Tales from around the world

What is a Folk Tale?

A folk tale is a story or legend handed down from generation to generation usually by oral retelling. Folk tales often explain something that happens in nature or convey a certain truth about life. A folktale is a story or legend forming part of an oral tradition. Folktales possess many or all of the characteristics listed below.

• The beginning of the story starts with "Once upon a time . . . " or a similar phrase.
• Magic events, characters, and objects are part of the story
• One character is someone of royalty (king, queen, prince, princess, etc.)
• One character is wicked.
• One character is good.
• Goodness is rewarded in the story.
• Certain numbers like three and seven are in the story (three eggs, seven sisters, etc.)
• The story ends with ". . .they lived happily ever after." 

Tales from around the world

• African tales

Way of Communicating

There is a rich, fertile legacy of folklore from Africa. On this vast continent, folk tales and myths serve as a means of handing down traditions and customs from one generation to the next. The storytelling tradition has thrived for generations because of the absence of printed material. Folk tales prepare young people for life, as there are many lessons to be learned from the tales. Because of the history of this large continent, which includes the forceful transplanting of the people into slavery on other continents, many of the same folk tales exist in North America, South America, and the West Indies. These are told with little variation, for the tales were spread by word of mouth and were kept among the African population.

In addition to the folk tales, there are myths, legends, many proverbs, tongue twisters, and riddles.

Anansi

Anansi, the Spider, is one of the major trickster figures in African folk tales. This spider can be wise, foolish, amusing, or even lazy--but always there is a lesson to be learned from Anansi. The spider tales have traveled from Africa to the Caribbean Islands. Sometimes the spelling is changed from Anansi to Ananse. In Haiti the spider is called Ti Malice. Anansi stories came into the United Stated through South Carolina. The Anansi spider tales are told as "Aunt Nancy" stories by the Gullah of the southeastern part of the U.S.

Use of Nature

In the African folk tales, the stories reflect the culture where animals abound; consequently, the monkey, elephant, giraffe, lion, zebra, crocodile, and rhinoceros appear frequently along with a wide variety of birds such as the ostrich, the secretary bird, and the eagle. The animals and birds take on human characteristics of greed, jealousy, honesty, loneliness, etc. Through their behavior, many valuable lessons are learned. Also, the surroundings in which the tales take place reveal the vastness of the land and educate the reader about the climate, such as the dry season when it hasn't rained for several years, or the rainy season when the hills are slick with mud. The acacia trees swaying in a gentle breeze, muddy streams that are home to fish, hippos and crocodiles, moss covered rocks, and giant ant hills that serve as a "back scratcher" for huge elephants, give the reader a sense of the variety of life in this parched or lush land in this part of the world.

Some examples of african tales are: 
The Lion King, the tortoise and the hare  and Uncle Remus Tale.

 

• Latinamerican tales:

• Are generally part of the oral tradition of a group.
• Are more frequently told than read
• Are passed down from one generation to another
• Take on the characteristics of the time and place in which they are told
• Sometimes take on the personality of the storyteller
• Speak to universal and timeless themes.
• Try to make sense of our existence, help humans cope with the world in which they live, or explain the origin of something.
• Are often about the common person
• May contain supernatural elements
• Function to validate certain aspects of culture

Some Latinamerican tales are: "The coyote and the rabbit" and "The jaguar and the little skunk"

• Asian tales:

This tales are told in their local dialects (Japanese folktales for example) which may be difficult to understand because of intonation and pronunciations differences, conjugations and vocabulary.
The animals or creatures are known by their abilities, foxes are mentioned frequently for instance. Another characteristic that these tales contain is marriages between humans and non-humans.
The Asian tales allow children to experience the culture and heritage or tradition.

Some examples of Asian tales are: "The jade emperor and the four dragons" and "Chasing the monk's shadow "

 

• Australian tales:

Australia traditional storytelling, handed down from generation to generation, has always been part of the landscape. Since the beginning of time (the Dreaming) storytelling played a vital role in Australian Aboriginal culture, one of the world’s oldest cultures. Aboriginal children were told stories from a very early age; stories that helped them understand the air, the land, the universe, their people, their culture and their history. Elders told stories of their journeys and their accomplishments. As the children grew into adults they took on the responsibility of passing on the stories. These stories are as much a cultural necessity as they are entertainment and are still passed on orally though many are now recorded in print, audio and video. 

