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126-527: A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale , fairy story , household tale , magic tale , or wonder tale ) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre . Such stories typically feature magic , enchantments , and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in

252-417: A plot ". Hugh Walpole had a similar view: "A story should be a story; a record of things happening full of incidents, swift movements, unexpected development, leading through suspense to a climax and a satisfying denouement." This view of the short story as a finished product of art is however opposed by Anton Chekhov , who thought that a story should have neither a beginning nor an end. It should just be

378-429: A "slice of life", presented suggestively. In his stories, Chekhov does not round off the end but leaves it to the readers to draw their own conclusions. Sukumar Azhikode defined a short story as "a brief prose narrative with an intense episodic or anecdotal effect". Flannery O'Connor emphasized the need to consider what is exactly meant by the descriptor short. Short story writers may define their works as part of

504-462: A Chinese Studio (published posthumously, 1766), which has been described by Yuken Fujita of Keio University as having "a reputation as the most outstanding short story collection." The fairy tale itself became popular among the précieuses of upper-class France (1690–1710), and among the tales told in that time were the ones of La Fontaine and the Contes of Charles Perrault (1697), who fixed

630-526: A Prince of the United Kingdom would no longer be entitled to the style "Royal Highness". This has so far applied to Diana, Princess of Wales , and Sarah, Duchess of York . Similarly, in Denmark , Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg , lost her status as princess upon her second marriage after divorcing Prince Joachim of Denmark ( Danish : Grevinde af Frederiksborg ). In some cases, "princess"

756-518: A consciously feminist perspective. James Baldwin 's collection, Going to Meet the Man (1965), told stories of African-American life. Science fiction stories with a special poetic touch was a genre developed with great popular success by Ray Bradbury . Stephen King published many science fiction short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. King's interest is in the supernatural and macabre. Donald Barthelme and John Barth produced works in

882-498: A fixed form, and regardless of literary influence, the tellers constantly altered them for their own purposes. The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism , that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were

1008-416: A folklore, Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index 300–749,—in a cataloguing system that made such a distinction—to gain a clear set of tales. His own analysis identified fairy tales by their plot elements, but that in itself has been criticized, as the analysis does not lend itself easily to tales that do not involve a quest , and furthermore, the same plot elements are found in non-fairy tale works. Were I asked, what

1134-593: A larger narrative story (a frame story ), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic " novella " of Italian author Matteo Bandello , especially in their French translation. The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette . Traditional fairy tales began to be published in

1260-856: A literary variant of fairy tales such as Water and Salt and Cap O' Rushes . The tale itself resurfaced in Western literature in the 16th and 17th centuries, with The Facetious Nights of Straparola by Giovanni Francesco Straparola (Italy, 1550 and 1553), which contains many fairy tales in its inset tales, and the Neapolitan tales of Giambattista Basile (Naples, 1634–36), which are all fairy tales. Carlo Gozzi made use of many fairy tale motifs among his Commedia dell'Arte scenarios, including among them one based on The Love For Three Oranges (1761). Simultaneously, Pu Songling , in China, included many fairy tales in his collection, Strange Stories from

1386-437: A major literary form remains diminished. In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories; however, some works classified as short stories have up to 15,000 words. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or " flash fiction ". Short stories have no set length. In terms of word count, there is no official demarcation between an anecdote ,

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1512-423: A man-eating tiger with her own hand." In contemporary literature , many authors have used the form of fairy tales for various reasons, such as examining the human condition from the simple framework a fairytale provides. Some authors seek to recreate a sense of the fantastic in a contemporary discourse. Some writers use fairy tale forms for modern issues; this can include using the psychological dramas implicit in

1638-717: A mask on a human face, as in fables . In his essay " On Fairy-Stories ", J.   R.   R.   Tolkien agreed with the exclusion of "fairies" from the definition, defining fairy tales as stories about the adventures of men in Faërie , the land of fairies, fairytale princes and princesses, dwarves , elves, and not only other magical species but many other marvels. However, the same essay excludes tales that are often considered fairy tales, citing as an example The Monkey's Heart , which Andrew Lang included in The Lilac Fairy Book . Steven Swann Jones identified

1764-492: A monumental work called Le Cabinet des Fées , an enormous collection of stories from the 17th and 18th centuries. The first collectors to attempt to preserve not only the plot and characters of the tale, but also the style in which they were told, was the Brothers Grimm , collecting German fairy tales; ironically, this meant although their first edition (1812 & 1815) remains a treasure for folklorists, they rewrote

1890-481: A musician's variation are needed until this unknown fact is delivered into consciousness; and even then the theme is not exhausted. This unknown fact is what Jung calls the Self, which is the psychic reality of the collective unconscious. [...] Every archetype is in its essence only one aspect of the collective unconscious as well as always representing also the whole collective unconscious. Other famous people commented on

2016-399: A novel, Manto is widely admired for his analyses of violence, bigotry, prejudice, and the relationships between reason and unreason. Combining realism with surrealism and irony, Manto's works, such as the celebrated short story Toba Tek Singh , are aesthetic masterpieces that continue to give profound insight into the nature of human loss, violence, and devastation. Another famous Urdu writer

