Louisiana
Tech University
The
Future of Storytelling
John
C. Thompson
Fairy
Tales, English 575
Ernest
p. Rufleth, Ph.D.
May
15, 2017
Humans
are storytellers; it is in our very nature to tell stories that entertain,
educate, glorify our ancestors, warn, or simply explain the world in which we
live. Mankind looks to stories about how the Earth was created and how the
world will end. We look to stories to inspire us and to calm us. We all have
stories that we love to tell, and we all have stories that we would prefer to
never see the light of day. We are all story tellers.
The method of storytelling has changed dramatically over
the centuries. Stories were once told around evening fires and in village
centers through what is now known as the “oral tradition” before someone
developed a system of writing that would allow stories to be chiseled into clay
tablets. Eventually, our system of writing evolved into what we know today:
bookstores with rows and rows of shelves lined with hard-cover and paperback
books, virtual bookstores where consumers can find even the most obscure books,
and digital platforms that can house an entire library’s worth of information
on a device that can fit into a purse of backpack. Everyone has a voice, and
every voice has a platform.
Considering the sheer number of new books that are
published each year, where do the old stories fit? Is there a place for the
Brothers Grimm? Is there a place for Mother Goose? Should these stories be
replaced with new versions that are more current? More relevant? This paper
will examine the ways that people consume stories, the cultural impact that
those stories can have, and the argument is made in favor of perhaps
reinvigorating an old form of storytelling.
The
Structure of Story
Certain aspects remain constant within the world of
storytelling regardless of the story being told, and understanding the
structure that remains relatively constant among stories may be helpful. In the
article entitles “Fairy Tale Characters in Shrek:
Subversion and new Canon,” the authors lay out seven fundamental roles found in
most fairy tales. These seven roles were developed by Vladimir Propp who
reached his conclusions after analyzing 100 fairy tales. The seven roles are as
follows:
“1. The hero: He/She may
be the victim of the circumstances or the plot of the tale. . . in most of the traditional fairy tales the
role of the hero is played by a single male searching for adventure or fighting
the changes which have affected his early status of peace and wealth. This
character is frequently helped by a donor or magical helper.
“2. The donor: His/her
role consists on helping the hero through his quest by supporting his decisions
and following him throughout the story or by granting the hero with some kind
of power, a magical token which will allow the main character’s final success
and the achievement of a happy ending.
“3. The villain: The
hero’s success cannot exist without him having to prove his value by fighting
the villain. This character changes the hero’s situation of comfort and
happiness and lacks any virtues.
“4. The dispatcher: Often
sent by the villain. This character is in charge of sending the hero out of his
happy world and makes the villain known as well as his evil intentions.
“5. The princess: She is
the prize, the award deserved by the hero. If he is brave enough to fight the
villain and win, she will be the end of the hero’s journey since he will have
power, wealth and love in return for his services.
“6. The king or the
princess’ father: In some tales he gives the hero the task of saving the
kingdom from the villain. He sometimes identifies the false hero and often
gives her daughter’s hand to the hero as a way of payment for his resolution of
the evil attempts carried out by the villain.
“7. The false hero: This
character is not always included in every tale. The false hero tries to take
credit for the hero’s actions and sometimes even tries to marry the princess.
It is the king or the princess who discovers the false hero’s real intentions”
(Gonzalez, Cristina, Garcia).
Early
Storytelling
People were telling stories long before the advent of the
printing press in the fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg, and, even after
that, the majority of the population were illiterate with the exception of the
clergy and the social elite, so oral storytelling remained a constant for many
generations. Researchers have long since sought to understand the origins of
many of the stories that are familiar to us now through a variety of methods of
research and categorization. One such method of categorization is the
Aarne-Uther-Thompson method. Jamshid J. Tehrani refers to the ATU index as “the
most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work in the field.” The ATU index
identifies over two thousand international story types across three hundred
cultures worldwide. This catalogue, essentially, acts as an organized
repository of stories that allows scholars to better conduct their research in
more efficient ways (Tehrani).
The
study of the oral tradition of storytelling has undergone something of a shift
in recent years. Tehrani has created a new way to attribute stories to
different cultural groups by applying phylogenetic methods that were developed
to study species evolution to story plots and character types in the hope of
discovering the origins of “Little Red Riding Hood” for his paper, “The
Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.”
