Fairy tales before Grimm
Of course, it’d be preposterous to say that every fairy tale started with two brothers. Ancient stories have been told exclusively orally thousands of years ago. Because of this, it’s hard to know who created these stories, and the context surrounding them. The start of our knowledge of these tales begins before the Judaeo-Christian era; scribes began documenting various aspects of their culture including religious anecdotes and folktales. The recording of these stories has been highly influential to humanity. They preserved the tales and knowledge for future generations. Because these once exclusively oral stories went through adaptations they slowly morphed through every iteration. These stories also influenced each other and sometimes melded together. Fairy tales and folktales have been so prevalent throughout history even out-dating writing, it’s as if storytelling is an inherent nature of humans.
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Literary Masters
“Brothers Grimm” refers to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Jacob and Wilhelm were born in Hanau a town in Germany. Jacob was the more book smart of the two while Wilhelm had an artist’s heart. They were the oldest in the family out of five siblings, so they were both saddled with the responsibility of the family after the death of both of their parents. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm attended the University of Marburg and both found their love of history and folk poetry there. After graduating they continued their literary research and took on a project to collect historic folk songs in 1805. This project was a launching point for the brothers, they would continue to record fairy tales from different backgrounds and points in time. The Grimm brothers later published this collection under the name “Kinder- und Hausmärchen”. The book held two hundred tales including “Snow White,” Sleeping Beauty,” and “Little Red Riding Hood. The brother’s main goal was documenting the imagination of humanity, and ethos of the culture and time the stories were born in.
Grim(m) Stories
The original Grimm fairy tales are now known to be infamously dark compared to the versions we are exposed to these days. These stories would not shy away from graphic violence, sexual assault, incest, and child abuse. Although interestingly, the Grimm brothers already slightly toned down the tragedy in these stories. Today we find these texts shocking and disturbing, especially for media aimed at children but at the time these fairy tales were already the sanitized version.