2142-450: A picture book aimed at children in which a princess rescues a prince, Angela Carter 's The Bloody Chamber , which retells a number of fairy tales from a female point of view and Simon Hood's contemporary interpretation of various popular classics. There are also many contemporary erotic retellings of fairy tales, which explicitly draw upon the original spirit of the tales, and are specifically for adults. Modern retellings focus on exploring

2268-530: A regular short story salon, held in London and other major cities. Short story writers who have appeared at the salon to read their work to live audiences include Ben Okri , Lionel Shriver , Elizabeth Day , A.L. Kennedy , William Boyd , Graham Swift , David Nicholls , Will Self , Sebastian Faulks , Julian Barnes , Evie Wylde and Claire Fuller . Canadian short story writers include Alice Munro , Mavis Gallant and Lynn Coady. In 2013, Alice Munro became

2394-420: A short story is character-driven and a writer's job is to "...trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does." Some authors have argued that a short story must have a strict form. Somerset Maugham thought that the short story "must have a definite design, which includes a point of departure, a climax and a point of test; in other words, it must have

2520-605: A short story remains problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe 's essay " The Philosophy of Composition " (1846). H. G. Wells described the purpose of the short story as "The jolly art, of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud." According to William Faulkner ,

2646-426: A short story, and a novel. Rather, the form's parameters are given by the rhetorical and practical context in which a given story is produced and considered so that what constitutes a short story may differ between genres, countries, eras, and commentators. Like the novel, the short story's predominant shape reflects the demands of the available markets for publication, and the evolution of the form seems closely tied to

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2772-643: A succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures and is filled with the marvellous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses." The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls ; youngest sons and gallant princes ; ogres , giants , dragons , and trolls ; wicked stepmothers and false heroes ; fairy godmothers and other magical helpers , often talking horses, or foxes, or birds ; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions. Although

2898-571: A technique developed by evolutionary biologists to trace the relatedness of living and fossil species . Among the tales analysed were Jack and the Beanstalk , traced to the time of splitting of Eastern and Western Indo-European, over 5000 years ago. Both Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin appear to have been created some 4000 years ago. The story of The Smith and the Devil ( Deal with

3024-459: A time " rather than in actual times. Fairy tales occur both in oral and in literary form ( literary fairy tale ); the name "fairy tale" (" conte de fées " in French) was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century. Many of today's fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared, with variations, in multiple cultures around the world. The history of

3150-480: A time ", this tells us that a fairy tale or a märchen was originally a little story from a long time ago when the world was still magic. (Indeed, one less regular German opening is "In the old times when wishing was still effective".) The French writers and adaptors of the conte de fées genre often included fairies in their stories; the genre name became "fairy tale" in English translation and "gradually eclipsed

3276-492: A version intended for children. The moralizing strain in the Victorian era altered the classical tales to teach lessons, as when George Cruikshank rewrote Cinderella in 1854 to contain temperance themes. His acquaintance Charles Dickens protested, "In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." Psychoanalysts such as Bruno Bettelheim , who regarded

3402-463: A weekly short story publication for more than half a century. Shirley Jackson 's story, " The Lottery " (1948), elicited the strongest response in the magazine's history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the 1940s included John Steinbeck , Jean Stafford , Eudora Welty , and John Cheever , who is best known for "The Swimmer " (1964), beautifully blending realism and surrealism. Many other American short story writers greatly influenced

3528-537: A world where all the fairy tales take place, and the characters are aware of their role in the story, such as in the film series Shrek . Other authors may have specific motives, such as multicultural or feminist reevaluations of predominantly Eurocentric masculine-dominated fairy tales, implying critique of older narratives. The figure of the damsel in distress has been particularly attacked by many feminist critics. Examples of narrative reversal rejecting this figure include The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch ,

3654-667: Is ex-officio a co-prince of Andorra , then Andorra could theoretically be jointly ruled by a princess. For many centuries, the title "princess" was not regularly used for a monarch's daughter, who, in English, might simply be called "Lady". Old English had no female equivalent of "prince", "earl", or any other royal or noble title aside from queen . Royal women were simply addressed or referred to as "The Lady [Firstname]". For example, Mary and Elizabeth , daughters of Henry VIII of England , were often simply referred to as "the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth". This practice, however,

3780-498: Is Ismat Chughtai , whose short story, "Lihaaf" (The Quilt), on a lesbian relationship between an upper-class Muslim woman and her maidservant created great controversy following its publication in 1942. Notable examples in the period up to World War II include: Following World War II , the artistic range and numbers of writers of short stories grew significantly. Due in part to frequent contributions from John O'Hara , The New Yorker would come to exercise substantial influence as

3906-400: Is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance and other dynamic components as in a novel , but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel , authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques . The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre. Determining what exactly defines

