¶ … Tales Are Not Just Children's Play -- The Importance Of Folklore In College Education
Although fairy tales are often considered to simply exist as palatable and easy to understand tales for children, this has more to do with the modern legacy of Disney cartoons than the actual genealogy of this literary tradition of oral narrative. In fact these stories did not originate as tales to ensure that young people behaved in a proper and decorous manner. Rather they are quite literally, tales of the common folk (hence 'folktales' or 'fairy tales') and populace. These tales provide snapshots of common cultural values particular to a people and to a cultural tradition. The Brothers Grimm quite explicitly attempted to catalogue oral narratives of their native, rural Germany, providing a bloody chronicle of the sociological values and assumptions of this heritage. Even though Hans Christian Anderson attempted to construct his stories more obviously as an individual author, still his Christian and Scandinavian values are...
The tellers of these tales did not have the means to preserve their words in published form, yet still created a vibrant, narrative oral art. In college, there is too much of a privilege given to the history and literature of the higher echelons of society, those who were literate, educated, urban, and quite often male. By including folklore into the education, this tendency of the university syllabus is subverted, or at least minimized.
The value of cultural heritage evident in folklore is evident in one of the Brothers Grimm's most infamous tales, namely "The Juniper Tree." This story highlights the conflict present between the children…
