What is a fairy tale?

 

Here is a simple question: what is a folk tale? What is a fairy tale? And what is the connection with, say, the fabliaux of French medieval literature?

Before going any further, I’ll try a few definitions. Then I can compare them with those of other writers, and see if the definitions stand up after reading a few examples.

 A fairy tale is:

• A short story, not a novel
• A story of obstructions before a resolution is reached.
• Often includes the supernatural and magical.
• A path to a happy ending for the hero or heroine.
• Often ending in marriage.
• Does not question social boundaries. A peasant may marry a princess if he is clever enough, but there is no question that class distinctions should survive.
• Usually, but not always, involves magic.
• Typically has no sex. Sex is implied (Sleeping Beauty) but unspoken.
• Having a clear distinction between good and evil. The evil are usually punished and the good are rewarded.
• Often involves repetition (typically three times, with the last being successful).
• Moral world similar to that of Christianity: good deeds will ultimately be rewarded, even if not immediately. 

Helpfully, many critics make a distinction between “oral” fairy tales, transmitted by recitation, and “literary” fairy tales, which are written down and therefore subject to reworking by the author, and typically read rather then heard.

In contrast are folk tales or fabliaux (I have grouped them together, as they seem to have more in common with each other than with the fairy tale). Examples include Boccacio’s Decameron, Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. Their characteristics are:

• Less supernatural, more based on individual attitude. The crafty characters are usually the winners, even if they have only a lowly place in the social order.
• Both fabliaux and folk tales are humorous, often raucous and sexual.
• Fabliaux are written in verse, folk tales in prose. 

There are of course cases of overlap, and collections that deliberately mix the different types. Calvino’s Italian Folktales mixes fairy tales with folk tales, and some of the lesser-known tales in Grimm are anything but fairy tales. But the distinctions above are, I hope, a good start to an assessment of fairy and folk tales. Let's see how these rules stand up with actual examples! 

The magic of fairy tales

 

Fairy tales! I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales, without ever having been able to articulate exactly why. Fairy tales don’t correspond with the standard rules of literature. They have no characters. Rather embarrassingly, they are not politically correct. Disabled people are condemned. Beautiful people are praised. Success in a fairy tale is usually getting married, and usually to a prince or princess, with the implication that you are freed of any financial worries for life. Success doesn’t only come to those who deserve it, although the wicked never seem to prosper. Finally, fairy tales are almost always formulaic: the rule of three seems ubiquitous, with the first two failing but the last trial successful.

So what are we to make of fairy tales? Can they be justified? Yes, of course, because they address things that other types of literature don’t reach. They have a kind of primeval power that is very memorable. If you want a justification of fairy tales, just remember how the third bowl of porridge is just right – in Robert Southey’s words, “and that was neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right”.

 So over the next few posts, I intend to look at some aspects of fairy tales in more detail. I’ll look at some of the major commentators (the Opies, Bettelheim, Zipes) and some of the famous collections (Perrault, Madame d’Aulnay, Grimm, Calvino’s collection of Italian Folktales, which I’m currently reading, the Pentameron of Basile) and finally, some of the original writers (Andersen, Macdonald, Nesbit, Marcel Ayme). One thing is certain: it’s fun reading fairy tales!

Beginner's Guide to Bollywood classics

 

For many years, my arty-farty and rather snooty knowledge of Indian cinema was restricted to Satyajit Ray – in other words, to Indian art films that would be shown in film clubs. I knew that Bollywood existed, and that there was a lot of dancing, but that was about it. 

But, of course, the relationship between high art and popular entertainment has always been full of overlaps, and it’s not surprising that there are many classics from the popular tradition, nor that more recent Bollywood films have started to become much more aware of other ideas and attitudes 

One positive result of the Coronavirus lock-down is that I have had the time to watch several Bollywood films, and so I am entitled to construct a mini-guide to the Indian film industry in less than a thousand words.

 

Which leads me to the first point: Bollywood films are long. Three hours seems to be about the average for the “classic” titles. Frequently the stories are so rambling that it is difficult to know how they could be shortened.

