The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

Earn Money  The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition Hardcover – October 19, 2014

For the first time one is able to read the original editions of the famous tales of the Brothers Grimm in English in an excellent translation by Jack Zipes. Published originally in two volumes in 1812 and 1815, they represent the "raw material" (and it is often raw) that was later edited, polished and bowdlerized to be more acceptable to polite society and children. Almost all of us will be familiar with many of the tales as they were later presented culminating in the 7th edition in 1857, which is often seen as definitive.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were interested in 'recovering the "true" nature of the German people through their so-called natural Poesie, the term that the Grimms often used to describe the formidable ancient Germanic and Nordic literature.' (p. xxiii). Rather than a work of entertainment for children this collection was intended as a scholarly work and included extensive scholarly notes. It was presented with minimal editing with the aim of capturing the original stories as they had been told to the brothers by a variety of sources. Zipes explains, in an interesting introduction, how they wanted to show how the cultivated literature, Kunstpoesie, evolved and eventually replaced Naturpoesie (tales, legends etc.) which survived in oral traditions.
There are a total of 156 tales in the two volumes, including nonsense stories, fables, animal and magical stories. All the well-known stories are there - Rapunzel, Snow White, Bluebeard, etc., etc. - but usually in shorter and often more basic forms. For example, in one version of Rapunzel her meetings with the prince are revealed when she gets pregnant and her clothes become too tight.
The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm