In interviews and readings on BBC3, writers including Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, John Agard, Michael Morpugo and Carol Ann Duffy explain how they fell under the spell of the German masters of the fairytale
The stories of the Brothers Grimm have been read at bedsides and seen in cinemas all over the world. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are still vivid characters today, but their popularity began 200 years ago.
Radio 3 will this week celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Grimm's Fairy Tales with a series of interviews and readings by some of Britain's greatest writers. They include poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Michael Morpurgo, the author of War Horse, John Agard, the poet and playwright, Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, and the writer of comic fantasy stories, Sir Terry Pratchett.
In 1812 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published Children's and Household Tales in the German region of Westphalia and its influence slowly spread all over the world. The Grimms' book, which they updated in their lifetime, is the second bestselling book in the German language after the Bible.
While many in Britain will have first experienced the tales in Ladybird Books, others will have seen some of the Walt Disney films that brought the stories into the televisual era of the 20th century.
The Brothers Grimm harvested their tales from friends and old books. Many of the tales date back thousands of years and have variations in other languages and cultures. The Grimms later published collections of Irish and Scandinavian folk tales.
The writers on the Radio 3 shows offer their own interpretations of the tales. Terry Pratchett said his work was heavily influenced by the Grimms and his story, The Amazing Morris and his Educated Rodents, is a retelling of their Pied Piper of Hamelin. "They [Grimms' tales] hang in the ether. We probably first met them at school," he said. Because of this he used the tales extensively in his work; "knowing that we all know the fairy tales means that someone like me can play a lot of tunes with them knowing that I don't have to explain an awful lot to people".
Most adaptations of the stories make them less sexual and violent. In the Grimms' original, Snow White's stepmother dies as she is forced to dance in red-hot metal shoes at Snow White's wedding. Rapunzel's long hair is used to bring up a prince to her tower cell for a sexual liaison which leads to pregnancy. The Frog Prince is not kissed by the princess but thrown against the wall in anger by her.
Philip Pullman is about to publish his own collection of some of the Grimms' fairy tales.
"My main aim was to take some of the stories I have read and loved enormously and tell them as if I was telling them to an audience, to take the stories and put them into my own voice," he said. "So I took 50 or so and marinaded them and told them as well as I could."
The interviews and the readings will be broadcast daily at 5.30pm as part of Radio 3's In Tune
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/02/brothers-grimm-fairytales-bicentenary-bbc3
No comments:
Post a Comment