I am currently working on several academic projects that have to do with some fun topics. One of them is a discussion of Fairy Tales. In teaching my students about inquiry and exploration I tell them that a good paper begins with a good question. That question is usually, or should be related to the person so that interest and significance drive the rest of the inquiry.
I usually begin by telling them the story of my niece, who like me, loves princesses and fairy tales and other maked- up stories. My niece would exhibit two kinds of behaviors when playing these stories live action. Either she would be shy and demure calling pitifully for the prince to come and save her, or she would grab a foam sword, one of many in Nannie's dress up closet, and tell the prince not to worry because she will save him. This binary behavior has often given me pause to wonder what she was learning from fairy tales.
I take my students through my concern about the passive behavior and the aggressive behavior and wonder aloud if she will grow up with a Prince Charming Complex, or if she will grow up not wanting a Prince at all. Ultimately I ask if we should be teaching our children fairy tales. My internal and resounding answer is yes, but I allow room for discussion on both sides, yes or no.
I decided that instead of just positing this question I would actually do my research this time. So, I am reading Fantastic Literature: a Critical Reader by David Sandner. I am not just modeling a paper for my students I am building my case for the reading and study of fairy tales in serious academia and in our homes. This book is awesome because it collates articles, letters, lectures, and interviews throughout literary history in the discussion of fairy tales as part of human identity.
I decided to start posting some of this stuff; it is quite amazing. This post is from Samuel Taylor Colleridge, Mr. Romantic Literature himself.
Letter From Samuel Taylor Colleridge to Thomas Poole, 16 October 1797
"I read every book that came in my way without distinction. And my father was very fond of me and used to take me on his knee, and hold long conversations with me. I remember that at eight years old I walked with him one winter evening from a farmer's house a mile from Ottery, and he told me the names of the stars, and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world , and that the other twinkling stars were suns that had worlds rolling around them. And when I came home, he showed me how they rolled around. I hear him with a profound delight and admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or incredulity. For, from my early reading of fairy tales and genii etc. etc., my mind had been habituated to the Vast--and I never regarded my sense in any way as the criteria of my belief. I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions--not by my sight, even at that age."
Should children be permitted to read romances, and relations of giants and magicians and genii? I know all that has been said against it, but I have formed man faith in the affirmative. I know no other way of giving the mind a love of the "the Great" and "the Whole". Those who have been led to the same truths step by step through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess: they contemplate nothing but parts, and all parts are necessarily little. And the universe to them is but a mass of little things. It is true that the mind may become credulous and prone to superstition by the former method--but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in believing any absurdity rather than believe the grandest truths, if they have not the testimony of their own senses in their favor? I have known some how have been rationally educated , as it is styled. They were marked by a microscopic acuteness, but when they looked at great things, all became a blank and they saw nothing--and denied (very illogically) that anything could be seen, and uniformly put the negation of a power for the possession of power, and called the want of imagination 'judgment', and the never being moved to rapture 'philosophy'!"
In essence, a childhood deeply immersed in fairy tales created an ability to see the world in more than just its small parts, but an ability to not be overwhelmed by the immensity of the whole picture. I think we cling to small things, small ideas, small views, because we get overwhelmed when we look up into the sky and see the vastness of life and the universe and in a sense feel like we are falling up, out into that void where things are not easily put into boxes and categorized alphabetically. Coleridge's discussion of rationalists and imaginationists reminds me of a part of Hamlet where Hamlet remarks to the rational Horatio "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Fairy tales imbue their readers with that extra sense, maybe the seventh sense, the ability to understand greater things that heaven and earth combined, the ability to accept what is not seen, to live in a world where wonder is always a possibility. That is a sense that I want us all to have more of.