Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Das graue Feenbuch
Für wen es gedacht ist
For parents and teachers who love reading tales aloud, and anyone curious about folklore from many cultures, with talking animals, enchanted princes and clever heroes.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Grey Fairy Book is a collection of fairy tales from many peoples, gathered by the Scottish writer Andrew Lang and published in 1900. It is one of a long series of colour-named fairy books that Lang edited for young readers. He did not write the tales himself. He chose them from folklore collections in many languages, and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne, and a circle of helpers did much of the work of putting them into English.
What you get is a wide trip through the world of oral storytelling. There are Chinese and Japanese tales, Irish and Scottish ones, African and Australian ones, and stories from Europe and the East. Dwarfs, dragons, talking animals, enchanted princes and clever poor people move through them. In this summary you will meet the kinds of tales the book holds, the shapes they share, and the odd pleasures of hearing them side by side. First, a word on how the book came to be.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A Scottish scholar gathers the world's talesFree
- 2Greed and kindness are tested by little folk
- 3Heroes face giants, monsters and dragons
- 4Clever creatures win with wit, not strength
- 5Princes, princesses and long hard quests
- 6How the tales work and how to hear them
Punkt 1 von 6
A Scottish scholar gathers the world's tales
Andrew Lang was a poet, critic, historian and student of folklore. In the late nineteenth century he became convinced that fairy tales belonged to everyone and were found in every country. Similar plots, he noticed, turned up in places that had no known contact with each other. He wanted to show this to children as well as to scholars.
The result was a series of books named for colours, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889. The Grey Fairy Book came later in the series, in 1900. Each volume mixed stories from different sources, and the grey volume follows the same plan. Lang wrote the prefaces and shaped the whole, while translators and retellers did much of the daily work.
The sources were collections made by folklorists in many lands. Some tales had been written down from village storytellers. Others came from older printed books. In the grey volume you meet stories from places as far apart as China, Japan, Ireland, southern Africa and Australia, along with tales from across Europe.
This mixing is the book's main idea. A reader moves from a mountain village to a desert, from a king's court to a fisherman's hut, in a few pages. No tale is long, and each one can be read in a sitting. That makes the book easy to dip into, and well suited to being read aloud.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Das graue Feenbuch
What is The Grey Fairy Book about?
It is a collection of short fairy tales from many countries, including China, Japan, Ireland, Africa and Australia. The stories feature dwarfs, dragons, clever animals, heroes and princesses, and many are about kindness, greed and cunning.
Did Andrew Lang write the stories in The Grey Fairy Book?
No. Lang edited the book. He chose tales from folklore collections in many languages, and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne, and other helpers translated and retold many of them. He wrote the preface and shaped the whole.
When was The Grey Fairy Book published?
It was published in 1900 as part of Lang's series of colour fairy books. The series began in 1889 with The Blue Fairy Book and grew to twelve volumes in all.
Is The Grey Fairy Book suitable for children?
It was made for young readers and suits reading aloud. Like most folk tales, though, some stories have fights, danger or cruel turns, so adults may wish to choose tales to suit the child.
Are the stories in The Grey Fairy Book true or traditional?
They are traditional folk tales, passed on by word of mouth and later written down by collectors. They are not history. They reflect the beliefs, fears and humour of the peoples who told them.