This guide will connect you with resources referring to French and Italian fairy tales from the sixteenth century to the present day. In addition, this guide will be contextualized in terms of connections among fairy tales, film, literature, and other art expressions, helping you find primary and secondary sources that you could use to map relationships among different versions of the same tale.
Beauty and the Beast. Smithsonian Library.
Looking at the Children's shelves of public libraries, you will probably find many fairy tales retold or adaptations of well-known fairy tales. You can find these adaptations in books for children, teen novels, graphic novels, films, theater, and even operas. Consider, for instance, the contemporary versions of the Cinderella tale type below.
You will also notice that these books' call numbers (locations) start with PZ. The Library of Congress classification system assigns PZ8 for traditional fairy tales, meaning you can find fairy tales in the same classification letter and number in other libraries that follow this classification system.
Cinderella/Cenicienta
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Cinderella
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Cinderella
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Cinderella Skeleton
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James Marshall's Cinderella
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You probably are familiar with searches on Google and other search platforms, such as generative artificial intelligence models. When you make searches in the Library's Catalog, think of keywords or phrases related to your topic of interest and combine these terms according to your needs.
Example:
If you are looking for a film adaptation of Cinderella your search may look like this:
If you are looking for a fairy tale adaptation for youth or teen literature, your search may look like this:
If you are looking for a fairy tale adaptation to a dramatic performance work, such as an opera, your search may look like this:
Keywords and related terms are nouns and noun-phrases connected to your research topic. You may use one or more keywords when you are looking for information. Keywords will help you:
When you find a book, article, or other material that you like, see its bibliographic record and pay attention to the subject heading listing, which will help you expand your research.
Boolean operators are helpful when you search a university's catalog or a database.
Examples:
The example "Bluebeard AND Metaphrog NOT Perrault," indicates that you want the retold by Metaphrog and not the tale written by Charles Perrault.
Your professor will establish the rules of using AI in your work. A guideline you can follow is to always disclose when you have used AI and how you utilized it, following your Professor's stipulation.
AI models, such as a ChtGPT, Google Gemini, and Cluade, are generative AI models that can generate new content using human-like language that is not present in the original data. These models use a large amount of text, images, audio, and video materials that are taken from the Internet. Predictive AI, on the other hand, uses past data to predict something, like Netflix, which uses AI models to learn your content selection pattern so it can recommend additional content.
It is essential to remember that generative AI models generate text, and although they appear to "understand" what you are asking and "respond" accordingly, they do not comprehend meaning like humans do. AI models have been trained to imitate human-like communication, but they cannot reason.
Find more information:
Information provided by the course AI Literacy Foundations offered at CU Boulder.
You can find fairy tales and books related to fairy tales at Norlin Library or in digital format. Some books are located at the Norlin Library- Rare Books Collection, others are shelved at the Children's and Young Adult Collection, and some books are shelved in the following call numbers:
The Fairy Tale and Anime
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Fairy Tale and Film
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Fairy Tales on the Teen Screen
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From Fairy Tale to Film Screenplay
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Grimm Pictures
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Queer Enchantments
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Reality, Magic, and Other Lies
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French fairy tales : a Jungian approach
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The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures
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Fairy-Tale Science
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Magic Tales and Fairy Tale Magic
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Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion
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Fairy Tales
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The Pleasant Nights
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The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales
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The Fairy Tale World
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Fairy Tales Framed
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Pinocchio
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The Rare Books Collection at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Norlin Library (part of Rare and Distinctive Collections) has about 2000 books, including early modern printed books intended for adult readers; illustrated children’s books; nineteenth-century chapbooks; anthologies of fairy tales from around the globe; and stereoscopic viewing cards.
The database Fairy Tales at CU Boulder allows users to conduct searches and provides access to summaries and links to the digitized versions of the tale (if the work is digitized).
Image used under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.
Image used under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License...
Print : lithograph, hand-colored, c1919. No known restrictions on publication.
Photograph of a painting signed "J. Shannon, 1896" at Metropolitan Museum of Art. No known restrictions on publication.
1997 film Directed by Robert Iscove. Film available in the database Swank.
Fairy tales are usually short stories connected to countries' oral traditions. The tales may have a hero, heroine, or characters who must overcome wrongdoing of some kind and are in juxtaposition to an evil character. Fairy tales often have a moral message, and their stories may have magical and supernatural elements.
Sol, Luna y Talía. Illustration by Gustavo Doré. Public domain image. In the Giambattista Basile tale, a king rapes the sleeping Talia, who becomes pregnant with Sol and Luna.
Fairy tales usually have primary and secondary characters representing good and evil. These characters embody the villains, the adversaries, the heroes, the friends, the morals, the obstacles, and the supernatural elements. Characters may also be magical creatures, animals, nature, and enchanted objects.
Among the characters we may find:
Briar Rose Illustrated by Anne Anderson. Public domain image.
Symbolism is an essential element in fairy tales. Cinderella's glass slipper, the nose of Pinocchio, the mirror that looks at the inner self in Snow White, the boundaries represented in the enchanted forests, the number three, birds as messengers, the clothing and shoes in Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Little Tom Thumb are a few examples of the element of symbolism present in this genre.
Symbolism is seen in:
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Marlinchen mourning the loss over her stepbrother whilst a bird emerges from the juniper tree.; Illustration by Louis R. Head. Public domain image.