Tehrani writes that one discovery that came from the
publication of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s book entitled Children’s and Household Tales was the many recurrences of many
plot points from stories that were told by different societal groups that were
geographically separated by long distances. The publishing of Children’s and Household Tales prompted
researchers to follow the Grimm’s research model and went out into villages and
households to record stories of their own, and that was when plot traits from
the Slavonic, Indian, Persian, and Arab traditions began to turn up.
Researchers have used the evidence of prolific plots to study migratory
patterns and other elements of earlier human existence (Tehrani).
One issue that can arise from the use of the ATU index is
that not all scholars can agree on what category a story should be placed. Tehrani
points to the example of “The Tiger Grandmother” as a version of “Little Red
Riding Hood”, known within the index as ATU-333, that was told in Asian
cultures. The story tells about siblings that must share a bed with a tiger or
some other monstrous being that poses their grandmother. The tiger eats one of
the siblings, and the other siblings trick the tiger to let them go outside to
relieve themselves and manage to escape. Many scholars believe that this story
parallels “Little Red Riding Hood.” The story has been traced back to the Asian
regions that make up modern day Japan, China, and Korea along with other
sections of east Asia. If this were true, the discovery of an Asian story that
parallels a well-known European story could have interesting implications.
However,
it is also pointed out that this story is more similar to another story known
as ATU 123, “The Wolf and the Kids”, which was popular in Europe and the Middle
East. The plot of “The Wolf and the Kids” is very similar to “The Tiger
Grandmother,” but the stories differ because in “The Wolf and the Kids” a nanny
goat warns the kids not open their cottage door while the nanny goat is working
in the fields. A wolf overhears this and tricks the children into thinking the
nanny goat had returned. The wolf enters the cottage and devours all of the
kids (Tehrani).
Tehrani’s paper outlines two distinct differences between
ATU 123 and ATU 333 even though the two tales are considered to be closely
related. The first difference accounts for the victim. ATU 333 has only one
victim, a human girl. ATU 123 features a group of victims. Second, ATU 333’s
victim is attacked away from home while the victims in ATU 123 are attached in
their own home. Tehrani points out that the two story types overlap because a
story that originated in Africa and is found the in ATU 333 group actually has
the victim being attached in her own home. Victim’s initial encounters with the
villain are also found to overlap as well with ATU 123 stories placing the
victim in the woods in a similar vein as ATU 333 (Tehrani).
Critics of the ATU indexing system say that folktales are
too fluid to be categorized the way the ATU index requires. Tehrani employed
three methods of phylogenetic reconstruction that proved to be relatively
consistent, and he used “Little Red Riding Hood” as his subject despite the
substantial blending of cultural versions that exist. Through his work, Tehrani
found that ATU 123 and 333 are distinctly different tales with two distinct
lineages proving that stories are as complex as the cultures that create them
(Tehrani).
Modern
Approaches
It is no secret that modern consumers have no shortage of
media from which they can consume their entertainment of choice in the form of
digital media, movies, and television, and the technology is ever-changing.. In
the article “Storytelling in Contemporary Fairytales,” Elena Massi writes that
her analysis of Little Lit demonstrates
the importance of the use of a narrator in both the traditional oral delivery
and more modern modes of storytelling such as movies, games, comics, and
television (Massi).
Massi writes of the role of narrator: “The representation
of storytelling in fairy tales endures regardless of the transformation of
fairy tales across media and time. Throughout the course of history, the figure
of the narrator has evoked storytelling according to internationally
recognizable topoi that bridge literature and folklore; at the same time, we
find different types of narrator characters.” She goes on to say that
throughout the history of the fairytale, different storytellers use the
narrator character in several different ways such as using a narrator as a tool
for organization and other writers like Hans Christian Anderson who gave the
roll of narrator to the protagonist of the story (Massi).
The point of Massi’s paper is that the situations that
story tellers create are often linked to to topics that are current. She uses
the example of Favole al telefono (Fairy
Tales over the Telephone by Gianni Rodari). In Fairy Tales over the Telephone, Rodari examines what storytelling
is like when parents have little time for their children (Massi). The
simplicity of the idea is astounding because it is relevant to modern readers
and the listeners. The world today is driven by people’s “busyness,” and that
busyness is often to the detriment of children. So, what happens when parents
work so late that they miss their children’s bedtime? Fairytales or bedtime
stories are called in and the children listen to them over the telephone. The
concept of Rodari’s book paints quite a depressing picture.
