Okay, so who's heard the real Red Riding Hood story? It's ridiculous... yet my strange mind finds it slightly amusing

I've seen a few versions of that... one where he's human and kind of Blue Beardish, one where he's a werewolf... I'm sure there are others that escape me right now.

The one I heard is were Red sleeps with the wolf to get it to go away and then it eats her O_o

kinky! But then lots of the older versions were kinky. I point to Many Furs as an example.

Many Furs?

I've also seen it called Donkey Skin... and apparently 'All-Kinds-of-Fur'

It starts off with attempted incest, and then heads to Cinderella-ish territory.

OOoooookay! *runs to read*

---------- Post added 03-22-2014 at 01:09 AM ----------

Sooo, there was still incest in the end >_>

---------- Post added 03-22-2014 at 01:13 AM ----------

EDIT: Woops! My mistake, I didn't realise it was different king

Hahah, wow. I'm also fond of the versions of the stories they wrote for little kids from the point of view of bad guy.
Like this one:

I just read something on tumblr about Grimms fariy tales that kinda blew me away:
Tumbling Melon • deducecanoe: kwowru: thestoutorialist: ...

A huge part of my literature degree involved probing and questioning the context in which works were written; yet in all my years of school and being interested in fairy tales, it never occurred to me to question the Grimms brothers. I've even read about how they editorialized the stories for various purposes, and I still never really questioned their "authority." The idea that they were raging misogynists had never occurred to me, although now that it's been pointed out to me, I don't think I'll ever be able to read their works the same way again.

I really want to read that book the post mentions, "Grimms Bad Girls and Bold Boys" by Ruth Bottingheimer. It's an academic publication from Yale, so I assume it has textual evidence to back the theory, and I really want to know what it is.

What do you guys think? Have you heard anything like this before?

Oooh, Chexala. That is a very interesting post. It fits with everything, but I'm definitely withholding full judgement until I read that book, because I want to see how good her sources are. Although I'm a bit of a disadvantage there, but I figure judging them in the same way that I do peer reviewed science articles should suffice.

Yeah, I also want to withhold full judgement until I read that book.
If she's just reading into the life and times of the Grimms brothers, that would be kinda meh. On the other hand, if she has actual pre-Grimms textual sources, that would be enough for me. Literary critique is a murky field though!

I can imagine that. Science is a LOT easier to verify sources. Everything is reproducible and documented. There isn't a whole hell of a lot else that is like that.

Yeah, I really appreciate that about the scientific method.
Some of the best literature courses I had in college were ones where we were somewhat more scientific in our approach; that is, when we had to make arguments based on textual or historical facts, not just our own opinions. I mean, you always have to use textual facts, otherwise what the hell are you doing, but when we had to bring in historical facts too, that's when things got more interesting.

To be honest, those are the only times when history interests me: when it combines with other subjects that are more relevant to my interests. But yeah, literature can be so hard, because there is an awful lot of opinion.

Buuut it's time for me to go to bed now! Have a good night!

Yeah, I love it when multiple subjects cross over and intersect with each other. The boundaries between academic disciplines are mostly arbitrary anyway. (Is totally a grad of an "interdisciplinary liberal arts college.")

Sleep well, steel. :)

That book does sound fascinating. o.o It sounds like it approaches from the historiography standpoint-- that's the 'history of history', where you're supposed to try and look at things through the lens of the original author and figure out what's reporting and what's bias. It's really interesting, because the concept of recording events as they happened, without any other agenda, is relatively new... and rarely successful/possible even now.

... or maybe I'm just a nerd.

It's okay, Wyrm, we're all nerds here. Haha. That is pretty cool, and ridiculously hard to do, I'm sure.

That article just changed my perspective... forever

It is hard... but it's kind of fun, too. My preferred era of history is late Roman empire to early middle ages, and there's a ton of fascinating historiography going on there. Anybody who was writing had some kind of agenda-- or multiple agendas. Procopius is a great example of that... he has several books about how awesome Emperor Justinian was-- the guy who signed his paycheck. But then there's the Secret History, which is pretty much a disgruntled employee venting his bile about his employer. And there are so few other sources that it's hard to tell which account, if either, is accurate.

*looks around, confused. Steps away from the podium that suddenly appeared when she started lecturing*

SZP's mind is blown!

Ewwww... *scrapes mind-bits off her face*

Originally Posted by Wyrmskyld

It is hard... but it's kind of fun, too. My preferred era of history is late Roman empire to early middle ages, and there's a ton of fascinating historiography going on there. Anybody who was writing had some kind of agenda-- or multiple agendas. Procopius is a great example of that... he has several books about how awesome Emperor Justinian was-- the guy who signed his paycheck. But then there's the Secret History, which is pretty much a disgruntled employee venting his bile about his employer. And there are so few other sources that it's hard to tell which account, if either, is accurate.

*looks around, confused. Steps away from the podium that suddenly appeared when she started lecturing*

Oh gosh, yes. The Romans were notorious for paying historians to write about how awesome the they were. And the comedies were used to make fun of enemies.

*attempts to gather up pieces*
*wipes Wyrm's face*

I love those old translated stories like Gilgamesh. Even a few of the religious stories are nice and easy to read.

I'll find the source for it, but Grimm brothers were not only a.) not the originators of these tales and b.) were fanatically religious and altered the stories to that they were heinously abusive to women. I was a little horrified when I read about how they altered the stories to be more abusive and dark; talk about the women in refrigerators syndrome, right?

One of my favourite stories of all time is HCA's The Little Mermaid. Alongside the story of Medusa, it's one of the most beautiful and tragic stories that I can recall.

Oh gosh, I loooove Medusa. Greek mythology is wonderful!