Prof. Waller Hastings
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD 57401

Defining the Fairy Tale

        Folklorist Stith Thompson has observed that "fairy tales" rarely contain actual fairies, although they often contain other supernatural charactes such as giants, witches, or brownies.  J.R.R. Tolkien makes a similar observation: ". . . fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being."  So right from the beginning we are faced with a problem of naming: if "fairy tales" seldom have fairies, should they go by that name?
        The preferred term among scholars for this type of tale is Märchen - German for "tale."  As it is used in this context, a Märchen is "a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes, moving in an unreal world without definite locality or characters." (Thompson)  This term, like "fairy tale" itself, applies best to stories originating in the Western (i.e., European) tradition, although similar stories can occur in all world cultures.  Common features recognizable in fairy tales include:

        Various experts have attempted to define the "fairy tale" or Märchen, including the definition by Stith Thompson given above.  Another useful definition is by Linda Dégh: ". . . a magic story which cannot be true" and is known by its audience to be untrue and impossible. This distinguishes fairy tales from legends, which may be true.  Perhaps the simplest, broadest definition was given by Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjaer: fairy tales are “narratives predicated upon magic.”
       As a practical matter, specialists also distinguish between two types of Märchen: the "folk tale" or Volksmärchen and the Kunstmärchen, a literary ("art") fairy tale.  Some writers use "folk tale" to refer to the former and "fairy tale" to the latter, but not all folk tales fall into the category of the magic tale.  The folk tale is the older form, and it is oral and communal.  That is, it has developed through repeated oral retellings within a society or community; each person who retells it makes his/her own contributions to the story, altering it in some way, and in the process of transmission the tale takes on the character and concerns of its particular community.  Such oral texts have common characteristics, including a strong emphasis on the plot (as opposed to setting or characters, both of which are generic rather than specific) and frequent repetition.  Repetitive elements, both aspects of description and recurrent similar or identical plot episodes, aid in the process of remembering the story.
        The literary fairy tale is modelled to a greater or lesser extent on oral tales, but as a literary work, it has a more established form.  While all versions of an oral tale may have equal validity, one can make a claim for an authoritative version of a Kunstmärchen, that of the original author.  Since it is written down from the beginning, it can persist through periods of lesser popularity, whereas an oral tale will fade from memory if it does not continue to meet community needs.  And there is much less need for repetition as an assist to the storyteller's memory.  Characteristics of literary fairy tales, as opposed to folk tales, may include individualized characters with a more developed personality, more specific and detailed description of individuals and settings, and the elimination of much repetition as distracting from the flow of the story.
        However, this distinction may be less clear than it first appears.  Jack Zipes has argued that "neither genre, the oral folktale or the literaryfairy tale. . . can be called 'purebred'."  Rather, from the first appearance of fairy tales, oral storytellers have borrowed from written sources and literary writers have adapted oral "wonder tales" (yet another term for the folk fairy tale).  The traditional association with the "folk" - if by "folk" one means the peasants and other poor, which often appears to be the sense of references to this group - is also suspect, since many of the best-known fairy tale collectors drew from middle-class or aristocratic tellers, rather than directly from the peasantry.
        The association of fairy tales with children is "an accident of recent domestic history" (Tolkien).  Tolkien questions whether there is any essential link between children and fairy tales and claims that fairy tales that have become cut off from adult art and literature “have been ruined. . . . The value of fairy-stories is thus not, in my opinion, to be found by considering children in particular.”
        Through much of history, people have told folk tales to one another for entertainment and instruction; the oral tales were adapted to meet the needs of various audiences and situations.  As the tales began to be written down during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, however, they ceased to change, and gradually became relegated to the nursery, as children's tales; this shift coincided with a rise in literacy which established the middle class and with a corresponding increased differentiation between child and adult.  By the middle of the 19th century, the fairy tale was firmly established as a subset of "children's literature," even as writers continued to produce tales of this type that appealed to a broad spectrum of ages.

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    This page last updated on June 15, 2003.