On Analyzing Fairy Tales: "Little Red Riding Hood" Revisited

1987 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Swann Jones
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood

scholarly journals The Greedy Hippo and Red Riding Hood: The grotesque in fairy tales

Literator ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dineke Van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
The Other ◽  
Warning Messages ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood ◽  
Human Flesh ◽  
Children's Stories ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Gain Access ◽  
The Grotesque

This article presents a comparative reading of two folktales that are also characterised as children’s stories (one from Venda folklore and the other a popular European narrative) in order to explore a number of similarities between these stories. These similarities include the grotesque activity of eating human flesh, the way that overly trusting people are tricked by means of a masquerade and other ‘unethical’ and ‘immoral’ activities that occur in both narratives. In The Greedy Hippo (Hippopotamus throws his weight around), the monster for instance mimics the voice of a little boy in order to trick his sister and gain access to the children’s hut, whilst in Little Red Riding Hood the wolf tricks the grandmother in the same way to gain access to her house, in order to later trick Red Riding Hood. Furthermore, in both stories, the little girls (as well as the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood) are swallowed by vicious wild animals (either a hippopotamus or a wolf). As is often the case in fairy tales; however, the victims are saved or escape and live happily ever after. In this article, I argue that, although it seems absurd for children’s stories to deal with the grotesque, the presence of the grotesque actually serves an elevating purpose. I conclude that, because of the shock value of the grotesque, these stories not only intrigue children emotionally, but that the shocking quality of the grotesque also serves as a source of fascination for them. Therefore, the warning messages contained in the stories are more persuasively communicated and better remembered by the child audience.

scholarly journals When Modern Little Red Riding Hoods Cross Borders… or Don’t…

2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra L. Beckett
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
International Borders ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood ◽  
Anglophone World

Abstract Many contemporary retellings of Little Red Riding Hood, the best-known of all fairy tales, are by major, award-winning authors and illustrators, but all too often they remain completely unknown in the anglophone world. This paper examines retellings from numerous countries to show why or why not they cross international borders.

scholarly journals Os contos de Charles Perrault em tradução

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-180
Author(s):  
Anna Olga Prudente de Oliveira ◽  
Eliana Bueno-Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Xvii Century ◽  
French Writer ◽  
Charles Perrault ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood ◽  
Complete Translation

Translated and adapted to the Brazilian reader public from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, the tales Sleeping Beauty in the Forest, Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, The Boots Cat, The Fairies, Cinderella, Riquet of the Topete and The Little Thumb have recently won a new Brazilian edition that presents a complete translation of the work that became the canon of children's literature: Histories or Tales from the Time Past with Morals (Histoires or Contes du temps passé avec des Moralités) by Charles Perrault. In this interview with the translator, he seeks to know his work, his understanding of the work and the process of translation, and his proposals and strategies, especially in relation to these short stories, elaborated by the French writer of the XVII century with a characteristic that distinguishes them from others fairy tales: morality in verse at the end of the story told in prose.

Red Hoods, Dark Woods

2017 ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
James Gracey
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood

This chapter talks about the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as one of the most enduring and provocative of all the fairy tales ever told. It discusses the plight of the red-hooded girl who encounters a ravenous wolf as she wanders cautiously through the deep, dark woods on an errand to her Granny's cottage, which has haunted popular culture for centuries. It also reviews how Red Riding Hood has been told and re-told for centuries with its meaning interpreted and reinterpreted to reflect changing social values and attitudes. The chapter explores the scene of Rosaleen's encounter with the lycanthropic huntsman in the woods in Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves, which essentially provides an elaborate preparation for the central story. It analyses how folk and fairy tales were used to civilise listeners and readers in the ways of their communities and convey to them an understanding of acceptable conduct and behaviour.

scholarly journals The final girl on the freeway: Adaptation and appropriation of a fairy tale

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kloda
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Generic Type ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood ◽  
Double Interaction

Fairy tales and their adaptations transgress established social, cultural and temporal boundaries. This paper examines Matthew Bright’s Freeway (1996), an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood that deliberately mirrors this transgression by setting the film within the generic type of horror cinema. In choosing this mode, Bright partly restores the fairy tale to its original purpose, once existing as a folktale full of high melodrama, but goes further, criticising the text of ‘known pattern’ and overhauling it to a story in which an innocent female under attack restores her own equilibrium: in effect, deploying the ‘final girl’ trope that is common in slasher movies. Freeway uses its adaptive status to radically reinterpret the source text, fomenting its oppositional assault through a genre most suited to subversion. Through textual analysis, the paper examines how Bright harnesses the potential of the cinematographic medium through a double interaction, one that not only allows a coded opening of the internal, intertextual space of the adaptation, but also an antagonistic encounter rooted in the context of horror cinema.

scholarly journals Transformacje wzorców baśniowych w literaturze dziecięcej obecnej na współczesnym rynku wydawniczym

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Kamila Kowalczyk
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Snow White ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
Little Red Riding Hood

Transformation of fairy tales patterns in children’s literature available on the contemporary publishing marketWhat the contemporary publishing market offers the youngest readers are texts that make various forms of fairy tale characters — a  strongly representative group among them consists of texts that are transformations of fairy tale patterns that are deeply rooted in the mass imaginations including children’s imagination, which promote a  new version of a  well-known story: fairy tale renarrations. Such texts not only constitute evidence of changes in the fairy tale genre, but also prove the continuous updates on fairy tales. The aim of the article is to present and discuss how the authors modify specific characteristics of the fairy tale and play with its tradition. The examples of recognizable fairy tale patterns that are deeply rooted in the culture Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella were used to present the primary mechanisms of use and modification of fairy tales in children’s literature on the post-2000 Polish publishing market.The description of intertextual relationships between the fairy tale patterns and their renarrations renarration mechanisms has been supplemented with an analysis of influence of popular culture on children’s literature interpenetrating of cultural and literary circulations and the fashion for fairy tales. The studied works include those that have been written with gender education in mind, promotion of knowledge on rights of a  child or the environment and those primary aim of which is to entertain the young audience through reading. The article is also an encouragement to reflection on the genealogy of contemporary fairy tales and the shape, in which the “children’s fabulous fairy-tale-sphere” functions, and the factors that influence it.

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