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4032-404: Is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine : that is a fairytale   ... of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful. As Stith Thompson points out, talking animals and the presence of magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves. However, the mere presence of animals that talk does not make a tale a fairy tale, especially when the animal is clearly

4158-412: Is a recurrent trope in short stories; whether in their ending, characterisation or length. As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary depending on who is its creator. Characteristic of short story authors, according to professor of English, Clare Hanson, is that they are "losers and loners, exiles, women, blacks – writers who for one reason or another have not been part of

4284-501: Is a rich heritage of ancient folktales as well as a compiled body of short fiction which shaped the sensibility of modern Indian short story. Some of the famous Sanskrit collections of legends, folktales, fairy tales, and fables are Panchatantra , Hitopadesha and Kathasaritsagara . Jataka tales , originally written in Pali , is a compilation of tales concerning the previous births of Lord Gautama Buddha . The Frame story , also known as

4410-530: Is an impoverished piano student married to a Marquis who was much older than herself to "banish the spectre of poverty". The story is a variant on Bluebeard , a tale about a wealthy man who murders numerous young women. Carter's protagonist, who is unnamed, describes her mother as "eagle-featured" and "indomitable". Her mother is depicted as a woman who is prepared for violence, instead of hiding from it or sacrificing herself to it. The protagonist recalls how her mother kept an "antique service revolver" and once "shot

4536-448: Is best known today. The Brothers Grimm titled their collection Children's and Household Tales and rewrote their tales after complaints that they were not suitable for children. In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on sexual references; Rapunzel , in the first edition, revealed the prince's visits by asking why her clothing had grown tight, thus letting

4662-699: Is one of the best-known writers of short stories in the Spanish language . " The Library of Babel " (1941) and " The Aleph " (1945) handle difficult subjects like infinity . Borges won American fame with " The Garden of Forking Paths ", published in the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine . Two of the most representative writers of the Magical realism genre are also widely known Argentine short story writers, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar . The Nobel laureate author Gabriel García Márquez and

4788-857: Is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the Arabian Nights collection of magical tales (compiled circa 1500 AD), such as Vikram and the Vampire , and Bel and the Dragon . Besides such collections and individual tales, in China Taoist philosophers such as Liezi and Zhuangzi recounted fairy tales in their philosophical works. In the broader definition of the genre, the first famous Western fairy tales are those of Aesop (6th century BC) in ancient Greece . Scholarship points out that Medieval literature contains early versions or predecessors of later known tales and motifs, such as

4914-614: The Ramayana , the Mahabharata , and Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey . Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse , often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets . Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition, and adaptation of the story. While the overall arc of the tale was told over the course of several performances, short sections of verse could focus on individual narratives that were

5040-467: The Renaissance , such as Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile , and stabilized through the works of later collectors such as Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm . In this evolution, the name was coined when the précieuses took up writing literary stories; Madame d'Aulnoy invented the term Conte de fée , or fairy tale, in the late 17th century. Before the definition of

5166-460: The heir apparent to the throne or the spouse of the heir apparent. Some princesses are reigning monarchs of principalities. There have been fewer instances of reigning princesses than reigning princes, as most principalities excluded women from inheriting the throne. An example of a princess regnant is Constance of Antioch , princess regnant of Antioch in the 12th century. Since the president of France , an office for which women are eligible,

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5292-470: The 17th century, a passion for the conversational parlour game based on the plots of old folk tales swept through the salons. Each salonnière was called upon to retell an old tale or rework an old theme, spinning clever new stories that not only showcased verbal agility and imagination but also slyly commented on the conditions of aristocratic life. Great emphasis was placed on a mode of delivery that seemed natural and spontaneous. The decorative language of

5418-462: The 18th century with the publication of the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley . In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written form in the early 14th century, most notably with Giovanni Boccaccio 's Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales . Both of these books are composed of individual short stories, which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fiction, set within

5544-484: The 1970s that demonstrate the rise of the postmodern short story. While traditionalism maintained a significant influence on the form of the short story, minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie . Carver helped usher in an "extreme minimalist aesthetic" and expand the scope of the short story, as did Lydia Davis , through her idiosyncratic and laconic style. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges

5670-463: The 19th century: that the folk tradition preserved fairy tales in forms from pre-history except when "contaminated" by such literary forms, leading people to tell inauthentic tales. The rural, illiterate, and uneducated peasants, if suitably isolated, were the folk and would tell pure folk tales. Sometimes they regarded fairy tales as a form of fossil, the remnants of a once-perfect tale. However, further research has concluded that fairy tales never had

5796-506: The Americas, and Australia; Andrew Lang was able to draw on not only the written tales of Europe and Asia, but those collected by ethnographers, to fill his "coloured" fairy books series . They also encouraged other collectors of fairy tales, as when Yei Theodora Ozaki created a collection, Japanese Fairy Tales (1908), after encouragement from Lang. Simultaneously, writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and George MacDonald continued

