When the fairy tale does not possess a settled classic form, select,
as was mentioned, that version in which the language best conveys the
life of the story, improving it yourself, if you can, in harmony with
the standards of literature, until the day in the future when the tale
may be fortunate enough to receive a settled form at the hands of a
literary artist. Sometimes a slight change may improve greatly an old
tale. In Grimm's _Briar Rose_[1] the episode of the Prince and the old
Man contains irrelevant material. The two paragraphs following, "after
the lapse of many years there came a king's son into the country,"
easily may be re-written to preserve the same unity and simplicity
which mark the rest of the tale. This individual retelling of an old
tale demands a careful distinction between what is essential and
internal and what may have been added, what is accidental and
external. The clock-case in _The Wolf and Seven Kids_ evidently is not
a part of the original story, which arose before clocks were in use,
and is a feature added in some German telling of the tale. It may be
retained but it is not essential to the tale that it should be. Exact
conversations and bits of dialogue, repetitive phrases, rhymes,
concrete words which visualize, brief expressions, and Anglo-Saxon
words--these are all bits of detail which need to be mastered in a
complete acquirement of the story's form, because these are
characteristics of the form which time has settled upon the old tales.
Any literary form bestowed upon the tales worthy of the name
literature, will have to preserve these essentials.
II. THE PRESENTATION OF THE TALE
In the oral presentation of the tale new elements of the teacher's
preparation enter, for here the voice is the medium and the teacher
must use the voice as the organist his keys. The aim of the oral
presentation is to give the spiritual effect. This requires certain
conditions of effectiveness--to speak with distinctness, to give the
sense, and to cause to understand; and certain intellectual
requirements--to articulate with perfection, to present successive
thoughts in clear outline, and to preserve relative values of
importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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