To further the conversation of relevance, another
interesting thought is the place of aged character stereotypes in modern folk
and fairytales. Modern storytellers are faced with the dilemma of reverting
back to tried-and-tested character models or developing something new that
might not be as accepted as what has been constantly recycled. The reason for
this is almost certainly nostalgic, at least to a degree. Parents want to
revisit the old tales that they grew up hearing and reading for themselves,
but, on the other hand, parents may not feel that old favorites are relevant to
the problems faced by readers today, or, at the very least, old stories may not
be able to capture a child’s attention like it once could.
One example of adapting a story to fit a contemporary
mold is “The Werewolf” by Angela Carter. The story is Carter’s adaptation of
“Little Red Riding Hood.” The parallels between Carter’s story and those
written by Charles Perrault in the seventeenth century and Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm in the early nineteenth century are apparent, but Carter’s story runs far
afield of the more traditional versions. For example, Carter’s villain (the
wolf) and the grandmother character are the same while in Perrault’s and the
Grimms’ versions the wolf and grandmother are separate characters with
fundamentally different functions within the narrative. In “The Werewolf” the
female character, who is never given a name, only called “the child” or “the
good child” is accosted by a wolf in the woods and she defends herself by
cutting off the wolf’s paw with her father’s knife. She finally reaches her
grandmother’s home only to find the old woman in the bed with a fever. The paw
that the girl had cut off the wolf and carried with her to her grandmother’s
house has inexplicably turned into human hand, and the girl recognizes it as
her grandmother’s hand. The girl’s reaction to this revelation attracts the
attention of some nearby villagers who come, and, recognizing the old woman as a
witch, beat her to death outside of her home.
As interesting as Carter’s interpretation of the original
story is, the most telling difference between her story and others is the
difference between her environment and the environment created by Perrault and
the Grimm brothers. Take Perrault’s setting for example: “She had a good time
gathering nuts, chasing butterflies, and picking bunches of flowers that she
found” (Perrault).
The Grimms created a similar setting for the character in
“Little Red Cap,” and the wolf is actually allowed to describe the setting for
them by saying: “Little Red Cap, have you seen the beautiful flowers all about?
Why don’t you look around for a while? I don’t think you’ve even noticed how
sweetly the birds are singing. You are walking along as if you were on the way
to school, and yet it’s so heavenly out here in the woods” (Grimm).
The wolf’s words are used against the girl, and this is
made evident when the Grimms describe an eye-opening experience for the girl,
writing further: “Little Red Cap opened her eyes wide and saw how the sunbeams
were dancing this way and that through the trees and how there were beautiful
flowers all about” (Grimm).
In both cases, Perrault and the Grimms are using a sunny
and whimsical environment to act as harbingers of danger. Keep in mind that
contemporary readers already know how both stories end, but Perrault was the
first person to write the story and publish it. Early readers of Perrault’s
version, and the Grimms’ to a lesser extent, could probably guess what was
going to happen based on both versions of the story making some sort of
reference to the wolf’s desire to eat the girl while she is in the woods. So,
Perrault and the Grimms have almost lured readers into the story with a false sense
of peace and tranquility.
Not so with “The Werewolf.” Angela Carter’s story starts
out in abject darkness in which she describes the countryside and the people
that inhabit it: “It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have
cold hearts.” Carter goes on to reference witches, vampires, and the devil, all
dark entities of other folkloric traditions.
The modern relevance found in Carter’s story can be found
in the mother’s commands of the girl. The girl is being sent to her
grandmother’s house with oatcakes and a pot of butter. She takes the path
through the forest and does as her mother says. She stays on the path because
wild animals that are hungry due to the winter’s cold and lack of food are
prowling. Then the most poignant line in the story: “Here, take your father’s
hunting knife; you know how to use it” (Carter). In fact, Carter’s character
rebuffs Vladimir Propp’s first rule of storytelling where the main character is
usually male and is looking for adventure. The girl in Carter’s story is not
looking for adventure; she is merely trying to survive.