5922-686: The Devil ) appears to date from the Bronze Age , some 6000 years ago. Various other studies converge to suggest that some fairy tales, for example the swan maiden , could go back to the Upper Palaeolithic. Originally, adults were the audience of a fairy tale just as often as children. Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the fairy tale became associated with children's literature. The précieuses , including Madame d'Aulnoy , intended their works for adults, but regarded their source as

6048-539: The Grimms' tale appears to be the only independent German variant. Similarly, the close agreement between the opening of the Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood and Perrault's tale points to an influence, although the Grimms' version adds a different ending (perhaps derived from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids ). Fairy tales tend to take on the color of their location, through the choice of motifs,

6174-718: The Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, The London Magazine Short Story Prize, the Pin Drop Studio Short Story Award and many others attract hundreds of entries each year. Published and non-published writers take part, sending in their stories from around the world. In 2013, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature —her citation read "master of the contemporary short story." She said she hopes

6300-816: The Russian Alexander Afanasyev (first published in 1866), the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe (first published in 1845), the Romanian Petre Ispirescu (first published in 1874), the English Joseph Jacobs (first published in 1890), and Jeremiah Curtin , an American who collected Irish tales (first published in 1890). Ethnographers collected fairy tales throughout the world, finding similar tales in Africa,

6426-534: The Seven Dwarfs was largely (although certainly not solely) intended for the children's market. The anime Magical Princess Minky Momo draws on the fairy tale Momotarō . Jack Zipes has spent many years working to make the older traditional stories accessible to modern readers and their children. Many fairy tales feature an absentee mother, as an example " Beauty and the Beast ", " The Little Mermaid ", " Little Red Riding Hood " and " Donkeyskin ", where

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6552-478: The Short-Story . During that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James , who produced some of the most influential short narratives of the time. The spread of the short story movement continued into South America, specifically Brazil. The novelist Machado de Assis was an important short story writer from Brazil at

6678-542: The Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti are further significant magical realist short story writers from the Hispanic world. In Brazil, João Antonio made a name for himself by writing about poverty and the favelas . Detective literature there was led by Rubem Fonseca . João Guimarães Rosa wrote short stories in the book Sagarana, using a complex, experimental language based on tales of oral tradition. The role of

6804-412: The archetypes in their simplest, barest and most concise form" because they are less overlaid with conscious material than myths and legends. "In this pure form, the archetypal images afford us the best clues to the understanding of the processes going on in the collective psyche". "The fairy tale itself is its own best explanation; that is, its meaning is contained in the totality of its motifs connected by

6930-463: The artistic and personal expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and fixed formation. William Boyd , a British author and short story writer, has said: [a short story] seem[s] to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards

7056-456: The award will bring readership for the short story, as well as recognising the short story for its own merit, rather than "something that people do before they write their first novel." Short stories were cited in the choice of other laureates as well: Paul Heyse in 1910 and Gabriel García Márquez in 1982. Short stories are sometimes adapted for radio, TV or film: As a concentrated, concise form of narrative and descriptive prose fiction,

7182-465: The bi-monthly magazine Desh (first published in 1933) was key in development of the Bengali short story. Two of the most popular detective story writers of Bengali literature are Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi ) and Satyajit Ray (the creator of Feluda ). Notable examples in the post-World War II period include: The numbers of 21st-century short story writers run into

7308-519: The case of children and grandchildren) or " Highness " (in the case of male line great-grandchildren). Queen Victoria confirmed this practice in letters patent dated 30 January 1864 (the first Act of the Prerogative dealing with the princely title in general terms). On 31 December 2012, Queen Elizabeth II issued letters patent enabling all children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales to enjoy

7434-566: The child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." Albert Einstein once showed how important he believed fairy tales were for children's intelligence in the quote "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales." The adaptation of fairy tales for children continues. Walt Disney 's influential Snow White and

7560-404: The children's window of tolerance". These fairy tales teach children how to deal with certain social situations and helps them to find their place in society. Fairy tales teach children other important lessons too. For example, Tsitsani et al. carried out a study on children to determine the benefits of fairy tales. Parents of the children who took part in the study found that fairy tales, especially

7686-499: The color in them, triggered their child's imagination as they read them. Jungian Analyst and fairy tale scholar Marie Louise Von Franz interprets fairy tales based on Jung's view of fairy tales as a spontaneous and naive product of soul, which can only express what soul is. That means, she looks at fairy tales as images of different phases of experiencing the reality of the soul. They are the "purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes" and "they represent

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7812-451: The common elements in fairy tales found spread over continents. One is that a single point of origin generated any given tale, which then spread over the centuries; the other is that such fairy tales stem from common human experience and therefore can appear separately in many different origins. Fairy tales with very similar plots, characters, and motifs are found spread across many different cultures. Many researchers hold this to be caused by

7938-417: The conversations consisted of literature, mores, taste, and etiquette, whereby the speakers all endeavoured to portray ideal situations in the most effective oratorical style that would gradually have a major effect on literary forms." Many 18th-century folklorists attempted to recover the "pure" folktale, uncontaminated by literary versions. Yet while oral fairy tales likely existed for thousands of years before

