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Q: Old fairy tale or folk tale ( No Answer,   5 Comments )
Question  
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
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
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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