Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Attached, almost as an afterthought, to the end of Mircea Eliade's book Myth and Reality 1 is a highly stimulating essay entitled "Myths and Fairy Tales." First published as a review of a book that dealt with the relationship of the fairy tale to the heroic legend and myth,2 Eliade's essay was concerned not only with demonstrating the differences between myth and fairy tale but also with elaborating their extraordinary symbiotic connection. It is well known that Eliade, one of the great scholars of religion and myth, believed that "myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the 'beginnings.' In other words, myth tells us how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings , a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality-an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution .'' 3 Since myth narrates the deeds of supernatural beings , it sets examples for human beings that enable them to codify and order their lives. By enacting and incorporating myths in their daily lives, humans are able to have a genuine religious experience. Indeed, it is through recalling and bringing back the gods of the past into the present that one becomes their contemporary and at the same time is transported into primordial or sacred time. This transportation 2 INTRODUCTION is also a connection, for a mortal can gain a sense of his or her origins and feel the process of history in the present and time as divine. In contrast to the myth-and here Eliade often conflates the genre of the oral folk tale with the literary fairy tale-he argues that "we never find in folk tales an accurate memory of a particular stage of culture; cultural styles and historical cycles are telescoped in them. All that remains is the structure of an exemplary behavior." 4 However, this does not mean that oral folk tales and literary fairy tales are desacralized narratives. On the contrary-and this is Eliade's important point-they continue to convey mythic notions and motifs that are camouflaged. In one key passage of his essay, Eliade states that, "though in the West the tale has long since become a literature of diversion (for children and peasants) or of escape (for city dwellers), it still presents the structure of an infinitely serious and responsible adventure, for in the last analysis it is reducible to an initiatory scenario: again and again we find initiatory ordeals (battles with the monster, apparently insurmountable obstacles, riddles to be solved, impossible tasks, etc.), the descent to Hades or the ascent to Heaven (or-what amounts to the same thing-death and resurrection), marrying the princess." 5 All of this becomes camouflaged, according to Eliade, when the tale abandons its clear religious "initiatory" responsibility, but appropriates the scenario and certain motifs, and one of the intriguing questions for folklorists and those scholars interested in myths and fairy tales is to determine why and when all this took place. Eliade believes it may have occurred when the traditional rites and secrets of cults were no longer practiced and when it was no longer taboo to reveal and tell the "mysteries" of the religious practices. Whatever the case may be, it is clear to Eliade that the myth preceded the folk and fairy tale and that it had a more sacred function in communities and societies than the secular narratives. 2] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 00:53 GMT) INTRODUCTION 3 Of course, there have been great debates among scholars about whether the myth preceded the oral folk tale and whether it is a higher form of art because it encompasses the religious experience of people. But this debate is not what interests me with regard to Eliade's essay, rather it is the manner in which he almost equates the religious myth with the secular fairy tale. That is, he tends to regard the folk tale as the profane conveyor of the religious experience. "The tale takes up and continues 'initiation' on the level of the imaginary," he says. ''All unwittingly, and indeed believing that he is merely amusing himself or escaping, the man of modern societies still benefits from the imaginary initiation supplied by tales. That being so, one may wonder if the fairy tale did not very early become an 'easy doublet' for the initiation myth and rites, if...