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Subject:
Old fairy tale or folk tale
Category: Arts and Entertainment > Books and Literature Asked by: archae0pteryx-ga List Price: $10.19 |
Posted:
18 Dec 2004 22:39 PST
Expires: 17 Jan 2005 22:39 PST Question ID: 444557 |
Please see my #444553 about Cinderella. This is essentially the same, but for a different story: I'd like to find at least one other story that is old enough to have been around in some version at the same time in Europe--that is, before 1350. I'm looking for an English translation of the version that would have been known in Flanders in 1300. For bonus points: - Show me the text in medieval Flemish, with an English translation of the same version. - I'd like an English translation of a French version that would have been known in the same time period. I don't require a story that is still well-known today, but that would be a nice plus. Thank you, Archae0pteryx |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: Old fairy tale or folk tale
From: fp-ga on 21 Dec 2004 00:04 PST |
The website http://www.dbnl.org/ ("digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren") has a webpage on medieval authors: http://www.dbnl.org/auteurs/index.php3?c=15&l=A and on medieval literature: http://www.dbnl.nl/letterkunde/middeleeuwen/ Several texts available online: http://www.dbnl.nl/tekst/tekst15.htm I did not try to find out if these webpages do include some texts which would interest you. However, I thought I should mention the website. |
Subject:
Re: Old fairy tale or folk tale
From: leli-ga on 21 Dec 2004 00:19 PST |
Hi A'teryx I thought your original question was interesting (hard not boring!), so played around with it, but have no hope of finding an answer. Perhaps you'd like to see these notes, in case they help at all. An article about Dutch/Flemish folk tales. http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/medewerkers/theo.meder/sn/SprookNed.html Reading Dutch is a struggle for me, but I think the writer's saying that some of the oldest written stories in Dutch come from Flanders. It seems that a 13th century Middle-Dutch romance about Gawain is largely based on The Golden Bird and The Sons on a Quest (similar to The Water of Life). The second part of a Dutch romance with French origins is an adaptation of The Shepherd and the Three Giants plot. The AT numbers refer to Aarne and Thompson's categories: http://www.maerchenlexikon.de/khm/konkordanzkhmat.htm The Meertens Instituut site has an advanced search option. You can fill in, say, Vlaanderen for "regio" and 14e for "datering". http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/volksverhalenbank/expert_zoeker.php At first I had high hopes of "Sleeping Beauty". The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales says, "Another nursery story with ancient lineage is "Sleeping Beauty", first documented in the French medieval romance "Perceforest"; it was read in France, and in northern Germany was performed as a pre-Lenten Shrove Tuesday drama in the mid-1400s." "Perceforest is a romance written in French in the Low Countries between 1330 and 1344." http://freespace.virgin.net/nigel.nicholson/wom1.htm But: "The original tale of Sleeping Beauty seems to have first appeared in the fourteenth-century anonymous and vast prose romance Perceforest printed in France in 1528 and translated into Italian in 1531. In chapter LII, the ?Histoire de Troïlus et de Zellandine,? Troïlus rapes and impregnates the catatonic Zellandine who delivers the child while still in a stupor." http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/articf95/jehenson.htm The Oxford Companion (see Amazon) queries whether "the documented existence of an individual motif" proves "the contemporaneous presence of an entire fairy tale". The writer claims that many scholars no longer believe that the fairy tale is an "ancient genre", citing "medieval documentary evidence from the lowest to the highest levels of society of a great variety of literary genres, among which were ballads, verse epics, Aesopic fables, folk tales, legends, animal tales and jests, but not a single fairy tale". (pages 209-10) The book gives 1558 as the date for the first "literary" version of Cinderella. Does he mean the first written version in Europe? I do hope you manage to find a suitable folk tale. Good luck with your plans! Leli |
Subject:
Re: Old fairy tale or folk tale
From: archae0pteryx-ga on 21 Dec 2004 20:41 PST |
fp, thank you--I wish I could read those! They look rich and promising--but, alas, not revealing enough to me. Archae0pteryx |
Subject:
Re: Old fairy tale or folk tale
From: archae0pteryx-ga on 21 Dec 2004 21:03 PST |
leli, hello--thanks very much for your notes. I am trying to make a detail in a piece of fiction sound authentic, and I don't like to give up too easily. I too thought it might be fairly easy to choose a well-known tale and then just look for a source note such as "Flemish, 12th c." From there it would be a matter of searching for the text. Someone of European birth would probably be better qualified than I to make a guess at some likely titles to pursue. A lot of the tales typically presented as "traditional" in the U.S. were actually written by Charles Perreault in the 17th c., but someone in Europe would probably know stories that really are traditional, even if not popular in the U.S. I know the Andersen stories, so I don't confuse them with traditional folktales, but lots of people do. (Then there are the people who believe that Walt Disney *wrote* the stories he used in his animated fairy-tale films!) Maybe some of the Grimm stories are old enough, but I haven't checked them because I don't have a way of placing them in Flanders. I actually thought of going through the Lang books that I have, looking for the endnotes to each story and hoping one would give me a hit, but that seemed too tedious. GA sounded like the best answer. If there's no information like this out there, well, that signifies an opportunity for someone to mount an original, nonduplicated resource, doesn't it? If even just Cinderella could be authenticated, that would be something, and I wuld make do with that. Archae0pteryx |
Subject:
Re: Old fairy tale or folk tale
From: cynthia-ga on 22 Dec 2004 13:44 PST |
The Origin and Evolution of Fairy Tales http://www.bobhuang.com/essays/essay22.htm This has some interesting text about Cinderella. |
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