Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Bettelheim and Darnton

I find Bettelheim to be fairly mistaken on most any of the original ideas he had within his paper. I do agree with his overall idea on children though. The idea that the environment a child is raised in is the most important determining factor within a child's development is a strong one. Bettelheim continues to say that the second most important part of a child's development is the literature he/she is exposed to at a young age. I would go so far as to say that the odds of a child from a negative home most likely wouldn't be properly exposed to the literature like Bettelheim wishes. Generally it is the parent's job to expose the child, and the parents are doing a bad job of parenting, there isn't much hope.

Darnton i find to have a much more down to earth and realistic approach to the topic. He is right in saying that Bettelheim makes broad generalizations and that it is wrong to take a single version of a folk tale and apply it to all people. Taking the common themes and motifs from all of the regionally affiliated stories and compiling them would create a much more accurate view of the intent of the stories. Darnton's idea to use these folk tales to examine peasant culture is fairly interesting to me. It is probably the best way to approach learning of a people with little written history of their own. Also, as the main purveyor of folk tales, it is likely that all of these tales contain some insight to each of the originating groups. Darnton, once again being the more realistic of the two writers, goes on to talk about the difference in the versions of the folk tales that we had today versus the original versions ( or at least the oldest versions). When first transmitted by way of mouth, these tales included the human element that cannot be captured on paper. The story tellers themselves added an extra element. Between the two arguments, i believe Darnton's to be the much stronger of the two, especially seeing as he disproves Bettelheims within the first two pages.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with what you said about Bettelheim, besides his points on parenting being the most important influence in a child's life I think his theories go beyond what can be observed from fairytales. He makes too broad generalizations about how people read stories, how they respond to their problems and even the problems and urges he presumes we all have aren't necessarily true for everyone so I do not see how these issues can be addressed by fairytales that don't even have codified or explicit meanings and have so many versions.

    I also agree with your point that Darnton is more realistic but I also think that he goes a little too far in assuming that all of these stories can tell us about the lives of peasants. Yes, they are stories that originated from the oral traditions of the peasant class but they have been changed so much by middle class and writers of the elite class that I'm not sure they really do reflect the peasant culture as authentically as Darnton would like to believe.

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  2. I think the point that you make about the positive things that Bettelheim brings to the table, the importance of environment and parenting of the child, is really important. Parents who talk to their children about deep issues, encourage them to use their imagination, and provide a positive environment, I would argue, have a much greater psychological impact that these fairy tales could ever have on children.

    I also had a hard time believing that these fairy tales would provide such a great glimpse into peasant society. It would seem to me that the stories would get greatly tampered with especially as they are written down. However, I do like his more historical and realistic approach, and I do think that these fairy tales are a great resource considering that they were an illiterate society and have very little to go off of.

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