German Literature Commons^™

What Makes A Woman "Pious And Good": The Function Of Several Grimm Brothers' Cautionary Fairy Tales, Hannah Montante

English (MA) Theses

This thesis explores how several of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, “Little Snow-white and the seven dwarfs,” “The Juniper Tree,” and “Cinderella” exhibit patriarchal expectations of women that fairy tale protagonists strive to uphold, while female villains feel driven to violence and artifice because of their inability to fit into this role. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published these stories in nineteenth-century Germany, which was predominantly Protestant and held the belief that women should be nurturing homemakers who took care of their husbands and children. These cautionary tales instruct women on how to behave and appear physically, likely because these stories …

Indisches Märchen, Malwida Von Meysenbug

Prose Fiction

No abstract provided.

Frauen Und Geschlechter In Märchen: Von Der Gebrüder Grimm Zu Disney, Harrison W. Lawrence

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis explores the representation of gender in fairy tales. Gender is among the most fundamental social constructs. Every culture has unique gender roles, and these roles must be taught to members of a society from a very young age. One of the oldest, and most successful methods of teaching gender roles to people of all ages is through fairy tales. In this thesis I demonstrate many of the subtle ways in which fairy tales are able to communicate powerful lessons about gender. The Grimm Brother’s Kinder und Hausmärchen transformed the fairy tale from oral tradition to literary genre. As …

Christian Themes In German Fairy Tales, Nikolaus Foulkrod, Grant Friedrich, Jen Johnson, Nathaniel Burrell

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

This research attempts to locate and identify Christian motifs in German fairy tales based on the research of Ronald Murphy in The Owl, the Raven and the Dove (2002). We selected 12 stories from the famous book by the Brothers Grimm, Kinder und Haus Märchen, and analyzed them in order to find direct and indirect Christian values and morals. The Germanic culture is historically grounded in Christian ideology; therefore, folk tales throughout the centuries included Christian themes as a means of infusing the culture with Biblical concepts, and to serve as a conduit for teaching Christian values. This …

The Fairy Tale (Spring 2007) (Whitman College), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

This course was taught by Robert Tobin at Whitman College. Professor Tobin worked at Whitman for 18 years as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities, and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.

"In this course, we will study one of the most appealing and enigmatic literary forms in human history: the fairy tale. Although focused on the German tradition, we will strive for a sense of the international and intercultural context of the tales. We will approach the tales from a variety of perspectives - structuralist, historical, sociological, and feminist among others. In the …