Thursday, April 8, 2010
Finding the Fairy Tale in The Philosopher's Stone
The main difference between this week's stories and the usual Grimm fairy tale is literary complexity. The Philosopher's Stone has complex dialogue, character development, humor and satire. It offers a social critique throughout the story, such as the contemporary issue of German subjects being sold to maintain an evil king's lifestyle. The tale even includes historical allusions that give the tale a superior, factual air about it. Yet despite these differences, magic and storytelling still take center stage. We still get our usual dose of animal-->human transformation, king-->peasant lessons learned, some weird gender mix-ups, and nature's role in helping things along. One notable difference between traditional fairy tales and this story was the inclusion of science and alchemy. Normally tales are timeless and therefore totally nondescript in time period, but this story shows some signs of modernity, with people either believing in the magicians or the scientists. Real magic combats real science. Of course, the ending to this story resembles a traditional fairy tale: happiness and the rite of passage into society that is marriage. They learn to be content with living simply.
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I agree. The inclusion of science was an interesting addition to the fairy tale. It kind of reminded me a little of fairy tales with magic potions and what not, because in those cases the person is using chemistry and supernatural to cause magic. I also find it interesting to comment on how the enlightenment affected writing, even in fairy tales. While i really enjoy the grimms tales, i find that it is really hard to analyze them because there really is no "authors intent" because in most cases the grimms were compiling and editing the tales not making them. So i actually like reading the literary tales for analysis to recognize the historical allusions and social critiques as you pointed out in your blog.
ReplyDeleteGreat point about the complexity and specificity concerning the literary genre of fairy tales. This "violent transition" that becomes apparent when fairy tales switch from traditional oral story telling to written down by an autho, is most noticeable in the detailed settings, named characters, and the mutli-dimensional narratives.
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