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| | Fairy Tale Themes and Motifs (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-10) |
 | | Traditional fairy tales (ones handed down by word of mouth, until they began to be written down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) were told by adults to adults, while working, at community gatherings, around the fireplace. |
 | | The tales’ symbolism speaks to adults as well as children (whom we now consider the appropriate audience), and the tales deal with childlessness, sexual maturation, remarriage, jealousy across the generations, sibling rivalry, incest, murderous rage, inheritance issues, and other timeless problems. |
 | | The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Literature notes that the Grimms tales were unusual among published fairy tale collections in “their presentation of children as central and serious”: in the tales “the lives of children are essentially dramatic and important, and their perceptions profoundly moral” (247). |
| personal.ecu.edu /tedescol/fairytales.htm (1381 words) |
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