Week 2 (Feb 4-8)

    A story is a description of events experienced by real or imaginary people for the purpose of entertainment. Because there are so many stories being created everyday, via oral speech and written literature, there has been categorical labels created to group these stories based on similarities, which we call genres. This blog will focus largely on two genres- folk tales and fairy tales.

A folk tale, or märchen, is a genre of stories passed through by oral tradition and usually has a heavier emphasis on cultural. In class, we discussed how folk tales have a universal and timeless theme that focuses on explaining how the world works, which is why they usually have a simple layout of events. This simplicity also helps people memorize the story so that it can be retold again. Since these stories can be retold several times, they are considered public stories where anybody could reproduce, or edit without any legal punishment because essentially they don't belong to anyone.

On the other hand, a fairy tale, or Zaubermärchen, is a subgenre within folk tales so it includes most of the characteristics of folk tales but the difference between the two is that fairy tales include an added element of or enchantment to them. Since these stories are written, they are given the ability to have much more complex storylines and characters and often have specific and fixed settings. Another major difference is that fairy tales are actually written by someone and therefore, has ownership and copyright. (250)