In his book The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History, American cultural historian Robert Darton argues that readers can access the “social dimension of thought” via folktales because stories are often influenced by the “surrounding world of significance” (6). He claims that folktales often evolve to reflect the social attitude at the time at which they are told. Thus, as Darton suggests, it is “…unwise to build an interpretation on a single version of a single tale (18)”. Focusing especially on the social evolutionary aspect of folktales, Darton provides a comprehensive tool to interpret what different versions of the same fairy tale suggest about changes in society.
In this essay, I will use Darton’s theory to …show more content…
The tale was written by Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan middle-class-born poet who lived in a time and place with significant class division. Nevertheless, Basile had the reputation of being a modest person who went out of his way to be honest and humble, using fairy tales as a way to parallel reality and fantasy (Matthews). In his story, a married king finds the princess and ravishes her while she is unconscious. The princess then bears two children without waking up, and the infants break the spell by biting her while nursing. Robert Darton notices that this version of Sleeping Beauty along with other early stories tend to contain the horror genre and mirror how peasants view the world (Darton 14). In this case, the awakening is not triggered by the king, but rather the newborn children of the princess. This shows that children have the power to awaken a women’s mother instinct and bring her “to life”, signifying the importance of child bearing duty as a woman at the time. In addition, the texts glosses over the fact that the princess is raped, as the princess and the king ends up living “happily ever after” with their non-consensual children. Darton mentions that the story portrays “… a world of raw and naked brutality” (15), perhaps in the …show more content…
Darton emphasizes that oral transmission is a necessary way for folktales to evolve, and literary stories cannot fully encompass the ever-changing societal attitude. He states that “no matter how accurate they may be, the recorded versions of the tales cannot convey the effects that must have brought the stories to life” (18). Although he guides me to focus on how people change the stories orally, in order to more fully grasp the transformation of folktales overtime, I argue that transformation in medium also reflects society at the time. In the case of our four stories, for example, with the original Sun, Moon, and Talia and Little Brier Rose both literarily written but mostly orally told, to purely literary text The Lady of the House of Love, to the live-action film Maleficent, I see a world evolving with technology. Although one cannot change the content of a literary tale in print or that of a recorded film by simply changing their words, it is entirely plausible to reimagine the stories and express them through a different medium. In fact, by utilizing different mediums, people are able to communicate better and express their ideas in ways that could not exist before. Thus, Darton’s idea that only oral tales can evolve is belied by how the way of
In this essay, I will use Darton’s theory to …show more content…
The tale was written by Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan middle-class-born poet who lived in a time and place with significant class division. Nevertheless, Basile had the reputation of being a modest person who went out of his way to be honest and humble, using fairy tales as a way to parallel reality and fantasy (Matthews). In his story, a married king finds the princess and ravishes her while she is unconscious. The princess then bears two children without waking up, and the infants break the spell by biting her while nursing. Robert Darton notices that this version of Sleeping Beauty along with other early stories tend to contain the horror genre and mirror how peasants view the world (Darton 14). In this case, the awakening is not triggered by the king, but rather the newborn children of the princess. This shows that children have the power to awaken a women’s mother instinct and bring her “to life”, signifying the importance of child bearing duty as a woman at the time. In addition, the texts glosses over the fact that the princess is raped, as the princess and the king ends up living “happily ever after” with their non-consensual children. Darton mentions that the story portrays “… a world of raw and naked brutality” (15), perhaps in the …show more content…
Darton emphasizes that oral transmission is a necessary way for folktales to evolve, and literary stories cannot fully encompass the ever-changing societal attitude. He states that “no matter how accurate they may be, the recorded versions of the tales cannot convey the effects that must have brought the stories to life” (18). Although he guides me to focus on how people change the stories orally, in order to more fully grasp the transformation of folktales overtime, I argue that transformation in medium also reflects society at the time. In the case of our four stories, for example, with the original Sun, Moon, and Talia and Little Brier Rose both literarily written but mostly orally told, to purely literary text The Lady of the House of Love, to the live-action film Maleficent, I see a world evolving with technology. Although one cannot change the content of a literary tale in print or that of a recorded film by simply changing their words, it is entirely plausible to reimagine the stories and express them through a different medium. In fact, by utilizing different mediums, people are able to communicate better and express their ideas in ways that could not exist before. Thus, Darton’s idea that only oral tales can evolve is belied by how the way of