A Study On The Publication And Communication Of Grimm’s Fairy Tales In China

Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which was written by German scholar Jacob Grimm (Jacob Grimm,1785-1863) and William Grimm (Wilhelm Grimm,1786-1859) in1812and published in1857, is a collection of folk tales. It includes three parts, which are "children and family fairy tale","children of religious legends" and "supplement", with a total of216writings. It has received a warm welcome, especially from children, ever since its publication. It is a classic in its field which marks the beginning of collections of fairy tales It starts to be translated into Chinese in the year of1903, which brings about a publication boom and has a far-reaching impact on Chinese children’s literature and folklore. This thesis sets out to make a study on the publication and communication of Grimm’s Fairy Tales including issues of historical background of its introduction to China, its publication conditions in China, its influences and explanation and criticism on the disturbance of the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales.The introduction part introduces reasons and significance of this thesis, covering definitions of fairy tale and an introduction to achievements of studies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in different subjects.The first chapter states the publication conditions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in China, which first describes the historical background of its introduction to China, and then presents its publication conditions from the year of1903up to now.The second chapter gives a detailed analysis of its publications in China from three aspects which are selected versions, complete versions and conditions of journal publication. We discuss some features of its translation in China, ideas of its edit, conditions of its publication and features of binding.The third chapter presents the influences of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in China. We analyze its underlying impact on Chinese children’s literature and folklore. We also compare contents of three versions which are named The Adult Fairy Tale, Grimm Fairy Tale and The Real Grimm Shivering Grimm Fairy Tale, and point out their absurdity of originating from the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which has a bad influence and causes a stir in China.The last part draws a conclusion, which gives five suggestions for the publication of children’s books, some insufficiencies of this thesis. We hope that it will be used as a reference for more studies in this field in the future.