ESCUELA DE EDUCACIÓN DE SORIA Grado en Educación Primaria TRABAJO FIN DE GRADO Rediscovering Classic Fairy Tales for the Primary English Language Classroom (H. C. Andersen and The Little Mermaid) Presentado por: Oihane Etxarri Zabaleta Tutelado por: Francisco José Francisco Carrera Soria, 30 de julio de 2014 Abstract ………………………….......................................................................... 1 Keywords ……………………………………………………................................ 1 Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………. 2 2. Justification ……………………………………………………………………. 3 3. Children´s literature and Classic Fairy Tales ……………………………….. 4 3.1 Folk tales and its characteristics ……………………………………. 4 3.2 Classical fairy tales´ writers ………………………………………… 6 3.3 Changes and adaptations in classical fairy tales: is this what children need? ……………………………………………………………………… 7 4. Hans Christian Andersen …………………………………………………….. 9 4.1 Biography …………………………………………………………….. 9 4.2 How was Andersen? …………………………………………………. 11 4.3 Andersen’s writing …………………………………………………… 12 4.4 Andersen´s literary work ……………………………………………. 13 5. The Little Mermaid …………………………………………………………… 15 5.1 Understanding “The Little Mermaid” ……………………………… 15 5.2 My version of “The Little Mermaid” ……………………………….. 18 7. Activities ……………………………………………………………………….. 22 8. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………. 26 9. Bibliography …………………………………………………………………… 27 10. Annexes ……………………………………………………………………….. 28 ABSTRACT. Children´s education is not an easy task. The goal of this research is to analyse the fairy tales, the first contact between children and the literature; it is also important to reflect on classic fairy tales´ adaptations and their impact on children´s life. Besides, it also adds a study of Hans Christian Andersen, one of the most known fairy tales writers and a rich riding about one of his stories: The Little Mermaid. The goal is to take advantages of each tale to educate children as literature students, English students and as persons too.” KEYWORDS. Children´s education. Children´s literature. Fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen. Interpreting tales. The Little Mermaid. RESUMEN. Educar a los niños no es tarea fácil. El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar los cuentos de hadas, el primer contacto entre la literatura y el niño. También es importante la reflexión sobre las adaptaciones de los cuentos y el impacto que suponen en la vida de los niños. También incluye información sobre Hans Christian Andersen, uno de los escritores de cuentos de hadas más conocido, y una rica lectura de una de sus historias: La Sirenita. El objetivo es sacar el máximo partido a cada cuento para educar a los niños como estudiantes de literatura, estudiantes de lengua inglesa y también como personas. PALABRAS CLAVE: Educación primaria. Literatura infantil. Cuentos de hadas. Hans Christian Andersen. Interpretación de cuentos. La Sirenita. 1 1. INTRODUCTION Classic fairy tales are not only simple stories. That is known before reading nothing about them. We all knew some classic fairy tales, we ever have read or hear them. They are a part of our lives. When we are children, the most difficult task is to teach us finding the sense of our lives. In this task the first influence is the family who has to transmit us the culture. As Bruno Bettelheim says (1997), in Psicoanálisis de los cuentos de hadas, in this cultural transfer literature is which gives righteously the information. Inside children´s literature there is nothing more enriching and satisfying than fairy tales. The reason that is the case lines on the fact that those tales teach children to solve internal problems and show them solutions for everyday problems (Bruno Bettelheim, Psicoanálisis de los cuentos de hadas, 1997) Nowadays, both teachers and pupil have easily available this simple tools: literature, books, tales…So, now it is important to use them in an enriching way for children. In this case we are going to try to stimulate and create a proper framework for the students to improve their linguistic and literary competences. Beginning from others´ and our own interpretation and understanding of the literature and of each tale, we have to achieve children´s learning. Children can learn both literary competences and solving everyday problems with tales. Besides, when the teacher, who directs students learning, knows more and more about a tale, she can use it in the best way and take as much advantages as possible, always from an educative perspective. 