 

How to choose your Bollywood classic film? I started by consulting the many top ten lists available on the Internet, as well as the useful (but dated) guide to Bollywood by Ashok Banker (2001). It’s important to remember that lists of top ten Indian films haven’t (yet) been corrupted by PhD studies and the inexorable drift of Hollywood towards the academy. No, the best Bollywood films for many people are the worst technically.

So what are my recommendations for beginners to Bollywood? 

Sholay (1975)

If there could be one film that summed up Bollywood, this would, I think, be it. It combines melodramatic plotting, Bond-style action, a (rather limited) love interest, and finally, celebration of anarchic humour in the shape of the two lovable villains, played by Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan, who bear more than a passing resemblance to Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere in Les Valseuses (1973).

Sholay is a lovely film because the seriousness of the main plot – a policeman plotting revenge against the bandit leader who killed his family – is balanced by the charming antics of the two small-time crooks. Bachchan steals the show.

Unlikeliness rating: 5/5 (for staging a fight between a man with no arms and a gangster, and the gangster losing) 

Lagaan (2001)

Starring (and produced by) Aamir Khan, this film cleverly combines the rags to riches formula of Hollywood (think 42nd Street) with the British Empire. The film was highly successful outside India, since it presented a very simple plot of villainous British rulers against an oppressed group of villagers who at the start don’t even know how to play cricket, let alone defeat the British at it. It was fun to think that today, Indian cricket is far more lucrative and successful than the game in England.   

Amar Akhbar Anthony (1977)

Here is another three-hour blockbuster, but this time, although the entire plot is ludicrous, the film-maker (and all the cast) seem to be aware of it. There is a feeling of enjoyment throughout this film that makes it very easy on the eye for the spectator.

Three young boys are separated from their parents and brought up as Christian, Muslim and Hindu. Later in the film they are (inevitably) reunited and of course bond happily together. This demonstrates another principle of Bollywood movies: although they are almost always shown from a (perhaps rather too easily assumed) Hindu perspective, they typically take pains to stress their ecumenicalism. There is an element of tokenism in all this, but it’s better to have some mention of other ways of life than no mention at all.

Again, the film is stolen by Amitabh Bachchan, as Anthony Gonsalves, brought up as a Christian, and demonstrating his religious adherence by jumping out of an oversized Easter egg at the start of a crazy musical number.

Unlikeliness rating: 5/5 for the first 15 minutes, which covers more narrative than many full films elsewhere. And that’s just the start – the film continues at a hectic pace, with car chases, jokes, and gunfights.

Greatest moment in the film is the final scene where the three brothers collaborate using outrageous disguises to hold up a wedding. They succeed, with a lot of music and dancing en route. 

Three Idiots (2009)

Here is a much more recent Bollywood film, and it reveals a major trend in Bollywood away from the traditional genres of large-scale and very colourful Hindu wedding ceremonies, good heroes versus evil gangsters, and similar rather hackneyed themes, to more contemporary themes. Three Idiots is a good example. While ostensibly following the student careers of three pranksters, headed by Aamir Khan, looking at least 20 years younger than his age - he was 44 when the film was made, but looks very convincing as a young student.  Yet while retaining the trappings of Bollywood, there is a serious point to the film, revealing the pressure felt by students in higher education within an exam-driven culture, unsympathetic teachers, and boys-school culture of bullying and oppression of new students. The film has an excellent script, in one scene revealing just how money-focused a suitor for the heroine is. When a drink is spilled on his shoes, his first response is to tell everyone how much the shoes cost. We all know people like that.

Other indicators of a drive towards more present-day concerns include Queen (2014), based on the startling idea that a woman jilted at the altar by her would-be partner might want to go on a honeymoon by herself; and Dil Se (1998), a love story set against a background of terrorism. The terrorists are a minority group fighting for recognition and political rights – a theme covered with sensitivity and awareness, yet at the same time, Dil Se includes a magnificent musical number set on the roof of a moving train – one of the great set-pieces of Bollywood, I am told, and it looked quite astonishing, filmed before AI tools made it unnecessary for most stunts to be carried out live.

