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This is the sandbox page for my suggested edits to the Sleeping Beauty article.

Sleeping Beauty, by Henry Meynell Rheam

Sleeping Beauty (French: La Belle au bois dormant), or Little Briar Rose (German: Dornröschen), also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a classic fairy tale which involves a beautiful princess, a sleeping enchantment, and a handsome prince. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales system classifies Sleeping Beauty as being a 410 tale type, meaning it includes a princess who is forced into an enchanted sleep and is later awakened by a prince breaking the magic placed upon her.[1] The earliest known version of the story is found in the narrative Perceforest, composed between 1330 and 1344. The tale was first published by Giambattista Basile in his collection of tales titled The Pentamerone (published posthumously in 1634).[2] Basile's version was later adapted and printed by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. The version that was later collected and published by the Brothers Grimm was an orally transmitted version of the literary tale published by Perrault.[3] The story has been adapted many times throughout history and has continued to be retold by modern storytellers throughout various mediums.

Plot

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Sleeping Beauty is shown a spindle by the old woman. Sleeping Beauty, by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)

The folktale begins with a princess whose parents are told that their daughter will die when she pricks her finger on a particular item. In Basile's version, the princess pricks her finger on a piece of flax. In Perrualt's and the Grimm Brothers' versions, the item is a spindle. The parents rid the kingdom of these items in the hopes of protecting their daughter, but the prophecy is fulfilled regardless. Instead of dying, as was foretold, the princess falls into a deep, magical sleep. After some time, she is found by a prince and the princess is awakened.

According to Maria Tatar, there are versions of the story that include a second part to the narrative detailing the couple's troubles after their union and some folklorists believe the two parts were originally separate tales.[4]

The second part begins after the prince and princess have had children. Through the course of the tale, the princess and her children are introduced in some way to another woman from the prince’s life. This other woman is not fond of the prince’s new family, and calls a cook to kill the children and serve them for dinner. Instead of obeying, the cook hides the children and serves livestock instead. Next, the other woman orders the cook to kill the princess. Before this can happen, the other woman’s true nature is revealed to the prince and the she is subjected to the very death that she had planned for the princess. The princess, prince, and their children live happily ever after.[5]

Origination

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Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (published in 1528). In this tale, a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her and impregnates her in her sleep; when their child is born, the child draws from her finger the flax that caused her to sleep. She realizes from the ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus later returns to marry her.[6]

The second part of the Sleeping Beauty tale, in which the princess and her children are almost put to death but instead are hidden, may have been influenced by Genevieve of Brabant.[7] Even earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions. Following these early renditions, the tale was first published by Italian poet Giambattista Basile who lived from 1575-1632.

Variants

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Basile's version

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In Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping beauty, Talia, falls into a deep sleep after getting a splinter of flax in her finger. When she is discovered in her castle by a wandering king, he "...gathers the first fruits of love."[8] and leaves her there where she later gives birth to a set of twins. Talia awakens from her sleep when one of her twins sucks out the flax that was stuck in her finger. The king later returns and, finding Talia awake, promises Talia that he will return again to take her to his kingdom.

Basile’s variation of the tale includes the tale’s second part which depicts the couple’s struggles after their meeting. In his version, the king’s wife is the one who seeks to harm Talia and her children by attempting to have the cook serve them and feed them to the king.

An older image of the sleeping princess: Brünnhilde, surrounded by magical fire rather than roses (illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner's Die Walküre)

Perrault's version

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Perrault’s adaptation also includes part one and part two of the tale, though, according to folklore editors Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek, Perrault’s tale is a much more subtle and pared down version than Basile’s story in terms of the more immoral details. An example of this is depicted in Perrault’s tale by the prince’s choice to instigate no physical interaction with the sleeping princess when the prince discovers her.[9]

In Perrault’s tale, an upset fairy places a curse on the princess that says she will die when she pricks her finger on a spindle. The curse is changed at the last minute and she simply falls into a deep sleep. The curse comes to an end at the same time as she is discovered by a prince, and the two are wed.

Part two of Perrault’s version introduces the prince’s mother, an ogress, who desires to eat the princess and her children. She does not succeed due to the intervention of the cook she hired, and is instead punished for her actions. [10]

Grimm Brothers' version

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The Brothers Grimm included a variant of Sleeping Beauty, Little Briar Rose, in their collection (1812).[11] Their version ends when the prince arrives to wake Sleeping Beauty and does not include the part two as found in Basile's and Perrault's versions.[12] The brothers considered rejecting the story on the grounds that it was derived from Perrault's version, but the presence of the Brynhild tale convinced them to include it as an authentically German tale. Their decision was odd on one point because in none of the Teutonic myths, meaning the Poetic and Prose Eddas or Volsunga Saga, are their sleepers awakened with a kiss, a fact Jacob Grimm would have known, since he wrote an encyclopedic volume on German mythology. It is the only known German variant of the tale, and Perrault's influence is almost certain.[13]

The Brothers Grimm also included, in the first edition of their tales, a fragmentary fairy tale, "The Evil Mother-in law". This story begins with the heroine, a married mother of two children, and her mother-in-law attempting to eat her and the children. The heroine suggests an animal be substituted for the children in the dish, and the story ends with the heroine's worry that she cannot keep her children from crying and getting the mother-in-law’s attention. Like many German tales showing French influence, it appeared in no subsequent edition.[14]

Other early variations

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Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), illustration by Gustave Doré

The princess's name has varied from one adaptation to the other. In Sun, Moon, and Talia, she is named Talia (Sun and Moon being her twin children). She has no name in Perrault's story, but her daughter is called "Aurore". The Brothers Grimm named her "Briar Rose" in their 1812 collection.[11] However, some translations of the Grimms' tale give the princess the name "Rosamond". Tchaikovsky's ballet and Disney's version named her Princess Aurora; however, in the Disney version, she is also called "Briar Rose" in her childhood, when she is being raised incognito by the good fairies.[15] John Stejean named her "Rosebud" in TeleStory Presents.

