Before the Grimms
The Brothers Grimm & German Fairy Tales
Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Before the Grimms: Tales, Tellers and Collectors
The Grimms did not invent the fairy tale, and they were not the first to print one. By 1812 there was already a long tradition of spoken stories, a fashionable French literary genre, an Italian collection from the 1600s, and a German intellectual movement eager to find "the voice of the people". This chapter sets out that background so that the Grimm collection can be judged in context. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
Oral Storytelling
Stories were told aloud for centuries before anyone collected them. Because spoken tales left no record, what we know about them comes from later writing, and that writing was done by people who had their own reasons for choosing and shaping what they wrote.
- Who told them. Women and men of many occupations, at work, at home or while travelling (check how far the common picture of a spinning-room storyteller is supported).
- To whom. Mostly to mixed audiences, adults as well as children; the idea of fairy tales as children's reading is largely later (Chapter 5).
- How they spread. By telling, by travel, by trade and by print, so that similar tales appear across Europe and beyond (check examples).
- The problem of evidence. A tale told in 1810 and written down in 1812 may already have been altered by the teller, the listener and the writer.
Earlier Literary Tales
Basile in Italy
Giambattista Basile's Lo cunto de li cunti (also called the Pentamerone), published after his death in the 1630s, is an early large collection of literary fairy tales in Neapolitan, with versions of stories later known elsewhere (check the dates and titles).
Perrault in France
Charles Perrault's collection of 1697 (check) gave French readers versions of "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood" and others, written for a court and salon audience and ending with a stated moral.
The salon writers
In the 1690s a group of mostly women writers, among them Madame d'Aulnoy, produced elaborate literary tales in Paris salons (check names), and the term "fairy tale" comes from their contes de fées.
These earlier tales matter for two reasons. First, they show that several "Grimm" stories had printed versions well before the brothers. Second, they show the tale as a sophisticated literary form, not only a rural folk one. Later Germans sometimes treated the French tradition as foreign, which affects how the Grimms' sources were described (Chapters 4 and 9).
Germany Before 1812
| Development (check each) | What it contributed |
|---|---|
| Translations of French and Oriental tales | The Arabian Nights reached Europe in French in the early 1700s, and German readers knew French fairy tales in translation. |
| Musäus's Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782 to 1786) | A German collection of ironic literary retellings that used the word Volksmärchen for tales that were not strictly folk tales. |
| Herder and the idea of the Volk | Johann Gottfried Herder argued that a people's songs and tales expressed its spirit and deserved collection. |
| Romantic writers | Writers such as Novalis, Tieck and later Brentano wrote their own Kunstmärchen (art tales) and admired older popular material. |
| Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805 to 1808) | Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano's collection of folk songs, edited freely, which the Grimms knew and which gave the Grimms an example. |
The Romantic Interest in Folk Culture
- The context. German-speaking lands were divided into many states and then, in the Napoleonic years, were invaded and reorganised (check the political background; Chapter 3).
- The idea. Many intellectuals looked to older popular culture as a source of shared identity, and some saw tales and songs as the surviving voice of the nation (check how different writers framed this).
- The method. Collect, preserve and sometimes improve. Brentano and Arnim felt free to rewrite; the Grimms said they wanted to be more faithful, though Chapter 5 asks how faithful they were.
- The link to nationalism. The collecting movement was later drawn into national politics, and Chapter 9 returns to this.
For the wider literary movement, see German Literature 6, which covers Romanticism and the fairy tale; this chapter concentrates on the collectors.
Exercises
Make a short timeline of five milestones from the 1600s to 1812 that lead up to the Grimm collection, and say in one line what each contributed.
Explain the difference between a Volksmärchen and a Kunstmärchen, and say why the difference is hard to apply to the Grimm collection.
Choose one tale that appears both in Perrault (or Basile) and in the Grimms. List two things the versions probably share and two you would want to check by reading both.
Quick Reference
- Italy: Basile, Lo cunto de li cunti, 1630s (check)
- France: d'Aulnoy and the salons; Perrault, 1697 (check)
- Germany: Musäus, Herder, Novalis, Tieck, Arnim and Brentano (check)
- Key terms: Volksmärchen (folk tale), Kunstmärchen (art tale), conte de fées
- The caution: every written tale before 1812 was already shaped by a collector or an author