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Apologies for missing last week’s post; I was ill. 

I want to take a break from our regularly-scheduled book rants to talk a bit about traditional literature. The term“traditional literature” might conjure up images of stodgy old books with nigh-unreadable prose for the modern reader. But you might be surprised to learn that you’ve probably been reading traditional literature since you were a kid! Traditional literature encompasses stories and poems that have been passed down from generation to generation, such as myths, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes. 

Traditional stories rely on patterns, motifs, symbols, and tropes. These stories were passed down orally long before they were ever written down, and using those storytelling devices helped both the teller and the listener to remember the story. Familiar patterns also helped listeners participate in stories by providing clues about what will happen next. We still use many of these today, opening with “once upon a time” and ending with “and they lived happily ever after.” 

Folk traditions in storytelling are both unique and universal. Many folklore stories from across the world share the same tropes, but use the story teller’s culture as a backdrop for the tale. Compare “The Rough-Faced Girl,” “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters,” and “The Irish Cinder Lad.” They’re all versions of the French Cinderella story, but come from the Algonquin Nation, Zimbabwe, and Ireland, respectively. 

Settings tend to be used again and again, with reliable associations. In the Anglo-European tradition, many stories start in a cottage, where simple, everyday folk live. A castle is where some aspire to be, and reaching it symbolizes success. The forest is dark, where mysterious creatures live and dangerous and unpredictable things happen. The road is where characters encounter new people and influences. This is a place where change occurs. 

Characterization relies heavily on archetypes. Each character plays a clear role: hero, villain, helper, trickster, numbskull, etc., though some characters represent more than one. In Jack and the Beanstalk, for example, Jack is both a hero and a trickster. 

Traditional stories often follow the monomyth structure, sometimes called the hero’s journey. The hero begins living a simple life at home, but problems arise that call them to go on a quest. They face challenges, meet a helper (often a mentor-figure), are validated as a hero by powerful forces, wins their prize, and changes by the end of the story. 

There are also several different types of traditional stories, such as fables, legends, folk tales, tall tales, fairy tales, and myths. Some are meant to teach lessons, such as Aesop’s fables, and others attempt to explain natural phenomena, such as winter being caused by the goddess Persephone being in Hades. 

Now that we know a little about how traditional literature works, I want to talk about its importance. Like a lot of children, I knew stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears by heart before I could even read. I didn’t just learn traditional stories from books, either. I learned them from movies (especially Disney), TV shows, songs, crafts, and my friends. Fairy tales and other forms of traditional literature are ubiquitous in early childhood. 

I don’t think it’s just because these are well-known and well-loved stories that our parents and grandparents grew up with. Nor is it that they’re in the public domain and therefore free for media companies and publishers to create work from. Both of those things play a big role in keeping traditional tales a mainstay of our culture, but I don’t think they’re the only factors. 

I think another big factor that contributes to traditional stories surviving for centuries is how concrete they are. When you look at these stories, the protagonists typically need to overcome some physical obstacle, be it a big bad wolf or a wicked step-mother. Things also tend to be black and white: either you are good, and will have a happy ending, or you are bad, and will be defeated. Some stories may have a simple moral that a child can apply to everyday life. 

Young children are very much concrete thinkers. Abstract concepts can be difficult for them to grasp. Think back to learning math when you were young. Numbers are an abstract idea, until you have something to count. For me, learning addition and subtraction was the same as adding or taking away beans from a pile. In Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, he theorizes that children have difficulty with abstract concepts until around age 12. Until then, children understand the world in a physical way.

That means there isn’t a lot of room for nuance when it comes to stories. The characters are good or bad; they will succeed or they will fail. I once heard a preschooler, upon seeing a picture of Elsa from Frozen, say that Elsa was “mean.” Elsa went from foe to friend over the course of Frozen, but for this child, Elsa couldn’t be both. She was the bad guy at the start of the movie, and for this child, that’s where she stayed until the end. 

Traditional stories don’t really have character development, except for maybe the character learning a lesson at the end. But the nature of traditional stories is that they don’t need character development. Little Red Riding Hood having a dark night of the soul in the wolf’s belly wouldn’t add anything important to the story, and it would confuse the heck out of its young readers. 

The black-and-white, simple structures of traditional stories combined with how prominent they are in children’s lives means that the messages in those old stories means that the messages within them are very easy to ingrain in a child’s mind. 

It’s also not a huge leap to say that old fairy tales don’t always have great messages by today’s standards. Damsels in distress and beauty equating to goodness are both common examples of this.* But there are also many lovely stories that have positive messages, too. One of my favorite fairy tales since I was a kid is the Three Billy Goats Gruff, where cleverness wins the day. There’s plenty of value to be found in traditional literature, and we should be conscientious of what stories, songs, and poems we share with children today.

_{*I also recommend against kissing frogs.}