Folk tale Genre :: essays papers

Folk tale Genre The greatest treasure of every nation is its language. Fairy tales are part of the oral traditions of literature all over the world. The fairy tale is one of the forms of the people's linguistic arts where life and social system are reflected. Folklore, mythology, fables, tall stories, and other classic tales have been handed down, generation through generation. Countless treasures of human thought and experience still accumulate and live in the world even after thousand of years. Fairy tales appeared in the world a long time ago. Every culture has it is own variety of these stories. Although, fairy tales differ because of places, cultures, and periods their unique impact on teaching and entertaining of people has not been changed. Every class of people, in all parts of the world, has passed down this great tradition for generations, giving it popularity. Some scholars have studied reasons of why fairy tales still exist and continue to be told everywhere. They state that "stories may differ in subject from place to place, the conditions and purposes of tale telling may change as we move from land to land, from century to century, and yet everywhere it ministers to the same basic social and individual needs (15-18)". Fairy tale allows the reader and the wrier to go into a new imaginary world. There are many things to learn from the fairy tale. Tales in their simplest form have many reasons for being told. The psychologist, Bruno Bettelhiem, studied what is being learned from folk tales. He states: " Folk tales tell about the agonies of sibling rivalry, of wishes coming true, of the humble being elevated, of true merit being recognized even hidden under rags of virtue rewarded and evil punished (45-46)". In every telling of a fairy tale, an audience is eager to listen and retell the story to a new audience. The social values can be taken back to the history, and around to all parts of the world. The tales take the pulse of existence and of man's faculty of dreaming and communing. According to M.K. Thompson: " Curiosity about the past has always brought eager listeners to tales of long ago which supply the simple man with all he knows of the history of this tale (484-485)".