Moretti and Fairytales

Nicole Rodriguez

ENGL 391W

Franco Moretti’s Concept of “Temporary Structures”

• In “Graphs, Maps, Trees” Moretti talks about genres as “temporary structures within the historical flow” (Moretti 14).

• He explains temporary structures as “Structures, because they introduce repetition in history, and hence regularity, order, pattern; and temporary, because they’re short” (Moretti 14)

Cycles and Temporary Structures

• Literary history is all about cycles. Stories get recycled into new stories on a constant basis.

• The stories themselves like the genres are in a never ending cycle, they “last in time but only for some time” (Moretti 14) only to be recycled into a new stories with similar but different characters, events, etc.

Grimm Fairytales

• These stories written in 1812 by the Brothers

Grimm (which are quite scary) were eventually taken

over by Disney and made to be more appropriate

for children.

Cinderella (1812)Snow White (1812)Rapunzel (1812)Briar Rose (1812)The Frog Prince (1812)

Disney Classics

• Disney remade the Grimm Tales into stories and

films. The main idea of the stories were kept but the

events and certain characters were changed to make

the stories seem less scary to children.

Cinderella (1950)Snow White (1937)Tangled (2010)Sleeping Beauty (1959)The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Evil in the Fairytales

• The evils in the Grimm fairytales are very obvious.

• Their stories have “gruesome scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in an R-rated movie. The Grimms never even set out to entertain kids. The first edition of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” was scholarly in tone, with many footnotes and no illustrations” (Greenspan).

Evil in Fairytales

• When Disney adapted the stories theses obvious evil events (like the disfigurement of Cinderella’s step-sister’s feet) were removed, but were they only replaces by more subtle evils?

• There is still evil in the Disney versions (like evil step-mothers).

• When you think about the base of the Disney classics they are still quite scary but are masked with catchy sing-along tunes and happy endings.

Conclusion

• In conclusion Franco Morretti’s concept of temporary structures and cycles can be applied to the corpus of Grimm fairytales and Disney classics because they are recycled versions of the other.

• All literature is part of a cycle in which the author recycles the stories of previous authors and adapts them to fit their style.

Work Cited

• Greenspan, Jesse. "The Dark Side of the Grimm Fairy Tales." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 17 Sept. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.

• Moretti, Franco. “Graphs, Maps, Trees Abstract Models for Literary History.” 2007. Print.