The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

• The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
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Germany

Germany
where fairy tales were first considered worthy of study, occupies a pre‐eminent position in the genre. When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm decided to collect Germany's traditional tale forms, they laid the basis for the future of the genre in Germany, created a model for content and style, and set a standard for editing that was applied in nations around the world.

1. the genre and its history

Modern fairy tales emerged together with an urban workforce that increasingly consumed print products, and their plots, short and relatively simple, recount the magic fulfilment of their heroines' and heroes' wishes against a backdrop of personal deprivation and hostile opponents. Customary protagonists are poor girls or boys who, with magic assistance, achieve wealth and power and marry royalty. Tales about fairies, on the other hand, deal with the complicated intersections of royal lives with gnomes, elves, kobolds, giants, and...

[The entire page is 5495 words long]

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