Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Beauty and the Beast is a traditional folktale (type 425C -- search for a lost husband -- in the Aarne-Thompson classification). The first published version of the fairy tale was a meandering rendition by Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve, published in La jeune ameriquaine, et les contes marins in 1740. The best known written version was published in 1756 by Mme Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, in Magasin des enfans, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieure de ses èleves; an English translation appeared in 1757.Similar tales include the story of Cupid and Psyche, and Madame D'Aulnoy's Le Mouton (The Ram).
Plot summary
Beauty's father, caught in a storm, finds shelter in the Beast's palace. As he leaves, he plucks a rose to bring back to Beauty, offending his unseen host, who tells him he must now die. The father begs to be allowed to see his daughters again: the Beast says that if one of the man's daughters will return to suffer in his place, he may live. Beauty journeys to the Beast's castle, convinced she will be killed: instead, she is made mistress of the enchanted palace, and the Beast asks her to be his wife. She says she can be his friend, and will stay with him forever, but not as his wife, asking only to return to her home for a week to say farewell to her father. Her sisters entice her to stay beyond the allotted week, and she returns belatedly to the castle, finding the Beast lying near death from distress at her failure to return. She begs him to live, so that he may be her husband, and by this act the Beast is transformed into a handsome prince.
Movie versions
A sumptuous French version of Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) was made in 1946, directed by Jean Cocteau, starring his lover Jean Marais as the Beast and Josette Day as Beauty. The score was by Georges Auric. The film is notable for its surreal quality and its ability to use existing movie technology to effectively evoke a feeling of magic and enchantment. In 1995 composer Philip Glass composed an opera meant as an alternative "soundtrack" to the movie, and some DVDs offer the ability to view the movie while listening to either version.In 1991 Disney produced an animated film of Beauty and the Beast with screenplay by Linda Woolverton, music by Alan Menken, and lyrics by Howard Ashman. It won Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Original Score and was the first animated feature ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. This version gave Beauty a name(Belle), but not the Beast. It is now considered one of the Walt Disney Company's "classics".
Stage Versions
The Disney film was adapted for the stage by Linda Woolverton and Alan Menken, who had worked on the film. Howard Ashman, the original lyricist, had died, and additional lyrics were written by Tim Rice. Five new songs, "No Matter What", "Home", "Me", and "If I Can't Love Her", and "Human Again" were added to those appearing in the original film score in the stage version. There is a great deal of emphasis on pyrotechnics, costuming and special effects to produce the imagery of the enchanted castle.
Television Versions
Beauty and the Beast, which owed as much to bodice-ripping Romance novels as to the fairy tale, originally broadcast in 1987, was centered around the relationship between Catherine, an attorney who lived in New York City, played by Linda Hamilton, and Vincent, a gentle, but lion-faced "beast", played by Ron Perlman, who dwells in the tunnels beneath the city.Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Beauty and the Beast."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A fairy tale is a story, usually told to children, concerning the adventures of mythical characters such as: fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants and others. Also, it often involves princes and princesses. American fairy tales normally have a happy ending, but German and other European tales most often have a bad ending (e.g., a girl plays with matches and burns the house to the ground). Often, fairy tales were disguised morality tales. This is true for the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale Collection, and many of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
An extensive collection of European fairy tales were published by Andrew Lang in a series of books: The Red Fairy Book, The Orange Fairy Book, and so forth. These provide some excellent examples of the genre. Some have also classed the Middle Eastern tales from 1001 Arabian Nights as fairy tales.
The fairy tale is a sub-class of the more general folktale.
