The stories, although moralistic, were intended to be entertaining. This is
evident by the inclusion of supernatural, magical and fantastical elements
woven throughout the stories. Before these stories, there had been very little
in the way of entertainment from books, most being instructional and educational.
‘Very few books for the amusement of child literature came into existence
before the middle of the 18th century. Early children's literature consisted
of devotional manuals and books used in the classroom.’ (http://www.buriedantiques.com/early_children's_books.htm.
9/9/06.)
The stories that we studied contained aspects of inanimate objects, humans,
environmental elements, and animals interacting together. They can all talk,
feel, communicate, relate together and cooperate to get each other out of
sticky situations. Having characters such as the environment, animals, humans,
and inanimate objects relates to the entertainment aspect as its more interesting
than simply reading about humans in everyday situations.
A majority of the stories follow universal patterns of fantasy. These include patterns such as ‘separation-initiation- return…the call to adventure, the herald, threshold, succession of trials, protective figure, victory/quest fulfilled and re-crossing the threshold’. (Literature lecture, semester 1, week 7).
Differences;
In the books that we studied there are obvious differences related to the language used in comparison to the time that they were written in, to today. ‘ handsome children…surely thou knowest not who I am… cut not off my head for then I could not live to repent my sin.’ (Anderson’s Fairy Tales p25). In the Indigenous stories the names of place, people and creatures are very different. There is not much description in the stories and the authors get straight to the point. There is no fuss, mass description or fancy language interrupting the story. ‘These gods from the Milky Way were so powerful that they didn’t need to speak, so they didn’t bother to have mouths…the ground became scorched, the rivers dried up, the animals began to die of thirst.’ (Wandjina, When the Snake Bites the Sun). Denmark, North Africa and China stories all have a sense of social hierarchy; royalty, rich, middle class, poor, whereas the Australian, Native American and Greek stories worship their gods and spirituality and there is no such social ladder based on wealth.
All of the stories have individual names and places specific to their country of origin. For example, names such as ‘Ahmed, The Sultan Marje, Ching Kit and the town of Tao Yuen’ would not be found in an early European story or an Australian one. A tribe such as the ‘Ngarinyin Tribe’ wouldn’t be evident in a Hans Christian Andersen’s story, where names such as Karen and Carl are used.
