Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- ‘Literary Fairy Tales’, Introduction to Frederik van Eeden's Little Johannes (1895)
- ‘Perrault's Popular Tales’, Introduction to Perrault's Popular Tales (1888)
- ‘Introduction’, The Blue Fairy Book (1889)
- ‘Introduction’, The Red Fairy Book (1890)
- ‘Preface’, The Green Fairy Book (1892)
- ‘Preface’, The Yellow Fairy Book (1894)
- ‘Preface’, The Pink Fairy Book (1897)
- ‘Preface’, The Lilac Fairy Book (1910)
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
‘Literary Fairy Tales’, Introduction to Frederik van Eeden's Little Johannes (1895)
from 3 - FAIRY TALES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- ‘Literary Fairy Tales’, Introduction to Frederik van Eeden's Little Johannes (1895)
- ‘Perrault's Popular Tales’, Introduction to Perrault's Popular Tales (1888)
- ‘Introduction’, The Blue Fairy Book (1889)
- ‘Introduction’, The Red Fairy Book (1890)
- ‘Preface’, The Green Fairy Book (1892)
- ‘Preface’, The Yellow Fairy Book (1894)
- ‘Preface’, The Pink Fairy Book (1897)
- ‘Preface’, The Lilac Fairy Book (1910)
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
Summary
The Märchen, or child's story, is a form of literature primevally old, but with infinite capacity of renewing its youth. Old wives’ fables, tales about a lad and a lass, and a cruel step-mother, about three adventurous brothers, about friendly or enchanted beasts, about magical weapons and rings, about giants and cannibals, are the most ancient form of romantic fiction. The civilised peoples have elaborated these child-like legends into the chief romantic myths, as of the Ship Argo, and the sagas of Heracles and Odysseus. Uncivilised races, Ojibbeways, Eskimo, Samoans, retain the old wives’ fables in a form far less cultivated, — probably far nearer the originals. European peasants keep them in shapes more akin to the savage than to the Greek forms, and, finally, men of letters have adopted the genre from popular narrative, as they have also adopted the Fable.
Little Johannes, here translated from the Dutch of Dr. Frederik van Eeden, is the latest of these essays, in which the man's fancy consciously plays with the data and the forms of the child's imagination. It is not my purpose here to criticise Little Johannes, an Allegory of a Poet's Soul, nor to try to forestall the reader's own conclusions. One prefers rather to glance at the history of the Fairy Tale in modern literature.
It might, of course, be said with truth that the Odyssey, and parts of most of the world's Epics are literary expansions of the Märchen, but these, we may be confident, were not made of set literary purpose. Neither Homer, nor any poet of the French Chansons de Geste, cried, ‘Here is a good plot in a child's legend, let me amplify and ennoble it.’ The real process was probably this: adventures that from time immemorial had been attributed to the vague heroes of Märchen gradually clustered round some half divine or heroic name, as of Heracles or Odysseus, won a way into national traditions, and were finally sung of by some heroic poet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangAnthropology, Fairy Tale, Folklore, The Origins of Religion, Psychical Research, pp. 126 - 130Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015