![]() Yet the central plot details remain the same: a king is protective of his beautiful daughter, the princess. This is because, like many other classic fairy tales, the tale of Sleeping Beauty exists in numerous versions, each of which is subtly – or, in some cases, quite strikingly – different from the others. ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is, depending on which version of the story you read, called Sleeping Beauty, Talia, Little Briar Rose, Rosamond, or Aurora. What is perhaps most noteworthy about this fairy tale – even more so than in Andersen’s other major fairy tales – is that (spoiler alert) the evil character at the centre of the story, namely the Snow Queen herself, doesn’t get her comeuppance at the end of the tale. We have analysed this story here. The mirror represents unhealthy cynicism which destroys youthful innocence. The inspiration for the film Frozen, ‘The Snow Queen’ tells of two children, a boy and a girl, who find themselves caught up in a battle of good and evil – featuring a broken mirror that distorts what it reflects. This fairy tale is slightly unusual on this list in that, rather than being based on pre-existing oral or written narratives, it was an original story by Hans Christian Andersen in 1844. But in this story, there’s definitely a pleasant twist in the tale… This tale – about a princess who accepts help from a frog in return for her hand in marriage – also shares some similarities with ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, in that in both stories a girl receives help from a hideous assistant who then demands something in return. ![]() A short and reasonably straightforward tale, ‘The Frog Prince’ really became popular in the nineteenth century with the Brothers Grimm and then with various Victorian retellings in Britain, although there are precursors to the frog prince tale found in much earlier, medieval literature, such as in Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’, which shares some of its central features. Nevertheless, this is a classic, and the image of the golden-haired Rapunzel letting down her hair from the tower in which she is imprisoned is familiar to pretty much everyone. But the Grimms’ earliest version was anything but a children’s story, and even the sanitised retelling hints at the story’s ‘adult’ content. ‘Rapunzel’ (derived from the word ‘rampion’, a kind of lettuce) contains many classic fairy-tale features: the damsel in distress, the wicked stepmother figure, the handsome prince. This is another stalwart in the Grimm fairy tale catalogue, although the tale can be traced back to the sixteenth century in its earliest version. ![]() A tale involving a greedy king, a negligent father, and a mysterious child-hungry dwarf, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ is an odd but enduring fairy tale that may have its roots in fears over bad harvests – or, as we discuss in the post linked to above, a host of other plausible influences. As we’ve revealed elsewhere, although this tale is closely associated with the Brothers Grimm and their retelling from the early nineteenth century, the basic story of ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ actually dates back around 4,000 years. But his scheming involves some questionable behaviour and trickery… In the Perrault telling of this classic fairy tale, the booted cat shows his plucky and enterprising spirit and helps his poor hapless master to climb the social ladder. ![]() A classic example of the fairy tale featuring ‘the animal as helper’, ‘Puss in Boots’ entered the canon of classic fairy tales when Charles Perrault included it in his 1697 collection of fairy stories, although like many of the greatest fairy tales, an earlier version can be found in the 1634 Pentamerone, a collection of oral folk tales compiled by Giambattista Basile. ![]()
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