The Comparison On Wolf Grandmother Of China And Little Red Riding Hood In The West

Wolf grandmother (Little red riding hood) is a popular type of fairy tales which has been researched by a great many scholars for a long time. Alan Dundes gathered several greatly influential academic theses in Little Red Riding Hood-A Casebook. These theses are various and worth broody, but they have some weaknesses: 1.scholars are always paying attention to European fairy tales, ignoring the same type of Asia folktales; 2.psychoanalytic criticism is the most influential in the field of studying Little red riding hood, and it analyses these fairy tales by Sexual instincts and Oedipus complex, but the conclusion does not carry conviction. This paper collects 43 wolf grandmother folktales, which are widely spread in China, and analyses the structure of these fairy tales. It also interprets the reasonable meaning of the folktales and compares the differences between Wolf grandmother and Little red riding hood.The paper consists of four parts: Part one, the preface. It introduces the propagating of this type of fairy tales in the word. On the base of summarizing the present study about the folktales, the author provides the goal of this paper. Part two is the analysis on the structure of Wolf grandmother and its cultural significance. The type of Wolf grandmother is divided into two sub-types. 1.children come into the cave of wolf by mistake; 2.permission the wolf grandmother into the house. Part three, comparison Wolf grandmother and Little red riding hood. This part has three sections: 1. Various surface-structures derive from the same deep- structures. Wolf grandmother and Little red riding hood have the similar deep structure that is the conflict between safe and liberty. The paper uses Semiotic square to explain the deep structure of them. 2. Different natural receptors have different aesthetic psychology. 3. The relations of the parents and their children are different. The process of telling fairy tales is just like making dialogue between adults and children, the different relations concern traditional culture. Part four, the conclusion. Fairy tales not only lie in the traditional activity of telling stories, but also play a important role in contemporary era. The movie Home Alone absorbs the plot of these folktales and develops the form of them, which provide us some worthy suggestions.