Academics and Carter’s fans have considered much of her
work to be of a feminist nature, but Anemona Alb views “The Werewolf” in
particular as a story that strengthens young women and empowers young women to fend
for themselves. Alb supports her argument by pointing out that the girl and the
wolf swap roles. The girl, who plays the traditional victim in the story, is
switched with the wolf who traditionally plays the oppressor (Carter). By
switching the character’s roles and putting the girl in a position of power,
Carter has given the girl more strength than either Perrault’s or the Grimms’
characters.
The innocence that is found in Perrault’s story, as well
as that of the Grimms, creates a character in the girl that is ignorant of the
dangers that surround her in the woods and make her susceptible to the advances
of a wolf that is portrayed as a male wolf in both stories. In Perrault’s
version, Red Riding Hood is not even given the benefit of a warning before she
leaves for her grandmother’s house. Perrault simply dedicates a few words to
the love that her grandmother had for her and briefly explains the origin of
the ubiquitous red riding hood that the girl wore.
On the other hand, the Grimms send the girl into the
woods with warning not to stray from the path, but the concern is not for her
safety but for the safety of the wine bottle. “Otherwise you’ll fall and break
the glass, and then there will be nothing left for grandmother.” The Grimms
also make mention of the love that the grandmother had for her granddaughter
(Grimm). In the end of both versions of the story, the girl is made a victim.
In Perrault’s version, the girl is eaten by the wolf and the story ends; the
Grimms’ version of the story had the girl and her grandmother eaten, but they
were saved by a man.
“The Werewolf” does not show readers a girl that is
ignorant of the dangers that surround her. Compared to Red Riding Hood and
Little Red Cap, the girl in Carter’s story is ultra-aware of the dangers that
surrounded her everyday life. Nor does Carter show as much love to the
character like Perrault and the Grimms. The very person who loved Little Red
Riding Hood and Little Red Cap, Grandma, is the source of the evil in Carter’s
tale. Carter does not provide readers any character backstory, so readers are
left to assume whether or not the girl and her grandmother had any kind of
positive relationship, thought they likely did. But, judging by the girl’s
actions at the end of the story, it could be safely assumed that the girl and
her grandmother were not terribly close.
What makes Carter’s character special is how Carter
empowers the girl to protect herself throughout the story and how Carter gives
the girl the gift of prosperity in the end. The girl receiving the knife from
her mother, and her mother’s lines, “you know how to use it” shows the reader
immediately that the girl is not a helpless and hapless character that is
walking into the dark woods. Alb writes that by possessing the knife along with
the assumption that she knows how to use it, the girl is taking on the role of
the male savior-type character. In essence, she becomes her own rescuer (Alb).
What works against the idea that the girl can take care
of herself is the appearance of the villagers after the girl finds her
grandmother in the bed. The girl is able to wrestle with her grandmother upon
the old woman’s waking, but the commotion caused by the struggle attracts
villagers that stone the old woman to death. Considering the power that Carter
gave her character in the beginning of the story, it is unlikely that she would
take it away at the end. More likely, Carter avoided a matricide plot point by
allowing the villagers to enter the story and finish if rather than the girl
doing it herself. Had that been allowed to happen, the girl would have been
considered a killer in her own right, no better than the wolf.
A
Case for Modern Oral Storytelling
In 1988, Germaine Dietsch began a pilot program with the
Denver Public Schools that allowed volunteers that had retired from the
workforce to come into the schools and tell stories to the school children. Ms.
Dietsch had one specific reason for founding the program that would later
become known as Spellbinders; she was concerned that seniors were becoming
disconnected from their communities upon their retirement. Seniors were moving
out of their neighborhoods and into retirement communities or nursing homes,
and Ms. Dietsch wanted to find a way to keep those seniors involved in their
communities and to keep them creatively active. Her hope was that by participating
in the program, seniors would be able to maintain a certain quality of life
that might have been lost otherwise.
Ultimately, the children loved their storytellers and the
seniors telling the stories loved the kids. Charles Thompson is a volunteer of
the Grand Junction, Colorado chapter of Spellbinders, and he further explained
how the volunteers prepare for a storytelling session and why he chose to
become a volunteer.
Spellbinder volunteers are cautioned not to tell personal
stories because what may seem like a good or funny story to the volunteers and
their families might not be relatable to the kids. Instead, the volunteers
spend several hours, or in some cases, consecutive days, in their local
libraries. They read stories upon stories and memorize them because
Spellbinders is strictly an oral storytelling group. They do not read to the
kids, they tell the stories from memory, and, as Charles put it, “Some of these
stories can take some pretty interesting and unexpected turns” (Thompson).