8064-502: The cruelty of older fairy tales as indicative of psychological conflicts, strongly criticized this expurgation, because it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues. Fairy tales do teach children how to deal with difficult times. To quote Rebecca Walters (2017, p. 56) "Fairytales and folktales are part of the cultural conserve that can be used to address children's fears   …. and give them some role training in an approach that honors

8190-462: The distinction is commonly made, even within the works of a single author: George MacDonald's Lilith and Phantastes are regarded as fantasies, while his " The Light Princess ", " The Golden Key ", and "The Wise Woman" are commonly called fairy tales. The most notable distinction is that fairytale fantasies, like other fantasies, make use of novelistic writing conventions of prose, characterization, or setting. Short story The short story

8316-523: The duration of a single telling. It may be helpful to classify such sections as oral short stories. Another ancient form of short story popular during the Roman Empire was the anecdote , a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the Gesta Romanorum . Anecdotes remained popular throughout Europe well into

8442-502: The early to mid 1900s in England were detective stories and thrillers. Many of these detective stories were written by authors such as G.K. Chesterton , Agatha Christie , and Dorothy L. Sayers . Graham Greene wrote his collection of short stories, Twenty-One Stories , between 1929 and 1954. Many of these short stories are classified in the genres of thriller, suspense, or even horror. The European short story movement during this time

8568-406: The economy and concision of the tales. Originally, stories that would contemporarily be considered fairy tales were not marked out as a separate genre. The German term " Märchen " stems from the old German word " Mär ", which means news or tale. The word " Märchen " is the diminutive of the word " Mär ", therefore it means a "little story". Together with the common beginning " once upon

8694-551: The evolution of the publishing industry and the submission guidelines of its constituent houses. As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length in the Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having fewer than 7,500 words. Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as

8820-562: The evolving form of the short story. For example, J. D. Salinger 's Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O'Connor's well-known story, " A Good Man is Hard to Find " (1955), reinvigorated the Southern Gothic style. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s. Philip Roth and Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie Olsen 's " I Stand Here Ironing " (1961) adopted

8946-401: The fairy tale is a distinct genre within the larger category of folktale, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute. The term itself comes from the translation of Madame D'Aulnoy's Conte de fées , first used in her collection in 1697. Common parlance conflates fairy tales with beast fables and other folktales, and scholars differ on the degree to which

9072-451: The fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace because only the literary forms can survive. Still, according to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon , such stories may date back thousands of years, some to the Bronze Age . Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today. The Jatakas are probably the oldest collection of such tales in literature, and

9198-655: The fairy tales served an important function: disguising the rebellious subtext of the stories and sliding them past the court censors. Critiques of court life (and even of the king) were embedded in extravagant tales and in dark, sharply dystopian ones. Not surprisingly, the tales by women often featured young (but clever) aristocratic girls whose lives were controlled by the arbitrary whims of fathers, kings, and elderly wicked fairies, as well as tales in which groups of wise fairies (i.e., intelligent, independent women) stepped in and put all to rights. The salon tales as they were originally written and published have been preserved in

9324-480: The first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811. In the United States, Washington Irving was responsible for creating some of the first short stories of American origin, " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " and " Rip Van Winkle ". Edgar Allan Poe became another early American short story writer. His concise technique, deemed the "single effect", has had tremendous influence on

9450-447: The first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries. The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland 's "remarkable narrative", "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Novelists such as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote influential short stories during this time. Germany soon followed the United Kingdom's example by producing short stories;

9576-558: The first writer of nothing but short stories to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . Her award-winning short story collections include Dance of the Happy Shades , Lives of Girls and Women , Who Do You Think You Are? , The Progress of Love , The Love of a Good Woman and Runaway . Prominent short story awards such as The Sunday Times Short Story Award , the BBC National Short Story Award ,

9702-424: The formation of the modern short story. Examples include: In the latter half of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. In 1890s Britain, literary periodicals such as The Yellow Book , Black & White , and The Strand Magazine popularized the short story. Britain was not alone in the endeavor to strengthen

9828-501: The forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella . Although Straparola's, Basile's and Perrault's collections contain the oldest known forms of various fairy tales, on the stylistic evidence, all the writers rewrote the tales for literary effect. In the mid-17th century, a vogue for magical tales emerged among the intellectuals who frequented the salons of Paris. These salons were regular gatherings hosted by prominent aristocratic women, where women and men could gather together to discuss

9954-673: The frame narrative or story within a story , is a narrative technique that probably originated in ancient Indian works such as Panchatantra . The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Pioneering the rules of the genre in the Western canon were, among others, Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom), Anton Chekhov (Russia), Guy de Maupassant (France), Rabindranath Tagore (India and Bangladesh), Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico) and Rubén Darío (Nicaragua). Early examples of short stories were published separately between 1790 and 1810, but

