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I must add the fact that I am currently eating pie off a plate with Snow White and Dopey smiling up at me 
Where to go from here…
I have finally finished the final draft that I will turn in as my research project. While I feel like I have accomplished a lot of reading, writing, and learning, I still think I could keep writing much much more. If I had more time, I would continue to read older versions of fairy tales, and expand upon the symbolism in the stories in order to make more cultural comments. I have presented a fairly thorough history of fairy tales and touched on a few writers and tales, but I feel like this is just the beginning! I recently discovered an intriguing essay writting by Charles Dickens called “Frauds on Fairies” that I found very fascinating. Apparantly, he was an avid supporter of fairy tales in his time. When I discovered this, my interest in the tales went up even more. I will certainly continue to read and write down my discoveries as I continue.
I am pretty satisfied with my conclusion, but more symbolism and cultural comments would definitely help make my paper stronger.
Final Edits and Conclusion
I am pretty happy with my reserch and what I have written. I still need to make a few edits and strengthen my conclusion. The class editing remarks were very helpful. They not only gave me some clear directions, but also assured me that I do have a solid paper to work with.
Since it is the last week of the quarter, my brain is a bit frazzled. I need to find a few more hours to sit down with my paper, read through it several times, and make any final edits necessary. I would really like to add more comics to the paper if I have time. (I’m having trouble downloading another trial version with a different web browser) There is not a whole lot more information to add other than clarifying the conclusion.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project. I honestly feel like I can write any type of paper now that I have learned how to properly do research. I found over 15 resources for this paper and learned how to best take advantage of the library’s amazing resources. I am sure this will help me greatly in my future research. Also, I feel a lot more confident in my ability to write longer papers; this and other papers I have written this quarter has really helped me break out of the “5-paragraph essay” mold. I am not afraid to be a little sloppy when I start writing a paper – I understand now that there is not a cookie-cutter shape for every type of paper. I am hoping that by the end of the week I will have a polished and informative research paper on the history of fairy tales to turn in!
Getting there…
Lately I’ve been spending more time reading than actually writing. I have almost 15 pages of text, but I need to start thinking about what I really want to convey in this paper. I have (as we talked about in class) regurgitated quite a bit of information, and am still reading more and more to learn as much as I can about my topic. However, tying all the pieces together to make it “my own” paper is what I really want to start thinking about. One thing that has helped me do this is relating the sections in my paper to one another. By making my own inferences about why this means that and how this could have influenced that helps put a little bit more “me” into my paper.
This week, I have spent a lot of time reading actualy original fairy tales. After researching their history and development, I now want to read as many of the actual tales as I can and then relate those tales to what I have learned about their origins (hopefully this makes sense). I am finding the tales very interesting and fun to read, especially those that I already know (such as Cinderella) and finding out their original text was much different than what I know. I’ll spend the rest of this week reading tales and interpreting them, as well as doing a bit of biographical research on a few fairy tale writers/collectors.
I feel like it’s finally coming together!
The Snow Queen
Here is a link to my comic strip:
C:\Documents and Settings\Michelle Matthews\My Documents\Michelle\Eng489_AdvComp\The Snow Queen_AndersenforWeb\Launcher.html
Fun Things
After being a bit bogged down with history and culture, I have decided to spend a bit of time actually reading and analyzing some of the fairy tales I want to talk about in my paper. I have narrowed it down to three main writers I want to include in the paper, and I plan on choosing at least 2 works to discuss in detail for each author. The writers are Charles Perrault, The Grimm Brothers, and Hans Christian Andersen. The first story I chose to read was “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen. It was a very fun and intriguing story to read, and definitely brought out some characteristics of the lower class that I have been reading about. I decided it would be fun to make a comic strip about it, and possibly about a few other fairy tales as well. That way I can include tales in my paper without having to basically paraphrase them, which is a rather boring read. The tale itself is always better than the summary! I will spend the next week delving into these three writers and analyzing their works, then I would work on molding the history and these writers into a smoother paper. Lastly, I still plan to do a bit of research on the use of fairy tales today.
Overwhelming
I am now almost 10 pages into my research paper, and surprisingly I have found myself a little befuddled. There are a few things I think I can attribute to my confusion:
1. I am finding it difficult to deviate from my original sources and look to new ones. I feel compelled to read an entire book rather than choosing the most interesting/important parts that will help me write my paper.
2. I have found some dissenting points of view and I’m unsure so far as to how to deal with them.
3. I need a better way to organize my information.
Besides being a little overwhelmed, I am enjoying reading more about my topic and am slowly becoming more and more intrigued. After I feel like I have attacked this “chunk” that I’m working on now, I would really like to try to find some more research on how and why fairy tales are used for children’s education. I have a start to this, but I feel like there is probably a lot more information that I haven’t found yet.
