Volume 21, Issue 1 (2007) Fairy Tales, Printed Texts, and Oral Tellings

Preface to the Special Issue on Fairy Tales, Printed Texts, and Oral Tellings

Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Guest Editor

This special issue showcases contemporary explorations of fairy tales’ origins and transmission, introduces one seminal work previously unavailable in English, and reproduces a long-inaccessible tale from the Thousand and One Nights tradition. Throughout the essays, questions of fairy-tale origins and transmission blur boundaries between the categories of “oral” and “literary” and illuminate the origins and transmission of fairy tales.

The traditional history provided for fairy tales largely originated from successive forewords to editions of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). Nearly all nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars and commentators accepted Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s assertions that the fairy tales included in their collection had had a long oral existence before being committed to paper, despite the fact that—as the Grimms themselves tacitly acknowledged—they had no firm evidence for their declaration.