Myths vs. Fairy Tales Finding differences and similarities in various literary forms helps to understand better the correlation between the reality and literature. Why it is important to know the differences between the myths and fairy tales? First of all, the differences have both theoretical and practical meaning. It is a question of correlation between the primitive religious ideology and the art. fairy tale is often examined as mere work of art, whereas the myth has unconscious-poetic elements, the traces of religious and pre-scientific conceptions and rituals. .
Although both myth and fairy tale are related to folklore, they have differences even in general definition. Fairy tale is a magic story that cannot be true. In contrast to the fairy tale, the myth is a folk magic story that may be true. The myths are often linked to certain historic heroes and places, for example, myths about Sparta, Troy, Roma, etc. Some of mythological heroes are described realistic as if they ever existed: Heracles, Aphrodite, Cupid, Psyche, etc. The fairy tales, on contrast to myths, present stories about imaginative heroes and places: gins, witches, beasts, monsters, etc. The plots of myths and fairy tales can seem quite simple from the first sight.
However, they are much deeper than this. Both of them raise philosophical, moral and social questions. Yet, the myth seems to raise more serious questions, whereas the fairy tale usually reminds light reading. Both myth and fairy tale characters teach lessons and try to help the people in solving various life situations but due to differences of their genre peculiarities they do it in different ways. The myth and fairy tale usually consists of several parts. For example, historical myth consists of: The birth of a hero/ acquaintance with the hero A special childhood of the hero The call to adventure The tests and trials of the hero The good fortune or the gift the hero earns The return of the hero The fairy tale can have almost the same structure.
Fairy Tale Essay Children Story Cinderella
Children encounter problems with family, life, and love all throughout their younger years and have many questions that may be difficult to answer or discuss. In his essay The Struggle for Meaning, Bruno Bettelheim argues that the fairy-tale provides the child with information about death, aging, and poverty and many other issues that the typical safe story would never even attempt to conquer ( ...
Yet, it is quite difficult to tell that structure is always the same. It can vary depending on plot or the main idea of myth/fairy tale. However, both fairy tale and myths usually present simple characters and pit good against the evil. Poor or unlucky, abandoned children, peasants attain wealth and happy marriages as often through sheer luck and the fortuitous intervention of magic as through cleverness or good actions (Fairy Tales Around the World n.p.) For the heroes and heroines of myths and fairy tales the quest is usually very difficult and dangerous. Despite the danger, they are determined to get what they want. The heroes usually have bad luck, they are treated badly, are confronted with difficulties and bywords for iniquity and injustice.
The heroes should perform impossible tasks or fight the dangerous monsters. They meet magic creatures who help them. Myth heroes are the integral part of mankind and are often subjectively associated with the mankind in general (real people).
The fairy tale hero is of somewhat lesser scale: the interest is focused mainly on a personal life of fairy tale hero (Thompson 37).
For example, if Prometheus steals the fire for the sake of the whole mankind, the fairy tale hero steals the magic fire for his personal aims (for his own fireplace, to cure his father from some dangerous disease, etc).
When fairy tale hero steals magic good water being guided by altruistic feelings, he still acts within the limits of a certain circle of people (for example, to help his father, beloved woman, his king or his village).
The Essay on Destiny of a Hero
Upon reading or watching the epic tales of heroes, it is easy to overlook the connection they all share. From his writings in, A Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell brings to light the journey of a hero in “the rights of passage: separation – initiation – return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.” (Campbell, 30) The epic tale of a hero follows the universal pattern of ...
Myth (as well as a fairy tale) usually has some kind of introduction: the description of the place, main character.
In contrast to fairy tale, the myth usually has some certain end as reader can definitely say what might happen next, whereas numerous fairy tales dont have a defined end. The end is open here: there are plenty of variants of developing of further events. Rituals and certain kind of sacral actions are typical rather for myth than for fairy tale. However, myth can exist without them (for example, myths of Oceania).
The words, appointing at prehistoric times are typical, but not obligatory. It rather serves as a signal of mythological character of narration than a peculiar definition of myth.
The mythical character of heroes doesnt determine the genre. We can easily imagine fairy-tale adventures ascribed to a myth hero.
Bibliography:
EDSITEment Website. Fairy Tales Around the World. Retrieved November 1, 2005. Thompson, S. (1955).
Myth and Folk-Tale / Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 68. 270.