10080-459: The genre of fantasy, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", including Tolkien's The Hobbit , George Orwell 's Animal Farm , and L. Frank Baum 's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Indeed, Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" includes discussions of world-building and is considered a vital part of fantasy criticism. Although fantasy, particularly the subgenre of fairytale fantasy , draws heavily on fairy tale motifs,

10206-483: The genres are now regarded as distinct. The fairy tale, told orally, is a sub-class of the folktale . Many writers have written in the form of the fairy tale. These are the literary fairy tales, or Kunstmärchen . The oldest forms, from Panchatantra to the Pentamerone , show considerable reworking from the oral form. The Grimm brothers were among the first to try to preserve the features of oral tales. Yet

10332-532: The grateful dead , The Bird Lover or the quest for the lost wife. Recognizable folktales have also been reworked as the plot of folk literature and oral epics. Jack Zipes writes in When Dreams Came True , "There are fairy tale elements in Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene , and in many of William Shakespeare plays." King Lear can be considered

10458-447: The grave and oblivion. In the 1880s, the term "short story" acquired its modern meaning – having initially referred to children's tales. During the early to mid-20th century, the short story underwent expansive experimentation which further hindered attempts to comprehensively provide a definition. Longer stories that cannot be called novels are sometimes considered " novellas " or novelettes and, like short stories, may be collected into

10584-496: The greater part of the rest are demonstrably more than a thousand years old. It is certain that much (perhaps one-fifth) of the popular literature of modern Europe is derived from those portions of this large bulk which came west with the Crusades through the medium of Arabs and Jews. Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways. The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index and the morphological analysis of Vladimir Propp are among

10710-459: The history of the short story". The creation and study of the short story as a medium began to emerge as an academic discipline due to Blanche Colton Williams ' "groundbreaking work on structure and analysis of the short story" and her publication of A Handbook on Short Story Writing (1917), described as "the first practical aid to growing young writers that was put on the market in this country."     In Uruguay , Horacio Quiroga became one of

10836-636: The history of their development is necessarily obscure and blurred. Fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literate cultures, as in The Golden Ass , which includes Cupid and Psyche ( Roman , 100–200 AD), or the Panchatantra ( India 3rd century BC), but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literary forms. What they do show

10962-417: The importance of fairy tales, especially for children. For example, G. K. Chesterton argued that "Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give

11088-404: The issues of the day. In the 1630s, aristocratic women began to gather in their own living rooms, salons, to discuss the topics of their choice: arts and letters, politics, and social matters of immediate concern to the women of their class: marriage, love, financial and physical independence, and access to education. This was a time when women were barred from receiving a formal education. Some of

11214-542: The late 17th century; one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault . The appearance of Antoine Galland 's first modern translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights , a storehouse of Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, is the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights ) (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12). His translation would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European short stories of Voltaire , Diderot and others. In India, there

11340-519: The literary forms, there is no pure folktale, and each literary fairy tale draws on folk traditions, if only in parody. This makes it impossible to trace forms of transmission of a fairy tale. Oral story-tellers have been known to read literary fairy tales to increase their own stock of stories and treatments. The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this,

11466-519: The lives of common people, especially the oppressed classes. The prolific Indian author of short stories Munshi Premchand , pioneered the genre in the Hindustani language , writing over 200 short stories and many novels in a style characterized by realism and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society. In 1884, Brander Matthews , the first American professor of dramatic literature, published The Philosophy of

11592-456: The more general term folk tale that covered a wide variety of oral tales". Jack Zipes also attributes this shift to changing sociopolitical conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that led to the trivialization of these stories by the upper classes. Roots of the genre come from different oral stories passed down in European cultures. The genre was first marked out by writers of

11718-439: The more marketable form of "collections", of stories previously unpublished or published, but elsewhere. Sometimes, authors who do not have the time or money to write a novella or novel decide to write short stories instead, working out a deal with a popular website or magazine to publish them for profit. Around the world, the modern short story is comparable to lyrics , dramas, novels and essays – although examination of it as

11844-405: The most gifted women writers of the period came out of these early salons (such as Madeleine de Scudéry and Madame de Lafayette ), which encouraged women's independence and pushed against the gender barriers that defined their lives. The salonnières argued particularly for love and intellectual compatibility between the sexes, opposing the system of arranged marriages. Sometime in the middle of

11970-641: The most influential short story writers in the Spanish language. With a clear influence from Edgar Allan Poe , he had a great skill in using the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. In India, Saadat Hasan Manto , the master of the short story in the Urdu language, is revered for his exceptional depth, irony, and sardonic humor. The author of some 250 short stories, radio plays, essays, reminiscences, and

12096-475: The most notable. Other folklorists have interpreted the tales' significance, but no school has been definitively established for the meaning of the tales. Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or "wonder tale" to refer to the genre rather than fairy tale , a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 [1946] edition of The Folktale : "...a tale of some length involving

12222-508: The mother is deceased or absent and unable to help the heroines. Mothers are depicted as absent or wicked in the most popular contemporary versions of tales like " Rapunzel ", " Snow White ", " Cinderella " and " Hansel and Gretel ", however, some lesser known tales or variants such as those found in volumes edited by Angela Carter and Jane Yolen depict mothers in a more positive light. Carter's protagonist in The Bloody Chamber