2 2. JUSTIFICATION Fairy tales are important, so I would like to write about the role they can play in children`s lives and how they can be used to help them to understand their feelings. Moreover, we are going to use classic fairy tales to learn English. After all, we want to bring up children to be able to live in this world as happy as possible. I think by knowing ourselves and acquiring knowledge we can train happy and free people. Literature gives us knowledge and knowledge makes us free. When we are talking about children, classic fairy tales are the first contact between children and the literature. Besides, tales give children the opportunity to know the world they are living in and themselves, reflected in fairy tales´ stories and characters. In this case I am also going to introduce another issue: The learning of English as a second language. A language which has taken a particular importance in our society in the last years. To develop these topics, I have chosen the writer Hans Cristian Andersen, because he is my favourite classic writer. He is also one of the most world-wide highly appreciated author as far as fairy tales are concerned. Besides, I have chosen his fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” because I love the story and I think it is a good one to work feeling at class. Although the original version is unknown for most people, I have tried to use it to work with children. 3 3. CHILDREN´S LITERATURE AND CLASSIC FAIRY TALES According to Valentina Pisanty (1995), people who usually listen to tales create a conception about tale´s literary genre and in this way they can difference tales or another kind of narrations with a certain degree of automatism. We usually introduce tales as a literary genre inside children´s literature, but tales have not a specific kind of listeners. In the first instance, it is true that “each time a writer sends a message he tries to structure it taking into account the expected recipient” (V. Pisanty, 1995, p.10). In this case, tales are written for children but it is also possible to read them from other points of view, from an adult one for example. According to Valentina Pisanty (1995), in Cómo se lee un cuento popular, many of these interpretations represent some clear disparities with the most apparent intentions of the texts. For example, “The Ugly Duckling” is a tale which has been recognized for generations as “an allegory of Hans Christian Andersen´s own life” (Lurie, 2003, p.21) 3.1 FOLK TALES AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS Fairy tales are a subgenre of folk tales, so it is important to start analysing folktales and its characteristics. First of all, it is important to say that tales arise from the oral tradition. Before the first classical writers started writing these stories, as Román López Tamés says (1990) in Introducción a la literatura infantile, folk tales were transmitted orally, in prose and anonymously. In the following paragraphs some common characteristics of folk tales are going to be described. According to Valentina Pisanty (1995), in Cómo se lee un cuento popular, it is necessary to analyse the thematic level on the one hand and the formal level on the other to distinguish folk tales´ specific features. On the one hand, it is necessary to talk about the tales´ morphology. There are the following features, whose classification we can found in Pisanty (1995): 4 1. No descriptions: There are not objects´ descriptions, they only are mentioned. “Any further description would give the impression that has been said only a fraction of what one might actually said” (Pisanty, 1995, p.36). Román López Tamés (1990), in Introducción a la literatura infantile, add that there are not place´s descriptions or specific time frames. 2. Formulas and repetitions: They are very recurrent and they show as oral narrative structure´s permanency. In fact in an oral culture, it was necessary to repeat constantly the knowledge, otherwise it would have been lost. Between all formulas, the introductory formulas are the most commonly used. The majority of them star with the sentence “Once upon a time…” 3. Lack of characterization: Characters are simple and “they have not ambiguity, really good persons or radically bad” and it happens something similar with the beauty and ugliness or with social scale, we can find “the poor or the rich, a prince or a peasant” (R. López, 1990, p. 36) In this point I would like to add the idea of identification. According to R. López (1990), in Introducción a la literatura infantil, it is a process that the child suffers when he reads or listens to a tale. It is related with our natural actuation of imitation, which offers us accommodation. The identification is the affectionate attachment between the child and another person, animal or object. It is an important factor in children´s literature. 4. Full lack of the use of the first person narrator. 5. Space and time structure´s indeterminacy: When the story starts saying “once upon a time…” it wants to lead the reader to a world without time (Seung in Pisanty, 1995). When writers started writing the stories, some differences appeared. .For example the appearance of descriptions. On the other hand, it is necessary to talk about tale´s contents. In tales there are both, supernatural or magic elements and everyday real elements. Some recurrent real contents in tales are: to look for partner, marriage and conception; follow advices and achieve rewards; fight…but they lost importance as 5 social contents. According to Pisanty (1995) they transform in means to follow the action. She says that there are only contents which are modelling to define the tale´s use. Besides, it happens the same with magical contents: there are an obvious elements. Neither the writer nor the reader are not shocked or confused by these supernatural elements. And they are not the element or content which define tales as a literary genre. It is reader´s acceptation attitude. In this way, magic elements are in the same level as real familiar and everyday elements. According to Pisanty (1995), in Cómo se lee un cuento popular, “The rules of folktales literary genre foresee a naive reader who accepts, without any discomfort, the peaceful coexistence between natural and supernatural”. 