Folk Literature and Magic Tales
By Sarah Schlesinger, Edited by Cory Elizabeth Nelson
The tales that provided inspiration for Into the Woods are part of a category of fiction called folk literature. Important figures such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, and Joseph Campbell have perceived folk literature as an entry point into the unconscious and a source of unexpected and significant insights into the essence of the human experience. The true power of these ancient tales, which entertain us while relating truths basic to our emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being, continues to be a source of fascination to us.
There are two types of poetic or prose folk stories: legends and fictional tales. Legends attempt to explain reality by accounting for phenomena such as the origin of the world and human race, explaining the nature of God or the gods, and predicting how the world will end. Magic tales, the type which inspired Into the Woods, often incorporate enchanted family members, magic objects, and supernatural enemies, knowledge, helpers, and tasks that must be accomplished. The central character in a magic tale is a hero or heroine who attempts to escape from everyday reality into the realm of magical experiences, where their expectations are met. They then return to the “real” world to live happily ever after.
Cinderella, one of the magic tales on which Into the Woods is based, is a folk tale told throughout the world, in which a mistreated, impoverished heroine receives supernatural aid in finding love and escaping her home. The oldest known version of this tale was told in China in the 9th century. The popular English version is a translation of Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon, which he wrote in French in 1907. More than five hundred versions of the Cinderella tale have been documented in Europe alone. Snow White is a magic tale with a similar structure.
The Origins of Magic Tales
Many old magic tales were originally created by adults for the entertainment of adults; in fact, only a small number were originally created to be shared with children. Much of the subject matter in these tales concerns the mature experiences, customs, beliefs, and emotional challenges confronted by individuals in adult life in most of the cultures of the world. However, since many tales also have exciting plots, an abundance of action and “just” endings, they have long been a popular form of literature for young people, as well.
How and why such tales originated has been a long source of debate. One popular theory, that of polygenesis, grew out of the belief that all humans are basically similar in their reactions to life and would inevitably create similar stories to describe their experiences. The existence of so many different versions of a basic tale like Cinderella would seem to support this notion. However, anthropologists quarrel with this theory, because their studies have revealed that human beings differ too widely in their customs and emotional reactions to have such similar responses to specific concepts, such as stepmothers.
Magic tales have also been thought to represent remnants of nature myths (Red Riding Hood and the Wolf are said by some to represent day and night); remnants of religious beliefs and rituals; symbols of emotional fantasy; or the dreams and nightmares of unconscious frustrations of the storytellers.
The most accepted explanation has been offered by social anthropologists, who believe these tales to be the cement of society and the means by which moral codes are communicated from one generation to the next. Their dramatic portrayal of positive and negative behavior, and the proper rewards and punishments that follow, are designed to help bind society together with shared concepts of societal norms and moral yardsticks.
Written Versions of Magic Tales
Written versions of tales began to appear in Europe in the twelfth century, when merchants and crusaders brought the talking beast tales from India in Persian and Arabic translations, to be written down in Latin. The great Celtic manuscripts recorded stories of witchcraft and magic that are thought to date back to 300 B.C.
In the sixteenth century, Canton’s celebrated translations of Aesop’s Fables, the King Arthur legends, and Homeric epics appeared. In seventeenth-century France, Charles Perrault authored a collection of eight famous folk tales, which triggered an interest in folklore collecting that continues today.
The Brothers Grimm
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm spent thirteen years collecting folk tales from the people of Hesse in middle Germany. Their first volume of eighty-six tales, gathered “from the lips of the people” over a five-year period, was called Kinder and Hausmarchen (Young People’s and Household Tales), and was published in Berlin in 1812. This work has sold close to a billion copies in no fewer than 20,000 editions in 50 languages. Into the Woods opened on the 175th anniversary of the publication of Kinder and Hausmarchen. [Editor’s Note: The Grimms’ folk tale collection includes the stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel, and “Little Red Cap.” The only notable absence is the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk, which seems to be English and Australian in origin.]
In collecting the tales, the Brothers were particularly concerned with preserving the contents as related by the people they interviewed. Their first concern was “faithfulness to the truth.” They often wrote their versions of the tales in the dialect of a particular region, so the stories would not lose their flavor. Often, they found several versions of the same story and combined them into one, providing notes explaining the source of the various elements of the tale.
While we observe the presence of many moral lessons in the good and bad characters and strong contrasts between good and evil in the tales, the Grimms stated that “although there is a moral in the stories, that was not their object and if it is there, it easily grows out of them like fruit from a perfect blossom without any help from man.”
These notes, excerpted from Music Theatre International’s Study Guide for Into the Woods, have been edited for length and content.