12348-512: The point with the most action) and resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved). Because of their length, short stories may or may not often follow this pattern. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition, more typically beginning in the middle of the action ( in medias res ). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis or turning point. In general, short stories feature endings which might be either conclusive or open-ended. Ambiguity

12474-425: The popularity of the short story. Several authors during this time wrote short stories centered on the devices of satire and humor. One such author, Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of Saki , wrote satirical short stories about Edwardian England. P.G. Wodehouse published his first collection of comical stories about the valet, Jeeves , in 1917. Other common genres of short stories during

12600-529: The presence of fairies and/or similarly mythical beings (e.g., elves , goblins , trolls , giants, huge monsters, or mermaids) should be taken as a differentiator. Vladimir Propp , in his Morphology of the Folktale , criticized the common distinction between "fairy tales" and "animal tales" on the grounds that many tales contained both fantastic elements and animals. Nevertheless, to select works for his analysis, Propp used all Russian folktales classified as

12726-432: The presence of magic as the feature by which fairy tales can be distinguished from other sorts of folktales. Davidson and Chaudri identify "transformation" as the key feature of the genre. From a psychological point of view, Jean Chiriac argued for the necessity of the fantastic in these narratives. In terms of aesthetic values, Italo Calvino cited the fairy tale as a prime example of "quickness" in literature, because of

12852-675: The princely title and style of "Royal Highness", as opposed to only the eldest son. In European countries, a woman who marries a prince will almost always become a princess, but a man who marries a princess will almost never become a prince, unless specifically created so. From 1301 onward, the eldest sons of the kings of England (and later Great Britain and the United Kingdom) have generally been created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester , and their wives have been titled Princess of Wales . Queen Elizabeth II issued letters patent dated 21 August 1996, stating that any woman divorced from

12978-560: The revival of short story salons such as those held by the short fiction company Pin Drop Studio. More than 690,000 short stories and anthologies were sold in the UK in 2017, generating £5.88 million, the genre's highest sales since 2010. Throughout the 2010s, there was frequent speculation about a potential "renaissance"; Sam Baker called it a "perfect literary form for the 21st century". In 2012, Pin Drop Studio launched what became

13104-435: The ruling "narrative" or epistemological/experiential framework of their society." Still often cited Princess Princess is a title used by a female member of a monarch's family or by a female ruler . The male equivalent is a prince (from Latin princeps , meaning principal citizen). Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or for the daughter of a monarch. A crown princess can be

13230-410: The short story has been theorised about through the traditional elements of dramatic structure : exposition (the introduction of setting, situation, and main characters), complication (the event that introduces the conflict), rising action , crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action), climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and

13356-480: The short story movement. French author Guy de Maupassant composed the short stories " Boule de Suif " ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and " L'Inutile Beauté " ("The Useless Beauty", 1890), which are important examples of French realism . Russian author Anton Chekhov was also influential in the movement. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India, many writers created short stories centered on daily life and

13482-443: The simpler riddle might argue greater antiquity. Folklorists of the "Finnish" (or historical-geographical) school attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with inconclusive results. Sometimes influence, especially within a limited area and time, is clearer, as when considering the influence of Perrault's tales on those collected by the Brothers Grimm. Little Briar-Rose appears to stem from Perrault's The Sleeping Beauty , as

13608-409: The social scene of the different socioeconomic groups. Rabindranath Tagore published more than 150 short stories on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as peasants, women, and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay , Tagore's contemporary, was another pioneer in Bengali short stories. Chattopadhyay's stories focused on the social scenario of rural Bengal and

13734-722: The spread of such tales, as people repeat tales they have heard in foreign lands, although the oral nature makes it impossible to trace the route except by inference. Folklorists have attempted to determine the origin by internal evidence, which can not always be clear; Joseph Jacobs , comparing the Scottish tale The Ridere of Riddles with the version collected by the Brothers Grimm, The Riddle , noted that in The Ridere of Riddles one hero ends up polygamously married, which might point to an ancient custom, but in The Riddle ,

13860-514: The stories printed under the Grimm name have been considerably reworked to fit the written form. Literary fairy tales and oral fairy tales freely exchanged plots, motifs, and elements with one another and with the tales of foreign lands. The literary fairy tale came into fashion during the 17th century, developed by aristocratic women as a parlour game. This, in turn, helped to maintain the oral tradition. According to Jack Zipes , "The subject matter of

13986-455: The story, as when Robin McKinley retold Donkeyskin as the novel Deerskin , with emphasis on the abusive treatment the father of the tale dealt to his daughter. Sometimes, especially in children's literature, fairy tales are retold with a twist simply for comic effect, such as The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and The ASBO Fairy Tales by Chris Pilbeam. A common comic motif is