3.2 CLASSICAL FAIRY TALES´ WRITERS All classical fairy tales´ writers follow in some way these aforesaid characteristics, but there are also differences and special characteristics in many of them. Some of the most popular classical writers are the German Brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm) who wrote, among others, “The Frog-Prince” or “Rapunzel”; The English writer Lewis Carroll, who wrote the marvellous story of “Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland”; or the French Charles Perrault, who wrote the world-famous “Little Red Ridding Hood”; The Italian writer Carlo Collodi too, whose most famous tale is “Adventures of Pinocchio”; and finally, Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer who create the fantastic stories of “The Little Mermaid”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Match Girl” or “The Snow Queen”. According to Alison Lurie (2003), in Niños y niñas eternamente, the difference between Hans Christian Andersen and other classical writers, Grimm Brothers for example, is that the first one did not just write the stories he heard from his mother and grandmother, he also created his own new tales. Besides, he often introduced substantial changes when he told a known tale. 6 3.3 CHANGES AND ADAPTATIONS IN CLASSIC FAIRY TALES: IS THIS WHAT CHILDREN NEED? Most of the classic fairy tales have been undergoing big changes. When people listen to the original version of a classic fairy tale, they sometimes be really surprised. But generally, people don´t know original versions and most of them are also unknown for me. Most of the opinions about the classical versions are negative (in reference to being or not proper for children). Gabriella Campbell (2012), in the article Cómo ha cambiado el cuento (I), wrote that there are some books or stories that we shouldn´t read before certain age. She thinks that they can be “inexhaustible sources of fear and nightmares”. These narrations have adapted to the new times. Lurie (2003), in Niños y niñas eternamente, also says that despite Andersen´s tales are great and poignant, most of them are sad, disturbing and sometimes even frightening. He argues in this way why most of classic fairy tales are not available in book shop nowadays. I think that we have to analyse each tale individually before deciding that it is or not proper for children. For example, according to Gabriela Campbell, the original version of “The Three Little Pigs” is not too proper and it is somewhat awkward story: the wolf eats two of the pigs and then, the oldest pig eats the wolf. I differentiate between two kinds of adaptations:  On the one hand, we can adapt the plot. Most of the writers are changing the classic fairy tales eliminating every fear or bad elements, and adding always a happy ending. But, why these changes? Bruno Bettelheim (1997), in Psicoanálisis de los cuentos de hadas, says that modern stories avoid existential problems, although they are crucial for us. “Safe” stories no mention the death and aging. Whereas, Fairy tales “face the child in a properly way with basic human conflicts”(Bettelheim, 1997, p.14)  On the other hand, we can adapt the complexity of the story. I am talking about vocabulary or the length for example. Classic fairy tales have complex descriptions and new difficult vocabulary for children. Lexical richness would 7 be very positive, but it is important to find a balance between children knowledge and text´s difficulty. In the first case we have to think about children´s education and their personal development. According to Bettelheim (1997) tales can cheer children and can help them to know themselves and develops their personality n the same time. In the second case, we have to think in their academic learning. It is important to find the best text to offer children, being an original one or an adaptation. As it was introduced in the beginning of this work some fairy tales have a strong influence in our lives and they are sometimes a part of our own lives. Bettelheim (1997), in Psicoanálisis de los cuentos de hadas, adds some very interesting ideas about that: “Just as we do not know at what age a particular story will be important for a particular child, we cannot know which one of them we have to tell, when or why. Only the child can reveal it through the strength of feeling that reacts to what story evokes in his conscious and unconscious. (…) Soon we will realise that a particular story has become important for child, through his immediate response to it. (…) By telling fairy tales is always the best options are to follow child´s interest”. (p. 23) So, it is also really important, apart from finding the most suitable text or adaptation, letting children to find the tale they really like. 8