Lots of Reading
Over the past several days I have been working a bit on two separate documents. The first document is fairly unstructured, basic text that I write as I read and find something useful or interesting. Whenever I get a chance during the day, I pick up on of my books and pick up where I left off and just start reading. I find it best that I have no specific intent when first reading, but rather reading just for the sake of enlightening myself about fairy tales. When I come across an interesting point, or note that one author’s opinion severely differs from one that I just read, I write about it. I have been doing this each day for the past 5 days or so, and have generated about 5 pages of information. This information is really only information so far – it still needs organization and rationale. However, I feel that as I learn more about fairy tales and what I want the specific purpose of my paper to be, this will be easier to do.
In addition to my “unorganized madness,” I’ve been keeping another document that is more of a plan, or outline, where I hope my writing and research takes me. It allows me to keep some basic form and clarity of thought in the back of my head while I write sometimes disjointedly about fairy tales while reading in my other document.
I have been learning a lot - there are many diverse opinions about the origin, nature, meaning and construction of fairy tales. So far, I have been writing about the oldest fairy tales and how they came to be. Some believe they originated from the dissemination of other mythical tales, such as the Odyssy, and some believe they contributed to the creation of larger mythical tales. Also, I have come to find a basic structure that most critics seem to agree on regarding the fairy tale, and that they have developed into much shorter, nicer stories today than they once were.
After writing a bit about the history of the fairy tale, I took one specific story, Sleeping Beauty, and compared different versions of it and what they mean and why this happened. Sleeping Beauty is a classic fairy tale and discussed much by the authors whose books I’m reading right now.
I will continue doing this for a while until I find a pattern in my research or some clear way to organize and continue with a more concise purpose.
Initial Research
Today I made a trip to the library to gather my initial research. Books are always the best place to start for me – concrete research I can read through to get an idea of where to start. As I was compiling my bibliography and reading through snippets of the text, I came across ideas and theories I had never thought of before. I discovered that there has recently been much controversy over fairy tales because of their oral nature. Fairy tales were not written until the early 1800s, yet they existed long before this time. I did not stop to think that the stories may have been abridged because of the difficulty in printing at that time in history. Therefore, many details may have been “lost in translation.”
Also, I was unaware of the major differences between stories about “fairyland,” “fairy tales,” and “folk tales.” There are specific qualities that define each genre. Stories about fairyland are generally fantasical in nature, and the stories take place in a world with which humans are not familiar, such as The Hobbit. All of the creatures and the physical landscape of The Hobbit are unfamiliar to human life. Fairy tales, on the other hand, have realistic qualities about them, with the addition of magic happenings, such as in Sleeping Beauty when the prince is able to awake Sleeping Beauty from a 100-year long sleep. Lastly, folk tales differ in the fact that they usually do not have happy endings, and meant to tell something very specific. For instance, Little Red Riding Hood warns children not to stray far from home and not to talk to strangers.
My next step is to narrow my topic even further, and decide which aspects of fairy tales I want to delve into and begin to write about. Right now, my plan is to research more about the specific timeline (as specific as it gets) regarding the origins and development of fairy tales and , how, where, and by whom they were told long ago. After I have a solid definition of a fairy tale and can trace is roots, I would like to examine several specific fairy tales in their original context, and in their context today. Tomorrow I will read more of my books and develop an outline of topics in order to start writing.
Fairy Tales
As I was thinking about honing in on a particular topic to rearch for my project, my head was tossing around different types of reserach I could do involving literature. This quarter I am taking a class called African American Literature. I just read a portion of our anthology about folktales and their origin and meaning. Set apart from African spirituals, rhymes, music, gospels, sermons, etc., folktales present something different altogether in their colorful nature and depth of meaning. After thinking about this for a while, I thought about my own personal “folktales,” or fairy tales I was told as a child.
Fairy tales are also a genre of literature often over-looked as fun, simple, and entertaining for children. However, their origins are anything but fun and simple. I would like to read about how fairy tales developed, how they related specifically to certain periods of time and history, and how/why they are still told today in a slightly different format.
In English classes, we often study the “canon,” the classics – Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Poe, Bronte, Fitzgerald, Hughes, etc. We learn how to read and write essays, analytical papers, poems, and short stories. We learn the proper elements of composition and how to use language correctly and effectively. However, I can’t recall a time in any English class where we read about fairy tales and their impact on society in their historical context.
Many people who know me know that I love Disney movies, fantasical and enchanting stories, and creativity. Fairy tales encase a fantasical, whimsical, and colorful nature, along with an often hidden depth of meaning. I think it would be fascinating to discover this hidden meaning in history and perhaps shed some light on the nature of fairy tales as they exist today.