So the future looks good for Bollywood, as long as it continues to resist the government's continuing push towards an unthinking Hindu perspective for every new film. The dancing and singing have not (entirely) gone away, but the plots have moved towards a new realism and to some awareness of contemporary issues. I certainly look forward to my next encounter with the next blockbuster, including a thumping musical soundtrack, fast-moving plot, and lots of action.

Books that can be right as well as wrong

 

Peter Thonemann, writing in the TLS, makes a passionate celebration of Moses Finley, the historian: 

More than any other individual, it is Finley we have to thank for shaking ancient history out of its mid-century belletristic torpor and restoring it to a position of respectability among the historical sciences. 

More specifically, Thonemann goes on to describe Finley’s best-known book, The World of Odysseus (1954) and it is very apt (for once) that his review (of a series of essays by academics about Finley) is entitled “Homer for everyone”. When I read Finley, I felt he was not talking down to you; he is writing for a general and a learned readership at the same time.

Interestingly, Thonemann makes the case for the book’s importance not in what it says, but for Finley’s refreshing approach.  Thonemann continues: 

Whether that argument is right or wrong (it is probably wrong) does not matter very much. What gave The World of Odysseus its extraordinary impact was not Finley’s overall thesis, but his uncompromisingly sociological approach. Finley was not interested in Homer’s poetry itself, but in what Homer’s poetry took for granted: the social relations, economic structures and ethical values that underlay the fictive narrative of the Iliad and Odyssey. 

For a reader like me, who had probably read no other books on the classics before reading Finley, the appeal was not just the subject matter. It was that Finley could write, in a straightforward and uncomplicated way, with genuine enthusiasm, about his subject.

 Here is the paradox of many great books. We read books for many different reasons, but unfortunately only rarely with enthusiasm. It is always a great surprise to discover a book that  captures your imagination by a combination of learning and ability to enthuse. And all the more fascinating to discover, years after you read a book for the first time in a fever of excitement, that actually the argument was full of holes – and yet it doesn’t matter, because the author has communicated their thesis with passion. Here are a few examples:

Ernst Panofsky: he carries you along with his astonishing range of visual and literary sources, and his tone so confident that you feel whatever he is saying must be correct, and all other (modern) critics wrong;

Paul Hazard: the French historian of the Enlightenment, who seizes you with enthusiasm, for the eighteenth century, one of the least interesting periods for students of literature; 

George Dangerfield, whose The Strange Death of Liberal England grips you from the title alone. Here are the opening lines of the book: 

The right honorable Herbert Henry Asquith was enjoying a brief holiday on the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, bound for the Mediterranean on some pleasant excuse of business …

Dangerfield’s depiction of the Suffragettes seems to have aged badly; but that doesn’t detract from the novelistic quality of a dry historical narrative.

E P Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Classes; I cannot read the name of some East Anglian towns and villages without remembering the raw injustice of industrialisation foisted on a rural community.

These are writers who write with learning but equally with passion. What Thonemann points out is that they can be wrong in their argument, but right in their passion. Perhaps all education could consist of celebrating “wrong” books. Who cares about the argument when they could write so grippingly? 

What's wrong with a meritocracy?

 

Like many of my generation, I grew up in what I later believed was a meritocracy. I went to a grammar school, because of my score in the 11+ exam. I did not become part of the establishment. I did not study at Oxford or to Cambridge, but nonetheless I believed I had been successful because of that magic examination result. My father loaded lorries; I made my living from my pen. Am I a success or a victim of the meritocracy? 

Thinking about a meritocracy is something that occurs after watching a thought-provoking programme on TV such as The Good Place. That series at least made its watchers ponder why some people got to heaven (or The Good Place, as they call it nowadays) and others did not. 

Like many others, I used the term “meritocracy” thinking it had positive connotations. Occasionally, in my reading, I would notice a few slightly uncomfortable statements that made me reflect on a life that was not a meritocracy. I read somewhere that UK members of Parliament used not to be paid. This meant, according to one commentator, that they were doing the job for altruistic reasons, not because they simply wanted the money and were prepared to jump through hoops to get such a lucrative post. This argument did make me ponder; was anyone an MP just for the money? The scandal of MP’s expenses suggested that altruism was no longer high on the list of reasons for people becoming parliamentary representatives. 

