Produce Its Version Of The Grimm Fairy Tale Of Evolution Research

Seldom would any other fairy tale collections be as well-known around the world as the Grimm Brothers'one. For nearly two centuries, the Grimms'tales have enchanted generations of children from different continents, being almost a kind of fairy tale bible in many families. They have, to a certain extent, been an indispensable part of our childhood memory.Around 2000, however, there emerged a countercurrent for obliterating the great influence the Grimms'tales ever had on Chinese people. A so-called"Adult-for Edition of Grimms'Tales"appeared on quite a number of Chinese websites. People began wondering, does such a frightening Adult-for Edition really exist of Grimms'fairy tales?The answer is, NO, but there did exist an original version of the great brothers'fairy tales that were not suitable for childhood reading. Different from many other literary fairy tales, the Grimms'collection was not compiled once and for ever, but under many times of revision and modification. It had not only an original edition, but also an ?lenberg manuscript lying at a monastery for more then a century. The well-known Grimms'fairy tales actually had 7 editions published during a time span of 45 years. The continuing revision of these fairy tales came to an end until the death of the key revisor Wilhelm Carl Grimm in 1859.In comparing the ?lenberg manuscript, the 1st and the 7th editions of Grimms fairy tales, we may find a transformation of the brothers'view on children, and a enhancement of their inclination to regard fairy tales as an instrument of education. During the revision process, they deleted what they thought were not good for children, and tried to make the originally oral tales more literary. Yet they disciplined themselves to the basic rules of the creation of folktales, and thus had not undermined the tales'colloquial qualities, but contrarily, helped to reinforce or even repair those qualities, which made their collection completely different from other fairy tales. The Grimms'tales were neither a general kind of folktales nor written fairy tales, but a genre between, a new fairy tale type initiated by the Brothers Grimm—the Grimms'Fairy Tale.This dissertation is to compare the different editions of Grimms'fairy tale collections through adoption of philological and editionological methodology, trying to trace their evolution in half of a century. It maintains that the original collection of Grimms'fairy tales was actually not children's literature. It was not until the 7th edition did Grimms'fairy tales became literature for children, which was a result of the forming of their own modern viewpoints on children. The paper also tries to find out the major features and narrative laws of Grimms'fairy tales under the context of children's literature and by adopting modern folklorists'theory. It is to offer a paradigm and to construct a mode for folktale collection, compilation and revision in Chinese children's literature.