Besides Sun, Moon, and Talia, Basile included another variant of this Aarne-Thompson type in his book, The Pentamerone, called The Young Slave. The Grimm's collection also included a second, more distantly related one titled The Glass Coffin.[16]

Italo Calvino included a variant in Italian Folktales. The cause of the princess's sleep is a wish by her mother. As in Pentamerone, the prince rapes her in her sleep and her children are born. Calvino retains the element that the woman who tries to kill the children is the king's mother, not his wife, but adds that she does not want to eat them herself, and instead serves them to the king. His version came from Calabria, but he noted that all Italian versions closely followed Basile's.[17][18]

In his More English Fairy Tales,Joseph Jacobs noted that the figure of the Sleeping Beauty was in common between this tale and the Gypsy tale The King of England and his Three Sons.[19]

The hostility of the king's mother to his new bride is repeated in the fairy tale The Six Swans,[20] and also features in The Twelve Wild Ducks, where the mother is modified to be the king's stepmother. However, these tales omit the attempted cannibalism.

Interpretations

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Media

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Illustration to Tennyson's 1830 poem, Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty has been popular for many fairytale fantasy retellings. Some examples are listed below:

In film and television

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In literature

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In music

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The Sleeping Beauty, ballet Emily Smith

In video games

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In other

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In art

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  • Sleeping Beauty, by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)
    Sleeping Beauty, by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)
  • He stands—he stoops to gaze—he kneels—he wakes her with a kiss, woodcut by Walter Crane
    He stands—he stoops to gaze—he kneels—he wakes her with a kiss, woodcut by Walter Crane
  • Prince Florimund finds the "Sleeping Beauty"
    Prince Florimund finds the "Sleeping Beauty"
  • Sleeping Beauty by Jenny Harbour
    Sleeping Beauty by Jenny Harbour
  • Book cover for a Dutch interpretation of the story by Johann Georg van Caspel
    Book cover for a Dutch interpretation of the story by Johann Georg van Caspel
  • Briar Rose
    Briar Rose
  • Sleeping Beauty by Edward Frederick Brewtnall
    Sleeping Beauty by Edward Frederick Brewtnall
  • Louis Sußmann-Hellborn (1828- 1908) Sleeping Beauty,
    Louis Sußmann-Hellborn (1828- 1908) Sleeping Beauty,
  • Sleeping Princess by Viktor Vasnetsov
    Sleeping Princess by Viktor Vasnetsov
  • The Sleeping Beauty by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
    The Sleeping Beauty by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
  • Sleeping Beauty, statue in Wuppertal – Germany
    Sleeping Beauty, statue in Wuppertal – Germany

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "410: The Sleeping Beauty". Multilingual Folk Tale Database. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
  2. ^ Hallett, Martin; Karasek, Barbara, eds. (2009). Folk & Fairy Tales (4 ed.). Broadview Press. pp. 63–67. ISBN 978-1-55111-898-7.
  3. ^ Bottigheimer, Ruth. (2008). "Before Contes du temps passe (1697): Charles Perrault's Griselidis, Souhaits and Peau". The Romantic Review, Volume 99, Number 3. pp. 175–189.
  4. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, 2002:96, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  5. ^ Ashliman, D.L. "Sleeping Beauty". pitt.edu.
  6. ^ Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 648, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  7. ^ Charles Willing, "Genevieve of Brabant"
  8. ^ Basile, Giambattista. "Sun, Moon, and Talia". Retrieved 31 March 2013.
  9. ^ Hallett, Martin; Karasek, Barbara, eds. (2009). Folk & Fairy Tales (4 ed.). Broadview Press. pp. 63–67. ISBN 978-1-55111-898-7.
  10. ^ Collis, Kathryn (2016). Not So Grimm Fairy Tales. ISBN 978-1-5144-4689-8.
  11. ^ a b Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, "Little Briar-Rose"
  12. ^ Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 961, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  13. ^ Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 962, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  14. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 376-7 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  15. ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "The Annotated Sleeping Beauty"
  16. ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to Sleeping Beauty"
  17. ^ Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales p 485 ISBN 0-15-645489-0
  18. ^ Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales p 744 ISBN 0-15-645489-0
  19. ^ Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, "The King of England and his Three Sons"
  20. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 230 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  21. ^ Hill, Robert (1971), Tennyson's Poetry p. 544. New York: Norton.
  22. ^ Cook, Howard Willard Our Poets of Today, p. 271, at Google Books
  23. ^ "Transformations by Anne Sexton"
  24. ^ "Ravel : Ma Mère l'Oye". genedelisa.com.
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