Charles, like many of the participants, volunteers
because it gives him an opportunity to work with kids and to be a positive influence
to children that may not otherwise have one. His other reasons are more
personal. He put it this way:
“Not
all kids grow up with someone to tell them stories. Not all kids grow up with a
caring adult around at all. By doing this, I might be able to help get a kid’s
mind off of what’s bothering him for a little while. It might make his day a
little brighter’ (Thompson).
Authors Rebecca Isbell, Joseph Sobol, Liane Lindauer, and
April Lawrence argue that a child’s formative years are the best time to enrich
his or her language, and an effective tool for that job is storytelling. The
authors state that children often have very complex vocabularies by the ages of
four and five and can often comprehend more than they can verbalize. The
storytelling sessions that the authors reference in the paper did not allow
children to memorize stories. Rather, storytelling sessions produce stories
that are spontaneous and energetic and allow children to devise alternate
endings to the stories that are being told and to join in on repetitive phrases
that may be found in the story. The sessions were described as two-way
communication and co-creative in nature. In other words, storytelling sessions
allow children to tap into their creative tendencies to help create, or at the
very least participate in, the telling of a story (Isbell, Sobol, et al).
Conclusion
Print is dead. At least that is the adage of those that
produce digital content and the platforms on which people read it. Print is not
likely to go anywhere anytime soon because, as long as enough people want
printed material, and the production of printed material remains profitable,
companies will continue to produce it. Realistically, the move to digital
storytelling platforms is simply the next step in the evolution of the story.
Make no mistake, curling up with an iPad or Kendal for an evening of reading is
not as easy to romanticize as doing the same with a book, but digital readers
do take up less space and hold an entire room’s worth of books.
The real tragedy of the printed story is the loss of the
spoken one. Research shows that hearing stories being told and telling stories
is an excellent tool that can be used to build a child’s vocabulary,
creativity, and confidence, and those skills learned by this generation can be
passed down to the next one in the same way. The positive mental and spiritual
effects that telling stories can have on seniors are numerous. Storytelling
keeps them mentally active and sharp and can lead to a better quality of life
in their later years, and storytelling provides them the opportunity to be the
bright spot in a child’s day.
Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf” is a full departure from
Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s
“Little Red Cap,” but Carter proved that old plots and characters can be
recharged and made to say something relevant to today’s young readers and
listeners. No longer are girls relegated to being cautious and prim. Carter,
and others like her, have said to young girls, and possibly some older women,
that it is okay to take care of and defend yourself, and that is what stories
should do. Ultimately, stories should strengthen the reader, regardless of
gender.
Works
Cited
Alb,
Anemona. “Polymorphous Creatures and Hybridized Texts: Fairy-Tale Stereotypes
Revisited in the Postmodern Vein.” Scientific Journal of the Humanities. 2.2
(2010)
123-127. Print
Carter, Angela. The
Bloody Chamber. New York: Penguin Books 1979. Print.
Gonzalez,
Lopez; Oya, Rebeca Cristina; Garcia, Elisabet. “Fairy Tale Characters in Shrek:
Subversion and New Canon.” Via Panoramica. 3.4 (2015) 85-102.
Print.
Grimm,
Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm. “Little Red Cap.” The
Classic Fairy Tales, 2nd Edition.
ed. Maria Tatar. New York: WW Norton
& Company, 2017. 18-21. Print.
Isbell,
Rebecca; Sobol, Joseph; Lindauer, Liane; Lowrance, April. “The Effects of
Storytelling
and Story Reading on Oral Language
Complexity and Story Comprehension of Young
Children.” Early Childhood Education Journal. 32.3 (2004) 157-163. Print.
Massi,
Elena. “Storytelling in Contemporary Fairy Tales.” Marvels and Tales. 30.2 (2016)
309-327. Print.
Perrault,
Charles. “Little Red Riding Hood.” The
Classic Fairy Tales, 2nd Edition. Ed. Maria
Tatar. New York: WW Norton &
Company, 2017. 16-18. Print.
Tehrani,
Jamshid J. “The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.” PLoS ONE. 8.11 (2013)
1-11. Print.
Thompson,
Charles. Telephone Interview. 12 May 2017.
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