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Article: Folk Tales and Fairy Tales
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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FOLK TALES AND FAIRY TALES
FOLK TALES AND FAIRY TALES.
Fairy tales, folk tales, and learned literature have markedly different histories and characteristics.
FAIRY TALES
Fabulous transformations of creatures from one form to another, special numbers (3, 7, 12, 40), speaking animals, and fairy beings have existed as literary motifs since antiquity, as has the theme of a parallel but alternative world inhabited by gods, goddesses, or fairy creatures that impinges on human lives. In the later Middle Ages, individual romances incorporated such elements, as did the early and influential collection,
Gesta Romanorum
(mid-fourteenth century).
In Renaissance Venice, Giovan Francesco ...