Indo European Folktales Exam 2 Lecture Notes Lecture 1 Sexual Physical Abuse Style Performance Centered Approaches Focus on social context and creative process of storytelling Russian and Hungarian Schools of folklore and Prague school of Linguistics o Performance serves a communal function o Focus on personality of storyteller social and community relationship U S Ethnographers o Performance is an aesthetic event o Focus on individuals not community Shift from Volkspoesie to Kunstpoesie Freud 4 Stages of Childhood Sexual Development Sexuality broader definition o Impulses urges satisfaction Diphasic model divided into 4 stages o oral o sadistic anal o phallic Oedipal and Electra Complex Period of Latency o genital puberty Sexuality finally organizes itself adult sexuality occurs Incest Tales Kora and His Sister India The She Bear Giambattista Basile All Kinds of Fur Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Fair Maria Wood Italy The Story of Catskin England The Girl without Hands Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Incest in European Literature Precursors to the Grimms Giovanni Francesco Straparola ca 1480 ca 1557 Facetious Nights 1550 o Bocaccio Decamerone o Frame narrative Stories w i a larger story which is called the frame Ex Chaucer s Canterbury Tales Giambattista Basile 1575 1632 Pentamerone 1634 36 1 Typical Plot Structure Introductory episode Wife dies father desires his daughter Daughter tries to avoid proposal first by stalling Daughter flees alters her appearance Heroine faces a period of debasing labor and abuse at another king s court She appears anonymously at festive occasions The prince finally discovers her identity and marries her o This typical plot structure is violated in Kora and His Sister Reflection of Patriarchal Society Father s authority unchallenged Shift guilt onto the victim Alan Dundes The Psychoanalytic Study of the Grimms Tales Projective inversion o the girl wants to marry her father o the taboo cannot be expressed so it is her father who wants to marry his daughter o daughter who is guilty of the original incestuous thought girl gets punished Psychoanalytic Readings Tale as projection of the daughter Electra Complex What about the father Incest Taboo in Fairy Tales Symbolic language o Examples Girl without Hands and All Kinds of Fur Creative Editing and Rewriting Silencing the victim s account Lecture 2 Girls Becoming Women Freud 4 Stages of Childhood Sexual Development Sexuality broader definition Diphasic model divided into 4 stages o oral o sadistic anal o phallic Oedipal and Electra Complex Period of Latency o genital puberty symbols in dreams 2 Problems of Editing Changing Functions of Tales What gets lost Changing functions of tales change over time o Audience change tales for audience adults children o Purpose make tales less explicit in order to teach morals Changing ideas of a young woman s coming of age o Onset of adulthood Little Red Riding Hood Messages Different Interpretations o Cannibalism LRRH dies o Wolf is aggressive LRRH cannot avoid him wolf seduces her o Note differing visual interpretations Little Red Riding Hood Different Versions Protagonist Abilities o Outsmarts the wolf talks about going to the bathroom Ending o Who dies rescue The wolf is killed o Added story another wolf Extra wolf is added to show that LRRH has learned a lesson Moral Didactic function Mother s Counsel o Mother tells her wat to do other version does not Color Red o Not there in early version later addition o Associated w sexuality passion Cannibalism Explicit moral function beware of some men Little Red Riding Hood Interpretations Solar mythology Britain Sun o Sun traveling westward swallowed by the night o Early tale sun passing over the sky o Red sun wolf night Psychoanalytic Scholars Pregnancy Envy o Red tale of pregnancy o Wolf is jealous so he puts living beings inside of him o Stones infertility 3 3rd Reich Germans and Jews o Tale about rape men praying on helpless girls Recent American Interpretation Rape o Change tale to fit ideology depends on social circumstances Little Red Riding Hood Bettelheim Earlier versions of the tale Problems of puberty o Little not yet a woman o Grandma gives red hood symbol of puberty sexuality Sexual competition with older woman sees grandma as sexual competition wants to destroy her Split Male figure o wolf bad violent id o huntsman good superego Rebirth new awareness Relies on Grimms version to talk about sexual development Wants to be grown up not yet there Pleasure principle do whatever you want Reality principle do what you should do o Can t decide btw the 2 not prepared for puberty Little Briar Rose Sun Moon and Talia Differences Impregnation while asleep o Males sexuality females are there to get pregnant Extra marital affair o Dif ideas of love and marriage o The king is not viewed as evil for affair the woman who hinders the male sexuality is evil Deceived wife o Revenge takes revenge for husband s affair blurs lines btw victim and aggressor o Cannibalism Crab Frog and Fairies vs Wise men supernatural vs human How is she awakened o Children suck her finger suck out the splinter o Focus on motherhood not romance Sleeping Beauty Interpretations Natural Processes solar mythology interpretation o Maturation Menstruation 13 fairies present 13 lunar months o Seasons 100 days of sleep 100 days of winter Inevitability of Fate Sleeping Beauty Bettelheim 4 Focuses on period of sleep natural processes Latency inevitable sexual time should be postponed King s efforts to prevent maturation o Spinning room represent sexual organs Key to open the room first sexual experience Sexual fulfillment premature sexual arousal Women and Spinning Spinning as domain of women o Industrial revolution women no longer spin Spinning shifted from domain of women to men o Marriage prospects o Social environment telling tales o Ambivalent attitudes towards Historical changes in spinning o Some will glorify spinning and others will try to protect women from the dangers of spinning Two tendencies of spinning tales o Folktale anti work ethic don t want to spin o Fairy tale pro work ethic spinning is good learn to be a good spinner Spinning successfully represents coming of age Spinning Tales Coming of age w o having to do work Tales o Rumplestiltskin o Habitrot o The Three Spinning Women does not have a magical element Opposition of diligence laziness Changing role of women beauty vs labor o Beauty vs spinners o Beauty becomes more important o Changing social values