Tales of the Brothers Grimm Week 10: European Fairy Tales - Assignments - Reading - Resources - Images

Resources

The Hans Christian Andersen project online contains a helpful overview of the Brothers Grimm, with brief biography and bibliography.

For more detailed information, Dan Ashliman maintains a wonderful Brothers Grimm Home Page (in addition to his Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts site).

For texts, a good place to start is the Teutonic Mythology Translation Project, which contains German-English parallel texts of the fairy tales along with other works by the Brothers Grimm, including their Teutonic Mythology.

William Barker maintains the original English translation of the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales, by Margaret Hunt in 1884. You will find a selection of some of the most popular stories by the Brothers Grimm at Bartleby.

And Sur La Lune, my favorite fairy tale site, contains comparative versions of many famous fairy tales, many of which are found in the Brothers Grimm.

The University of Victoria has put some illustrated German and English texts online, containing some of the most popular stories, intended to help beginning German students. There is also a complete German-English Grimm's Fairy Tale site, maintained by Eugene R. Moutoux. Here is what he says about this site: "Once upon a time some poor German students did not know what to read. They tried a German novel, but it was too long. They tried German poetry, but it was too boring. They tried a German short story, but it was too hard. Then one day they read a German fairy tale. It was just right, and they read the whole thing. Delighted, their teacher waved a magic wand, and some of the best fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm appeared at his web site. The students read them all, did the exercises, and lived happily ever after. And this power has stayed with the tales, so that you, too, if you read them, and do the exercises, will live happily ever after."

There is an interactive fairy tale site for the Brothers Grimm created by National Geographic. And grimmfairytales.com also has a fun interactive site for children.

Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Hanky Pank Players, a funky audio recording from 1960 which is available online.

Information about the upcoming Terry Gilliam film about the Brothers Grimm.

Although the theories of Propp do not apply to all the types of stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, his work can certainly be applied to many of them! You can find a Propp outline online.