History and Origins

  Before the genre became its own separate form, fairy tales were considered more to be natural, short stories. The tradition of fairy tales began as soon as they were being passed down orally. Because stories were told verbally and had not yet been written down, they were often told dramatically. This also contributes to the history of the genre not being completely certain, and biased on the development of them in some countries.

Timeline of the endurance of fairy tales in various forms (Literature,film,theatre)

    Although it has been attempted, it seems impossible to track down the original source of fairy tales, or the very first versions of stories. Due to oral tradition, tales were altered from speaker to speaker, leaving everyone with their own version of a tale. Even as people were beginning to write them down, aspects of stories were changed in order to accommodate cultures or the story tellers preference. Another issue that arose was the difference between the genres of fairy tale and fantasy. In 1980, Brian Attebery published a book titled The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, where he explored the genre of fantasy in depth. From there, he saught to find its influence of American folklore. Before fantasy was a genre of its own , some stories created during that time were considered to be fairy tales, when later they would be considered fantasy. From here, the sub-genre of fairytale fantasy was developed. Two stories that Attebery had studied closely were The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit, both of which fit into the sub-genre for including original plots with fairy tale aspects.