A Study Of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales, or fairy stories, from the very beginning of its source from Human Being's childhood, become an intimate companion of children and childhood itself, and thus become a forever topic in literature. In China, both the concept itself and this literary form are primarilly a kind of imported foreign culture. It took root in Modern China, accompanied with the generation of modern Chinese literature and the notion of "child".In the first spring phase, that is, the May Fourth period, a mass of classic fairy tales of the world were imported into China and translated or rewritten into modern Chinese. Meanwhile, some of the profound foreign theories of fairy tales, such as anthropology school out of the theory of mythology, began enjoying the attention of the first Chinese theorist on fairy tales as Zhou Zuoren and Zhao Jingshen, and impacted great influence on them. As to the text writing, some great writers as Ye Shengtao, Ba Jin, started a new and unique way of us own in exploration. As a whole, this period has laid a solid foundation for Chinese fairy tales, both in the theretical achievements and the text writing. However, as a special transformation period in Chinese literature, the specificity of the May Fourth Period adds to Chinese fairy tale many other tones different from the original foreign features. This results in an unusual disparity between the text writing and the theoretical studies of Chinese fairy tales. And along with the enrichment of these years' writing and creation, the theory of fairy tales in China is also getting mature, but the gap is getting enlarged rather than diminishing and vanishing. In return, we are getting more and more puzzled and lost when we are engaged in fairy tale writing or trying to comprehend the concept and analyse this literature genre. Pessimistically to say, today's Chinese fairy tale writing overall confrounts a difficult state. In a word, its reader crowd was narrowed to children in kindergarten, its text content was singled to speaking animals or magic fairies, its cultural deposits was reduced to superficiality and false sweetness.Nevertheless, fairy tales in foreign countries, especially in the UK, France and the USA, has presented another status. There has continually devoted a great deal of classics of fairy tales. And as to the theory research field, there also has been a good deal of profound works and articles. In their sight, the study of fairy tales is a solemn and big project which could be and had been introduced into other fields as Antropology, Psychology, Child Psychology, Sociology and Ethnology rather than literary studies. In the case of classical texts, they usually concern the major topic of life and society and natually express the precious humanistic care. Moreover, some foreign novels began to borrow ideas from fairy tales and develop a special style. On the other hand, the works of modern fairy tales began to take in some features of novels, for instance, both Charlott's Web and The Cricket in Times Square have a strucuture of two threads as some novels do. Compared this condition to the present development of fairy tales in our country, we can find a quite large disparity.Therefore, in this article, the first mission is to get a clear comprehension of the concept of fairy tale. And firstly this had to be put into the overall situation where we should bring Chinese fairy tale writing and researching into the world's development of fairy tales. Secondly, we should take into account that fairy tale as a genre is a kind of living and growing literature, so we could only summarize its traits and difine its notion out of the quantities of classical fairy tale texts. Then when we take this genre into our Chinese Children's literature, when we strive to confine its field and resolve sorts of questions and doubts, we should trace back to the source where fairy tale began to take root in China. No more than trying to find out how it works could we solve these problems and make clear its distinguishing features.After all, we can only find fairy tale in its abundant texts and it is there where the meaning lies. It is impossible and unimaginable to do theory research out of text analysis. As a genre, fairy tale is living, changing, developing and growing. The true literature traits of fairy tale lie in every single work, so the true study of fairy tale can only be carried out in the analysis of the classical texts. Thus, this article will analyze some classical fairy tales and make some comparison so as to seek the laws of its development and the classical characters of this genre, and accordingly, to find out where the value and meaning of fairy tale lie in nowaday life.In Chapter 1, I will trace back to modern China period when fairy tale began to emerge in China vision and try to find out how its laws works. Through the analysis of theories of the first theorists such as Zhou Zuoren and Zhao Jingshen and appreciation of the first modern Chinese fairy tales such as Scarecrow and The Eternal Life Pagoda, I will try to hold the special savour and wonder of this exotic flower when it rooted in the soil of China. In this process, I will try to clear up a couple of concepts: folklore and literary fairy tale. In Chapter 2, some groups of texts would be taken into analysis and clarification, so as to describe the development of folklore/folk tale and literary fairy tale, and eventually conclude their respective features. Chapter 3 will try to clear up some confusion in our mind, for instance, whether modern fairy tale is fantasy or not, what is the relation between fairy tale and modern fantasy, what are the characteristics of modern Chinese fairy tales, and why modern Chinese fairy tale is closer to reality. What's more, it will promote some notions of Tolkien in his On Fairy Stories, such as The Secondary World and Other Time, and then try to analyze the difference and intergrowth of fairy tales and Fantasy, whose mainstream is High Fantasy, which can take Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a master piece. Chapter 4 will take some examples from classical Chinese and foreign fairy tales, so as to seek the characteristics of modern fairy tales and analyze how they present themselves in specific texts. The epilogue will summarize the full text and propose my own view and conclude what is the fairy tale's value for our current life and society. It also points out the limitations of the present thesis and provides some suggestions for future research.