Blog Entry 3

Magic, miracles, and motifs. All of these are used in your typical fairy tale to help create a story with an interesting plot. A fairy tale, or “märchen” in German, can be defined as a fictional story usually aimed for a children’s audience that contains magical elements. In the novel “Once Upon A Time on the Nature of  Fairy Tales” by Max Lüthi, he states “the fairy tale portrays an imperishable world.” (Lüthi, pg 45). This quote is significant because it shows that ageing and perishablility are not focused on in fairy tales. An example given in the novel is when Lüthi discusses a witch removing the eyes of a heroine and how the eyes can be put back years later as if nothing had happened and the removed body parts hadn’t decayed. (Lüthi, pg 45). 

In comparison to a legend or saint’s legend, the miracle within the story is the main focus of the plot, but in fairy tales, the miracle is throughout most of the story and loses its star-of-the-show factor because the plot takes over. In fairy tales, there are motifs that stand out and help distinguish the story. These are typically what the fairy tale is easily recognized by. In Little Red Riding Hood, a motif would be her red cape.

Little Red Riding Home interpretation from Fairytalez.com

For almost any fairy tale, a motif could be the damsel in distress. In Lüthi’s novel, it is said that the ‘fairy tale’ age for children is between 5 and 10 years old. After this age, there is a phase where the children take a realistic point of view and become disposed toward the idea of fairy tales. 

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were attempting to find fairy tales for Clemens Brentano, they would often invited story tellers to where they were at the time and document the stories since fairy tales were almost always shared orally. Once they began publishing their own fairy-tale novels, they contaminated the plots with bourgeois-appealing plot-lines and Christian expressions so that their stories would be more inclined towards children and more appreciated by the educated middle class. 

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