The Brothers Grimm Thread

[Furet]

This forum seems to be missing a thread on these two great men. So I said I'd start one.

Firstly, some context from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm

Now, for people with a serious interest I'd recommend this great book on the brothers' lives:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothers-Gri...1034303&sr=8-4

For an adult version of the tales (mostly translations of the frist edition of Childrens' and Household Tales (1812)), this is the book to get: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Fai...1034422&sr=1-1

For a beautifully illustrated and annotated edition, I'd recommend this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Annotated-Br...1034487&sr=1-1

And for some seriously interesting and readable academic analysis of the tales, this book by Princeton's Maria Tatar is a must: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hard-Facts-G...1034549&sr=1-6

Many of the tales themselves (Maerchen in German) are well known. They were not written by the brothers. Instead, the were recorded by the two men, who listened attentively to the stories as they were told by common people. This was a common exercise in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was widely believed that the 'old ways' were being lost as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions reordered society, remaking the family, ties of kinship, rituals and recreation in the process. Many of the stories are thought to have been told between spinners and weavers in the middle ages, and most have decidedly adult, bawdy and violent themes.

Some random facts:

• Rapunzel let more than her hair down. In the original version, the fairy notices Rapunzel's pregnant stomach and realises that her captive stepdaughter is consorting illicitly with a prince.
• In Hansel and Grettel the "wicked stepmother" was originally a "wicked mother". This did not sit well with the brothers' bourgeois sensibilities. Incidentally, some scholars have posited that this story dates from the Great European Famine of 1315, though this of course cannot be proven.
• In The Frog Prince, as soon as the princess realises the frog is really a prince, she gets into bed with him and they copulate.
• In some versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the protagonist performs a strip tease for the wolf and even urinates on him, in order to distract him.
• Feel free to add more as you come across them!