See also: List of fairy tales, fantasy
External links and references
- Fairy Book collections edited by Andrew Lang, from Project Gutenberg
- Grimm's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg
- Andersen's Fairy Tales from Project Gutenberg
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Fairy tale."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Description | Work of fiction, novel, romance, Minerva press; fairy tale, nursery tale; fable, parable, apologue; dime novel, penny dreadful, shilling shocker |
Untruth | Invention, fabrication, fiction; fable, nursery tale; romance; (imagination); absurd story, untrue story, false story, trumped up story, trumped up statement; thing devised by the enemy; canard; shave, sell, hum, traveler;s tale, Canterbury tale, fairy tale, fake; claptrap. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: FAIRY TALE |
| English words defined with "FAIRY TALE": Little Red Ricing Hood. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "FAIRY TALE": Graciosa. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Well, because it's your damn fairy tale and it's alive and frozen in our kitchen (Charmed; writing credit: Colman deKay) This isn't some fairy tale. When I kiss you you don't wake up from a deep sleep and live happily ever after (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; writing credit: Doreen Spicer) And that will be the end of the fairy tale. (Roman Holiday; writing credit: Ian McLellan Hunter) Look Miss Fremont, that feminine intuituon stuff sells magazines, but in real life it's still a fairy tale. (Rear Window; writing credit: John Michael Hayes; Cornell Woolrich) | |
Lyrics | I will be your fairy tale (All 4 Love; performing artist: Color Me Badd) It was somewhere in a fairy tale, (Taxi; performing artist: Harry Chapin) | |
Movie/TV Titles | A Fairy Tale for Adults (1970) Mean Moe's Fairy Tale (1963) A Modern Fairy Tale (1914) The Elf King: A Norwegian Fairy Tale (1908) An American Fairy Tale (2003) | |
Song Titles | Fairy Tale (performing artist: Willie Murphy) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
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Theater & Movies | |||
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Hans Christian Anderson | Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's finger. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "FAIRY TALE"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Bulgarian | фантазия (daydream, dream, fancy, fantasia, fantasy, imagination, invention, phantasy), вълшебна приказка, измислица (concoction, excogitation, fable, fabrication, fake, fib, fiction, figment, flam, hoax, invention, make believe, make up, myth, nonentity, tale, tall story, taradiddle). (various references) | |
Chinese | 神話 (myth, mythology). (various references) | |
Czech | pohádka (story, tale). (various references) | |
Dutch | sprookje. (various references) | |
Esperanto | fabelo. (various references) | |
Faeroese | ævintýr (adventure, fable). (various references) | |
French | histoire, conte. (various references) | |
German | Märchen (fable, fairy story, fairytale, fairy-tale, myth, story, tale, tall story). (various references) | |
Greek | παραμύθι (fable, fudge, story), παραμυθάκι. (various references) | |
Hebrew | מעשי" (anecdote, legend, story, tale), א'"" (fable, legend, myth, story, yarn). (various references) | |
Hungarian | tündérmese (fairytale, fairy-tale). (various references) | |
Indonesian | dongeng (legend, nonsense). (various references) | |
Italian | fiaba (fairy, story, tale). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 童話 , 童話 , お伽話 , おとぎ話 (bedpan, chamber pot, coweringly, female transvestite, flattery, generally obnoxious middle-aged woman, good luck charm, hesitantly, screw, sexual intercourse, vagina, virgin), フェーリング反応 (a feint, face, facial, fader, fail, fail-safe, failure, fair, fair catch, fair copy, fair play, fair sex, fairway, fairy, fairyland, fake, fare, fear, feather, feather plane, feathercut, Fehling's reaction, phase, phaser, phasing, phasor), メルカトル図法 (characteristic, having a fairy tale atmosphere, Melbourne, melt, meltdown, melton, Mercator's projection, Mercedes-Benz, Thank You), 御伽話 , 伽話 (nursery tale). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | おとぎばなし, フェアリーテール , メルヘン , どうわ (exemplum, social integration), とぎばなし (nursery tale). (various references) | |
Manx | shee-skeeal, far-skeeal (apologue, fable, fiction, romance). (various references) | |
Papiamen | fábula. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | airyfay aletay.(various references) | |
Polish | bajka. (various references) | |
Portuguese | fábula (apologue, fable, fairytale, invention, legend, lie, romance, story, tale), lenda (legend), estória, contodefadas. (various references) | |
Romanian | basm (fable, fiction, story, tale). (various references) | |
Russian | сказка (fable, fairytale, tale). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | bajka. (various references) | |
Spanish | cuento de hadas, cuento (exaggeration, fable, romance, story, tale, yarn). (various references) | |
Swedish | saga (fable, fairy-tale, legend, myth, saga, tale). (various references) | |
Turkish | peri masalı, masal (fable, fiction, romance, story, tale, yarn), kuyruklu yalan (Corker, romance, rouser, walloping lie, Whacker, whopper, whopping lie). (various references) | |
Turkmen | erteki (story). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | казка. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"FAIRY TALE" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: fiary tale. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-e-f-i-l-r-t-y" | |
-1 letter: fayalite. | |
-2 letters: flytier, frailty, irately, reality, tearily. | |
-3 letters: aerial, aerify, aerily, artily, atrial, elytra, fairly, falter, fealty, featly, ferial, ferity, fetial, filter, flayer, flirty, lariat, latria, lifter, lyrate, ratify, realia, realty, retail, retial, rifely, tailer, trifle. | |
-4 letters: afire, afrit, after, alary, alate, alert, aliya, altar, alter, areal, ariel, artal, artel, atria, early, faery, fairy. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-e-f-i-l-r-t-y" | |
+2 letters: filamentary. | |
+3 letters: deflationary, forestaysail, reflationary. | |
+4 letters: affirmatively, forestaysails, fragmentarily. | |
+5 letters: faintheartedly. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Crosswords 2. Usage: Modern 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Quotations: Familiar 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Derivations | 9. Anagrams 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
