My lovely A-level history teacher used to drum it into us: ‘Define your terms’, and I should have thought about this before I started cobbling together my reading lists. Reading Bruno Bettelheim, who has a very definite idea of what constitutes a fairy tale, forced me to consider whether or not I agreed with him, and I did not. It also made me pause in mindlessly noting down titles from university reading lists ('oooh, I'd like to read that!') and wonder what exactly a modernist literary text is. So I’ll try to define that too, or a working version of it anyway.
I think a fairy tale must contain an element of magic – a flying carpet, an enchanted sleep, a witch or a talking frog – but the protagonist should be human. It should not be too long – perhaps an evening’s reading or telling at most. It must clearly be a story, not something which has ever been believed to be true or sacred, and this is one of the things which distinguish it from a myth. Myths form part of a coherent world view, and usually feature gods or superhuman heroes. ‘Cupid and Psyche’ compared with ‘East o’the Sun and West o’the Moon’ illustrates well the difference between a myth and a fairy tale.
Many fairy tales were originally oral, like folk tales (but folk tales lack the human protagonist plus magical element). However, some of the best-loved Western fairy tales were written in the nineteenth century by Hans Christian Andersen. According to Bruno Bettelheim, Charles Perrault was pretty free when he wrote down his versions of fairy tales – for instance, his story of Cinderella, the one with which most of us are most familiar (fairy godmother, pumpkin coach, glass slipper) is quite different from all the other versions of Cinderella, suggesting he invented quite a lot rather than simply recording what he had heard. I haven’t read much about it yet but there seems quite a tension between tales written down, including those collected by the Grimms and others, and oral tales, which interests me. How far did the collectors ‘shape’ the tales? How does writing a tale down change its nature? So, in my definition fairy tales may be oral or literary in origin.
(Pieter Coecke van Aelst, St Jerome in his Study, oil on panel, c. 1530; the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; St Jerome looks as if he has been trying to define modernism too)
It’s quite a wrench to jump to modernism... For this I had to trawl a few books and internet sites, and found that there is no single definition of a modernist literary work. There are characteristics, which perhaps can be summed up as a revolt against traditions and the conservative values of realism, all of which are perceived as inadequate to express the modern world. Certainties and religion are rejected in favour of subjectivity, relativity and individualism. What we perceive is what actually is – there is no single viewpoint, no single truth.
Modernist texts are often experimental in form as writers attempt to capture reality or perception in a new way. Linear narratives are often fragmented and many authors cultivate a deliberate obscurity; readers are required to make an effort to understand or possess a certain sort of education.
I suspect that both these definitions are partial and weak because my knowledge of both areas is so feeble, but I hope they’ll do for now, I can revise them as I go along. (Or conveniently forget about them.) I have guests coming for a week so it’ll be a little while before I have time to come here again. Meanwhile, I’d love to know how you define fairy tales or modernism, it would be a great help. Also, later Henry James: modernist or not?