Some examples of Australian tales are: ."The Galah, and Oolah the lizard", "Bahloo the moon and the daens".

"The origin of the Narran Lake" and "Gooloo the magpie, and the Wahroogah"

What is a Tall Tale?

A tale tale is an extravagant, fanciful or greatly exaggerated story. Usually focuses on the achievements of the ultimate hero. The folktale is a story, passed down verbally from generation to generation. Each storyteller told the stories a little differently, making them more interesting and fascinating as the ages passed. Different folktales bear the characteristics of the culture, folklore and customs of the people from which they originated.

Example: Pecos Bill rides a Tornado

 

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What is a Myth?

Myths are traditional, typically ancient stories dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people. The purpose of myths is to account for the origins of something, explain aspects of the natural world or delineate the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. In many myths, the main characters are gods or demi-gods and the story may have some religious meaning or background.

In the Inuit tale of the First Tears retold by S.E. Schlosser, we discover how Man learned to cry.

Excerpt: "Once long ago, Man went hunting along the water's edge for seals. To Man's delight, many seals were crowded together along the seashore. He would certainly bring home a great feast for Woman and Son. He crept cautiously towards the seals. The seals grew restless. Man slowed down. Suddenly, the seals began to slip into the water. Man was frantic. His feast was getting away."

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What is a Legend? 

A legend is a traditional tale handed down from earlier times and believed to have an historical basis.

Example: Jesse James and the Widow

 

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What is a Fable?

A fable is a short narrative making a moral point. Often employs animals with human characteristics (powers of speech, etc.) as the main characters of the story.

Example: The Ant and the Grasshopper

 

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What is a Fairy Tale? 

A fairy tale is a fanciful tale of legendary deeds and creatures, usually intended for children.

Example: Rapunzel

 

How did all these people contribute to the analysis of literature for children?

Vladimir Propp: (1895-1970), was a soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic elements of Russian folktales to identify their narrative elements. His most important book is Morphology of the Folktales. For him, in all fairy tales there are an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions, it is known asThe functions of Vladimir Propp. According to this theory, a tale can contain all the functions or only some of them, but in all cases, the functions appears in the same order. As an example of these functions, here are two of them:

1. ABSENTATION: A member of a family leaves the security of the home environment. This may be the hero or some other member of the family that the hero will later need to rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline. The hero may also be introduced here, often being shown as an ordinary person.
2. INTERDICTION: An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'don't do this'). The hero is warned against some action (given an 'interdiction').

He also concludes that all the characters can be resolved into 8 broad character types in the 100 tales he analyzed. We are going to mention two of them:

1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero

 

Bruno Bettelheim: (1903-1990), was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than The uses of Enchantment, because of its revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood  development . He was a good story teller, who made this analysis in terms of Freudian psychology. In it, he studied the role of the most important fairy tales on the development of the unconscious. He thought that they play different roles in teaching children about morals, right versus wrong etc. and they are instruments to stimulate their imagination. Bettelheim argues convincingly that fairy tales provide a unique way for children to come to terms with the dilemma of their lives.

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María Tatar: Is an American academic whose expertise lies in children´s literature, German literature and Folklore. Since 1970´s, she has focused on fairy tales and she discovered that in Grimm´s stories are included murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest. For her, the fairy tales have a magical glittery sparkle that fires a reader´s imagination, but also a dark horrific side that stages our deepest anxieties and fears. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales is a remarkable treasure trove, a work that celebrates the best-loved tales of childhood and presents them through her vision, as she is a leading authority in the field of folklore and children's literature. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this worldwide best-selling book.

 

Kieran Egan: (Ireland in 1942), is an educational philosopher who think that education may be more imaginative. For him, nightingales talk telling children certain kind of .feelings, since fear to a world of happy fantasy in which disease and cruelty are absent.

He divided the fairy tales in:

·         Happy fantasy

·         Fear fantasy

Fantasy  is for him a product of language mind and fantasy stories disturbing features are a healthy preparation for a life, that is unlikely to lack disturbance. Fantasy stories undermine courage, they present to the child's mind a world in which undefined but fearsome threats are behind the facade of the everyday world. Our discouraging anxieties may start with monsters under the bed but the anxieties remain with us, less precisely focused, to interfere with our work and our relationships and to suck pleasure from our lives. Fantasy is a prerequisite both for a range of intellectual skills and for an imaginative and flexible engagement with reality.