14112-412: The style in which they are told, and the depiction of character and local color. The Brothers Grimm believed that European fairy tales derived from the cultural history shared by all Indo-European peoples and were therefore ancient, far older than written records. This view is supported by research by the anthropologist Jamie Tehrani and the folklorist Sara Graca Da Silva using phylogenetic analysis ,

14238-443: The tale through use of the erotic, explicit sexuality, dark and/or comic themes, female empowerment, fetish and BDSM , multicultural, and heterosexual characters. Cleis Press has released several fairy tale-themed erotic anthologies, including Fairy Tale Lust , Lustfully Ever After , and A Princess Bound . It may be hard to lay down the rule between fairy tales and fantasies that use fairy tale motifs, or even whole plots, but

14364-468: The tales in later editions to make them more acceptable, which ensured their sales and the later popularity of their work. Such literary forms did not merely draw from the folktale, but also influenced folktales in turn. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told orally to them by Germans, because the tales derived from Perrault, and they concluded they were thereby French and not German tales; an oral version of " Bluebeard "

14490-401: The tales that servants, or other women of lower class, would tell to children. Indeed, a novel of that time, depicting a countess's suitor offering to tell such a tale, has the countess exclaim that she loves fairy tales as if she were still a child. Among the late précieuses , Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont redacted a version of Beauty and the Beast for children, and it is her tale that

14616-569: The term "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale ; it is used especially to describe any story that not only not true, but also could not possibly be true. Legends are perceived as real within their culture; fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics , fairy tales usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and to actual places, people, and events; they take place " once upon

14742-494: The thousands. Female short story writers have gained increased critical attention, with British authors, in particular, exploring modern feminist politics in their writings. Sales of short-story fiction are strong. In the UK, sales jumped 45% in 2017, driven by collections from international names such as Alice Munro, a high number of new writers to the genre, including famous names like actor Tom Hanks (plus those who publish their work using readily accessible, digital tools), and

14868-486: The thread of the story. [...] Every fairy tale is a relatively closed system compounding one essential psychological meaning which is expressed in a series of symbolical pictures and events and is discoverable in these". "I have come to the conclusion that all fairy tales endeavour to describe one and the same psychic fact, but a fact so complex and far-reaching and so difficult for us to realize in all its different aspects that hundreds of tales and thousands of repetitions with

14994-548: The time, under the influences of Xavier de Maistre , Laurence Sterne , Guy de Maupassant , among others. At the end of the 19th century, the writer João do Rio became popular by short stories about the bohemianism . Lima Barreto wrote about the former slaves and nationalism in Brazil, with his most recognized work being Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma . Examples include: In the United Kingdom, periodicals like The Strand Magazine and Story-Teller contributed to

15120-528: The tradition of literary fairy tales. Andersen's work sometimes drew on old folktales, but more often deployed fairytale motifs and plots in new tales. MacDonald incorporated fairytale motifs both in new literary fairy tales, such as The Light Princess , and in works of the genre that would become fantasy, as in The Princess and the Goblin or Lilith . Two theories of origins have attempted to explain

15246-529: The veracity of the events described) and explicit moral tales, including beast fables . Prevalent elements include dragons , dwarfs , elves , fairies , giants , gnomes , goblins , griffins , merfolk , monsters , monarchy , pixies , talking animals , trolls , unicorns , witches , wizards , magic , and enchantments . In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy-tale ending" (a happy ending ) or "fairy-tale romance ". Colloquially,

15372-415: The witch deduce that she was pregnant, but in subsequent editions carelessly revealed that it was easier to pull up the prince than the witch. On the other hand, in many respects, violence‍—‌particularly when punishing villains‍—‌was increased. Other, later, revisions cut out violence; J.   R.   R.   Tolkien noted that The Juniper Tree often had its cannibalistic stew cut out in

15498-600: Was not consistent. In the marriage contract between Prince George of Denmark and Anne , daughter of James II of England , Anne is referred to as "The Princess Anne". Practice in Britain began to change in the 18th century. After the accession of King George I to the British throne, the children, grandchildren, and male-line great-grandchildren of the British sovereign were automatically titled "Prince or Princess of Great Britain and Ireland" and styled " Royal Highness " (in

15624-575: Was not unique to England. In Ireland, James Joyce published his short story collection Dubliners in 1914. These stories, written in a more accessible style than his later novels, are based on careful observation of the inhabitants of his birth city. In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile American magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly , Harper's Magazine , The New Yorker , Scribner's , The Saturday Evening Post , Esquire , and The Bookman published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories

15750-410: Was so great and the money paid so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection, Flappers and Philosophers , appeared in book form in 1920. Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly suited for shorter fiction. Influenced by the short stories of Stephen Crane and Jack London , Hemingway's work "marks a new phase in

15876-413: Was thus rejected, and the tale of Little Briar Rose , clearly related to Perrault's " Sleeping Beauty ", was included only because Jacob Grimm convinced his brother that the figure of Brynhildr , from much earlier Norse mythology , proved that the sleeping princess was authentically Germanic folklore. This consideration of whether to keep Sleeping Beauty reflected a belief common among folklorists of

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