Darnton

I found the Darnton article to be the more enlightening of the two. The Bettelheim article seems to suppose a lot. To me, it feels like he is almost suggesting that without fairy tales, a child would learn nothing from his parents. It sounds like there is some natural desire and need for these stories, which just rubs me wrong. He also makes it sound as though the stories are absolutely crucial in the development of children.
When I was a kid, my book of fairy tales was a slightly demented one called The Stinky Cheese Man, which was a collection of the classic fairy tales, but filtered through what could be best described as a Ren & Stimpy mentality. However, I've grown up and turned out quite normal.
The Darnton article focuses more on oral tradition and history, which to me is more accurate. These stories are not static, but instead change as the storytellers see fit. There is nothing absolute in these, and they act more as a cultural barometer than a secondary Bible.

Sorry for the late post. I thought the assignments were going to be announced in class! My mistake.

Bettelheim

I found Bettelheim’s “The Struggle for Meaning” to be more productive in helping me think about fairy tales as more than just children’s entertainment. I think this is because Darnton’s essay was about the oral tradition of fairy tales and the adult content they originally had. This argument did not help me as much because it focused on fairy tales in the past. On the other hand, Bettelheim presented a view that I had never considered, and one that is relevant to fairy tales in the present time. His argument was that fairy tales provide children with access to deeper meaning, arouse their curiosity, and stimulate their imaginations. Additionally, fairy tales can teach children “about the inner problems of human beings, and of the right solutions to their predicaments in any society” (Tatar, 270). This helps me most to think about fairy tales as more than just children’s entertainment because it presents a latent function, one that I had never thought about before. Fairy tales play an extremely important role in the lives of children by teaching them about the difficulties of life and making moral decisions.

I found Darnton's "Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose" to be more productive in helping me think about fairy tales as more than children's entertainment. Bettelheim's article spoke of the benefits of fairy tales for teaching children about life. According to Bettelheim, fairy tales are the only literature for children that teaches them how to confront problems and emerge from difficult times with a sense of growth and maturity. Darnton's article, on the other hand, introduced the history of the fairy tale as part of an oral tradition among adults. Darnton's explanation showed that fairy tales had been transmitted across countries and altered until they were fit for children's entertainment. By including examples of the original fairy tales that contained the adult issues of rape, cannibalism, and child murder, Darnton showed clearly that fairy tales were not merely a form of child entertainment but had a long and sometimes bloody history.

Sahil Patel - Assignment for 1/13/09

I personally find Robert Darnton’s “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose” more productive in helping me to think about fairy tales as more than entertainment for children. Darnton explores different versions of classic fairy tales and the method of oral tradition that led to these tales. The entire essay is more of an anthropological discussion. He examines these stories as a way to understand and analyze peasant traditions and culture from where these stories come from. These stories are no longer just tales to entertain children, but a means to examine the mentality and culture of the speaker who would have passed this story on orally. What would bring a speaker to tell a version of “Little Red Riding Hood” that features cannibalism, striptease, and a disastrously negative ending for the protagonist? Unlike other articles that use the text itself to determine the mental condition of the writers during this time period, Darnton instead focuses on the culture of the time that would have allowed for such a grim and dark tale to be fodder for entertainment. Because Darnton chooses to look at these tales through an anthropological lens, they become less of a children's story that could be psychoanalyzed, and more of a text that could be used to understand illiterate and poor cultures centuries ago. For me, it immediately validates these stories’ usefulness as texts as historical documents deserved to be studied and analyzed.

- Sahil Patel

Assignment: 13 January 2009

Please respond to the question below by midnight tonight.

Which of the following essays do you find more productive in helping you to think about fairy tales as more than children's entertainment? Why?

• Robert Darnton's “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose”
• Bruno Bettelheim “The Struggle for Meaning,”

(both in Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales)