The fairy tale is one type of textual and literary appropriation of a particular oral storytelling tradition related to the oral wonder tale, often called the «Zaubermärchen» or the «conte merveilleux», which existed throughout Europe in many different forms before the common era and during the Medieval period. For the most part, early literary fairy tales were not intended for children. In fact, they were not intended for most people since most people could not read. The fairy tale was thus marked by the social class of the writers and readers, and since the clerics dominated literary production in Latin up through the late Middle Ages, the «secular» if not hedonistic fairy tale was not fully acceptable in European courts and cities, and it was certainly not an autonomous literary genre. As more and more wonder tales were written down and printed from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries – often in Latin – they constituted the genre of the literary fairy tale that began establishing its own conventions, motifs, topoi, characters, and plots, based to a large extent on those developed in the oral tradition but altered to address new reading publics formed by the aristocracy, clergy, and middle classes. Though slaves, peasants, women, and children were marginalized and excluded in the formation of this literary tradition, their material, voices, style, and beliefs were incorporated into the new genre during this long period of gestation.
So what exactly is the oral wonder tale? This is a question almost impossible to answer because each village and community in Europe and in North America developed various modes of storytelling and different types of tales closely connected to their customs, laws, morals, and beliefs. But Vladimir Propp’s now famous study, ‹The Morphology of the Folk Tale› (1928), can be somewhat helpful here. Using about 600 texts from Aleksandr Aafanasyev’s ‹Russian Folktales› (1855-1863), he outlined 31 basic functions that constitute the formation of a paradigmatic wonder tale, which was and still is common in Russia and shares many properties with wonder tales throughout the world. By functions, Propp meant the fundamental and constant components of a tale that are the acts of a character and necessary for driving the action forward. Consequently, most plots will follow a basic pattern which begins with the protagonist confronted with an interdiction or prohibition which he or she violates in some way. This leads to the banishment of the protagonist or to the assignment of a task related to the interdiction or prohibition. His or her character will be marked by the task that becomes his or her assigned identity and destiny. Afterwards the protagonist will have encounters with all sorts of characters: a deceitful villain; a mysterious individual or creature, who gives the protagonist gifts; three different animals or creatures who are helped by the protagonist and promise to repay him or her; or three different animals or creatures who offer gifts to help the protagonist, who is in trouble. The gifts are often magical agents, which bring about miraculous change. Since the protagonist is now endowed with gifts, he or she is tested or moves on to deal with inimical forces. But then there is a sudden fall in the protagonist’s fortunes that is generally only a temporary setback. A wonder or miracle is needed to reverse the wheel of fortune. The protagonist makes use of endowed gifts (and this includes magical agents and cunning) to achieve his or her goal. Often there are three battles with the villain; three impossible tasks that are miraculously completed; or the breaking of a magic spell through some counter-magical agent. The inimical forces are vanquished. The success of the protagonist usually leads to marriage and wealth. Sometimes simple survival and acquisition of important knowledge based on experience form the ending of the tale.
Propp’s structural approach to the wonder tale, while useful, should be treated with caution because there are innumerable variations in theme and plot types throughout Europe and North America. In fact, the wonder tale is based on a hybrid formation that encompassed the chronicle, myth, legend, anecdote, and other oral forms and constantly changed depending on the circumstances of the teller. If there is one «constant» in the structure and theme of the wonder tale that was always passed on to the literary fairy tale, it is «transformation», to be sure, miraculous transformation. Everybody and everything can be transformed in a wonder tale. In particular there is generally a change in the social status of the protagonists. For the peasants, slaves, and serfs who constituted the majority of the population before and during the Middle Ages, the hope for change was embedded in this kind of narrative, and this hope had nothing to do with a systematic and institutionalized belief system. That is, the tales told by the peasants were secular, and the fortuitous changes and happenings that occur in the tales cannot be predicted or guaranteed.
Rarely do wonder tales end unhappily in the oral tradition. They are information about daily life and wish-fulfillments. They are obviously connected to initiation rites that introduce listeners to the «proper» way to become a member of a particular community. In many ways, one could say that wonder tales serve a function in the civilizing process of all societies. The narrative elements issue from real-life experiences and customs to form a paradigm that facilitates recall for tellers and listeners. The paradigmatic structure enables teller and listeners to recognize, store, remember, and reproduce the stories and to change them to fit their experiences and desires due to the easily identifiable characters who are associated with particular assignments and settings. For instance, many tales concern a simple fellow named Jack, Hans, Pierre, or Ivan who is so naive that he seems as if he will never do well in life. He is often the youngest son, and his brothers and other people take advantage of him or demean him. However, his kindness and naiveté eventually enable him to avoid disasters. By the end of the tale he generally rises in social status and proves himself to be more gifted and astute than he seems. Other recognizable characters in wonder tales include: the Cinderella girl who rises from the ashes to reveal herself to be more beautiful than her stepsisters; the faithful bride; the loyal sister; the vengeful discharged soldier; the boastful tailor; the cunning thief; devious robbers; ferocious ogres; the unjust king; the malicious magician and rebellious pupil; the queen who cannot have a child; the princess who cannot laugh; a flying horse; a talking fish; a magic sack or table; a powerful club; a kind duck; a sly fox; treacherous nixies; a beast-bridegroom. The forests are often enchanted, and the settings change rapidly from the sea to glass and golden mountains. There are mysterious underground realms and caves. Many tales are about the land of milk and honey where everything is turned upside down, and the peasants rule and can eat to their heart’s content. The protagonist moves faster than jet planes on the backs of griffins and eagles or through the use of seven-league boots. Most important are the capes or clothes that make the hero invisible or magic objects that endow him with power to transform himself. In some cases there are musical instruments with enormous captivating forces; swords and clubs capable of conquering anyone or anything; lakes, ponds, and seas that are difficult to cross and serve as the home for supernatural creatures. The characters, settings, and motifs are combined and varied according to specific functions to induce wonder. It is this sense of wondrous change that distinguished the wonder tales from such other oral tales as the chronicle, legend, fable, anecdote, and myth; it is clearly the sense of wondrous change that distinguishes the literary fairy tale from the moral story, novella, sentimental tale, and other modern short literary genres. Wonder causes astonishment, and as marvelous object or phenomenon, it is often regarded as a supernatural occurrence and can be an omen or portent. It gives rise to admiration, fear, awe, and reverence. In the oral wonder tale, listeners are to ponder about the workings of the universe where anything can happen at any time, and these happy or fortuitous events are never to be explained. The tales seek to awaken our regard for the marvelous changing conditions of life and to evoke in a religious sense profound feelings of awe and respect for life as a miraculous process that can be altered and changed to compensate for the lack of power, wealth, and pleasure most people experience. Lack, deprivation, prohibition, and interdiction motivate people to look for signs of fulfillment and emancipation. In the wonder tales, those who are naive and simple are able to succeed because they are untainted and can recognize the wondrous signs. They have retained their belief in the miraculous condition of nature and revere nature in all its aspects. They have not been spoiled by conventionalism, power, or rationalism. In contrast to the humble characters, the villains are those who use their status, weapons, and words intentionally to exploit, control, transfix, incarcerate, and destroy for their benefit. They have no respect or consideration for nature and other human beings, and they actually seek to abuse magic by preventing change and causing everything to be transfixed according to their interests. The wondrous protagonist wants to keep the process of natural change flowing and indicates possibilities for overcoming the obstacles that prevent other characters or creatures from living in a peaceful and pleasurable way.
The focus on wonder in the oral folk tale does not mean that all oral wonder tales, and later the literary fairy tales, served and serve a liberating purpose, though they tend to maintain a utopian spirit. Nor were they subversive, though there are strong hints that the narrators favored the oppressed protagonists.
The sense of wonder in the tale and the intended emotion sought by the narrator is ideological. The oral tales have always played some role in the socialization and acculturation of listeners. Certainly, the narratives were intended to acquaint people with learning experiences so that they would know how to comport themselves or take advantage of unexpected opportunities. The information and knowledge imparted by the oral wonder tales involves a learning process through which protagonist and listener are enriched by encounters with extraordinary characters and situations.
Since these wonder tales have been with us for thousands of years and have undergone so many different changes in the oral tradition, it is difficult to determine clearly what the ideological intention of the narrator was, and if we disregard the narrator’s intention, it is often difficult to reconstruct (or deconstruct) the ideological meaning of a tale, because the textualization of an oral tale adds other historical, social, and ideological factors that need to be taken into consideration. In the last analysis, however, even if we cannot establish whether a wonder tale is ideologically conservative, sexist, progressive, liberating, and so on, it is the celebration of wondrous change and how the protagonist reacts to wondrous occurrences that account for its major appeal. In addition, these tales nurture the imagination with alternative possibilities to life at «home», from which the protagonist is often banished to find his or her «true» home. This pursuit of home accounts for the utopian spirit of the tales, for the miraculous transformation does not only involve the transformation of the protagonist but also the realization of a more ideal setting in which the hero or heroine can fulfill his or her potential. In fairy tales home is always a transformed home opening the way to a different future or destiny than the hero or heroine had anticipated.
Ultimately, the definition of both the wonder tale and the fairy tale, which derives from it, depends on the manner in which a narrator/author arranges known functions of a tale aesthetically and ideologically to induce wonder and then transmits the tale as a whole according to customary usage of a society in a given historical period.