (Rumpelstiltskin) is no coincidence. Patterns of three built suspense without being too complex for listeners to follow. Can you cite patterns of three in familiar tales?
Fractured fairy tales put a new and unexpected twist on familiar tales by changing characterization, setting, point of view, or plot. The result is often humorous. The 1960s TV cartoon series Rocky and Bullwinkle featured fractured fairy tales (see youtube).
Background Reading and Viewing
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Video about Fairy Tale Elements
Fairy Tale Elements (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site.
Fractured Fairy Tales http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/fairytales/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Sur La Lune Fairy Tales eBooks Index http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
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Assignment: Comparing Cinderella Variants
Researchers have identified more than seven hundred versions of the Cinderella story from around the world. The tale was first recorded in China in the ninth century and in Europe in 1634. The version most familiar across Europe and America was collected by a Frenchman named Francois Perrault.
Using the required worksheet “Comparing Cinderella Variants,” evaluate these two Cinderella stories: Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters and Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China.
Worksheet: ChartOnCinderellaVariantsWRubric.rtf
You may either read the books or view a video of the fairy tales (links below). The worksheet also requires you to provide bibliographic information in Modern Language Association (MLA) style. See the example below. To get needed bibliographic information, search the book titles on WorldCat (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
Example: MLA bibliographic style
Book with an illustrator
Author’s last name, Author’s first name. Ill. by. Illustrator’s first name Illustrator’s last name.
Book title (italicized). City of publication: Publisher, year of publication.
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
