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.