What are your favorite fairy tales and folktales?

What fairy tales and folktales do you enjoy reading? Mine's are: The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Fisherman and his Wife and Koi and the Kola Nuts.

I've gotten a really strong love for King Arthur's tales lately.

His knights more so than him actually, a real shame the only one anyone ever knows is Lancelot.

I love The Snow Queen. Frozen is great, but I'm disappointed that Disney won't ever do a straightforward adaptation now.

Yeah, I would like to see a straight forward adaptation of the Snow Queen. I also would like to see East of the Sun West of the Moon get adapted into a movie soon.

King Arthur is always cool, along with the various tales in the Arabian Nights. Additionally, I do enjoy me some Billy Goats Gruff and Beauty and the Beast.

Thinking about this makes me want to go out and find some old collections of Fairy Tales to just browse through.

Specifically I like reading the Juniper Tree. In general I'm a fan of the mermaid tales.

I also enjoyed the Juniper Tree! It was pretty gruesome at some parts, but also really interesting to read.

I love the Italo Calvino Italian Folktales. I grew up with the,. favorites were "the little girl sold with the pears" "the golden ball" "the dragon and the enchanted filly" and "jump into my sack"

I've always liked the one about the girl whose brothers were turned into swans.

That would be "The Wild Swans."

I loved the Wild Swans story also! It was great seeing the sister try to save her brothers!

I had a beautifully illustrated picture book with the story.

It's included in most Andersen collections.

I'll be honest, though...not one of my favorites. Beautiful imagery, good mythic resonance...but it beats the drum too hard about how good and virtuous and pure and good Eliza is, and the descriptions of her enduring agonizing pain in total silence border on fetishizing female suffering. (The Little Mermaid has a similar thing going on, come to think of it...Andersen had issues.) It's hard to believe it and The Snow Queen come from the same author.

I've long been a fan of The Tinderbox.

Just for the record there are tons of Brothers into Bird stories/ sister saves brothers from curse by not speaking for X number of years and knitting, not just the one HCA wrote( you are right, dude has serious issues that shine through even in fairy tales where the Protag doesn't die) A couple show up in Italy, one with seven brothers, one with two.

edited 25th Feb '14 9:37:55 PM by Ellowen

I can't even think of too many that I even know off the top of my head, instead of just knowing tangentially through popcultural osmosis.

The book I had was a more modern version of the Anderson story, so it was not that....graphic. And yes, Andersen had the tendency to write very extensive about the suffering of woman, but he also had a tendency to have female heroines. Gerda (The Snow Queen) for example is positively kick-ass. I also loved Thumbelina, just for the ending, when all the guys who wanted to force her into marriage a called before the fairy prince, and he tells them: "You have forgotten something important. You have forgotten to ask the girl if she even wants to marry you." And then proceeds to ask Thumbelina himself - she naturally said yes, but just that someone pointed this not so little problem in most fairy tales out made me love that story.

Andersen does have some good female characters, but Calvino has more. including a girl cursed to be a talking filly until she defeated a Dragon. Which she does.

The Brothers Grimm did have a few female characters written poorly also (although given the time the stories were created, I can kind of see this coming a mile away). However, Andersen did have some strong female characters like Thumbelina and Greta from "The Snow Queen."

Gerda is great, one of my favorites. but my heart belongs to Fanta Ghiro and Belfiore and Perina and Narbone and all the Italian fairy tale leading ladies who no one has ever heard of. I may have to make this year's Fall project a Trope Page for Italo Calvino's book of fairy tales.

I loved the Fantaghiro TV more-parter...well, at least the first two....the third was at least watchable...after that everything went to hell, sadly.

I didn't know it got adapted into anything. I just know the story my da used to read to me at night. Is it worth watching?

It was an European production, so I doubt that there is an English version (and if there is, certainly only a subtitled one), but yes, it was certainly worth watching. They put together some really good actors and produced five two-parters which, all aired in the Christmas program and were highly successful. The first was about Fantaghiro disguising herself as a man in order to participate in a duel and finish a war, the second was about her rescuing her kidnapped father, the third about the love of her life getting turned to stone and her riding out to find a cure....from that point on it became problematic because the actor who had placed her love interest up to this point didn't want to play the role anymore. So they did in the fourth movie some awful stock-footage use at the very end (after he got kidnapped again), and in the fifth she ended up in a parallel world and fell in love with another guy...the part was awful for multiple reasons, but I think it was mostly the new love interest which ended up being the straw breaking the camels back.

huh. the first part, that's from the fairy tale, but everything after that is not, though some elements sound like other italian folktales.

Yeah, I know....either way, for nothing else, the series is worth the watch for the soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqo4XUGPpQ

(There are actually multiple clips on Youtube, might help you to get an idea)