Scribd
Upload
196 views

Kinder-Und Hausmärchen: Jacob Wilhelm Grimm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first published "Hansel and Gretel" in 1812 based on a story told by Wilhelm's friend Dortchen Wild. In later editions, some details were changed, such as the stepmother becoming the biological mother and a religious reference being added. The tale may have originated during a famine in 1315-1321 when people abandoned children. It belongs to a group of European tales about children outwitting ogres, and resembles other tales such as "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" where children follow a trail home after being abandoned. The tale has been interpreted as representing a coming-of-age ritual in ancient societies.

Uploaded by

Tano Chavez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
196 views

Kinder-Und Hausmärchen: Jacob Wilhelm Grimm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first published "Hansel and Gretel" in 1812 based on a story told by Wilhelm's friend Dortchen Wild. In later editions, some details were changed, such as the stepmother becoming the biological mother and a religious reference being added. The tale may have originated during a famine in 1315-1321 when people abandoned children. It belongs to a group of European tales about children outwitting ogres, and resembles other tales such as "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" where children follow a trail home after being abandoned. The tale has been interpreted as representing a coming-of-age ritual in ancient societies.

Uploaded by

Tano Chavez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm heard "Hansel and Gretel" from Wilhelm's friend (and future wife)

Dortchen Wild[1] and published it in Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812.[2] In the Grimms' version of
the tale, the woodcutter's wife is the children's biological mother and the blame for abandoning them
is shared between both her and the woodcutter himself. In later editions, some slight revisions were
made: the wife became the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes her scheme to abandon
the children and religious references are made. The sequence where the swan helps them across
the river is also an addition to later editions.[3]
The fairy tale may have originated in the medieval period of the Great Famine (1315–1321),[4] which
caused desperate people to abandon young children to fend for themselves, or even resort to
cannibalism.
Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie indicate in The Classic Fairy Tales (1974) that "Hansel and Gretel"
belongs to a group of European tales especially popular in the Baltic regions, about children
outwitting ogres into whose hands they have involuntarily fallen. The tale bears resemblances to the
first half of Charles Perrault's "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" (1697) and Madame d'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron"
(1721). In both tales, the Opies note, abandoned children find their way home by following a trail. In
"Clever Cinders", the Opies observe that the heroine incinerates a giant by shoving him into an oven
in a manner similar to Gretel's dispatch of the witch and they point out that a ruse involving a twig in
a Swedish tale resembles Hansel's trick of the dry bone. Linguist and folklorist Edward Vajda has
proposed that these stories represent the remnant of a coming-of-age rite-of-passage tale extant
in Proto-Indo-European society.[5][6] A house made of confectionery is found in a 14th-century
manuscript about the Land of Cockayne.[1]
The fact that the mother or stepmother dies when the children have killed the witch has suggested to
many commentators that the mother or stepmother and the witch are metaphorically the same
woman.[7] A Russian folk tale exists in which the evil stepmother (also the wife of a poor woodcutter)
asks her hated stepdaughter to go into the forest to borrow a light from her sister, who turns out to
be Baba Yaga, who is also a cannibalistic witch. Besides highlighting the endangerment of children
(as well as their own cleverness), the tales have in common a preoccupation with food and with
hurting children: the mother or stepmother wants to avoid hunger, while the witch lures children to
eat her house of candy so that she can then eat them.[8] Another tale of this type is the French fairy
tale The Lost Children.[9] The Brothers Grimm also identified the French Finette Cendron and Hop o'
My Thumb as parallel stories.[10]

You might also like