%0 Journal Article
%T Fairy Grandmothers: Images of Storytelling Events in Nineteenth-Century Germany Fairy Grandmothers: Images of Storytelling Events in Nineteenth-Century Germany
%A Willem de Bl¨¦court
%J Revue Electronique de Litterature Francaise : RELIEF
%D 2010
%I Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals
%X Typical nineteenth©\century German images of elderly female storytellers capture them in the act of relating M rchen to young children. When these images reached a mass public, they reinforced the idea of a timeless female oral tradition. As researchers of oral tales hardly ever recorded any actual female storytellers, the images belonged for the most part to a romantic myth of Germany s past. Towards the end of the century, artists started to produce more realistic paintings of female storytellers. This coincided with the growing popularity of fairy©\tale books which were indeed mostly read to children by women. Typical nineteenth©\century German images of elderly female storytellers capture them in the act of relating M rchen to young children. When these images reached a mass public, they reinforced the idea of a timeless female oral tradition. As researchers of oral tales hardly ever recorded any actual female storytellers, the images belonged for the most part to a romantic myth of Germany s past. Towards the end of the century, artists started to produce more realistic paintings of female storytellers. This coincided with the growing popularity of fairy©\tale books which were indeed mostly read to children by women.
%K fairy tales
%K narrators
%K images
%K Germany
%K nineteenth century
%U http://www.revue-relief.org/index.php/relief/article/view/544