It was a shock to discover that Michael White, in his book The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), intended the term as a criticism, or at least as an argument for or against [all quotes are from the 1994 introduction to the book]: 

The book was, in other words, intended to present two sides of the case – the case against as well as the case for a meritocracy. It is not a simple matter and was not intended to be. 

It was even more of a surprise to learn that White was responsible for coining the term. “Meritocracy” was his term for what you had when you rejected “nepotism, bribery, or inheritance” [from White’s 1994 Preface to the book]. According to White, there is a meritocracy because “otherwise the people who exercise power are going to be undermined by self-doubt and people over whom the power is exercised become indignant and subversive because they deny that the others have any right to lord it.” 

What’s wrong with the term? First, it tends to be used by the very people who believe themselves to be members of the new elite. Not surprising if they are positive. But, argues Young:

A good society for provide sinew for revolt as well as for power. But authority cannot be humbled unless ordinary people, however much they have been rejected by the educational system, have the confidence to assert themselves against the mighty.

'The dubious appeal of ESG investing is for dupes only'

Some months ago I took a deep breath and moved my pension from a traditional pension provider into an investment fund. I wouldn’t call myself a skilled investor. I didn’t look very hard at the options, but before choosing which fund to put my money in, I did glance at the biggest investments within each of the available funds to see what where the money was going. I was shocked when the first fund I looked at had for its largest single investment British American Tobacco. I couldn’t believe it. Instead, I chose an ESG (ethical, social, and governance) fund, that invests only in companies with these goals. Was I wrong? According to the FT, I am “a dupe”. 

In an opinion piece in the FT, 24 August 2020, entitled “The dubious appeal of ESG investing is for dupes only”, Robert Armstrong gives some reasons for rejecting ESG investing. In so doing, he reveals some of the values at the core of the Financial Times.

 Why not invest in ESG funds? Because, according to Mr Armstrong:

1. They do not provide “adequate” returns
2. They provide cosmetic, rather than real change
3. Behind ESG and stakeholderism lies a dangerous idea: Shareholders’ economic interests and the social good always harmonise over the long run.

Armstrong’s argument is that since economic interests and social good do not always harmonise, there is no point in seeking for them ever to harmonise.

First, let's confirm the terminology. “Stakeholderism”, also referred to in the article as “stakeholder capitalism”, is defined in Investopedia as follows:

Stakeholder capitalism is a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all their stakeholders. ... Supporters of stakeholder capitalism believe that serving the interests of all stakeholders, as opposed to only shareholders, is essential to the long-term success and health of any business. 

Mr Armstrong has a PhD in philosophy, so you would expect him to know how to argue a point. He is also chief editorial writer, so you can assume he offers a fairly standard FT approach. Here he argues that companies ultimately make decisions for shareholders, not stakeholders, and this commits them to making short-term policies. As he memorably states:

 it is obvious that shareholders’ and stakeholders’ interests can conflict. If they did not, there would be far fewer lay-offs announced and far fewer oil wells drilled.

For some perhaps unconscious reason he describes drilling an oil well as a necessary short-term activity for a company. I know it is a common phrase, used without thinking, but drilling an oil well is the very thing that investors in ESG companies hope will not happen. We don’t drill oil wells any more, Mr Armstrong. I would suggest the goals of ESG investors (certainly my goals) are as follows. I want companies to carry out their activities for the long term. I mean by that a sustainable activity, not one that results in the destruction of the planet (the example of Rio Tinto destroying a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal cave in Australia to expand their iron ore mine springs to mind). Perhaps Mr Armstrong regards that destruction as an understandable and necessary short-term activity that companies will do.

In any case, he states, we have “democratic action and the rule of law” to fall back on, in case companies misbehave. Although nobody lost their job at Rio Tinto after this environmental disaster, so perhaps there is no law against destroying cultural heritage. In any case, the law is usually a few years behind the latest commercial practices. Perhaps that explains why the FT regularly reports on the activities of tobacco companies and praises them when their profits increase – see, for example, “BAT beats profit forecasts as US stimulus bolsters sales” (30 July 2020). The “US stimulus” they refer to is government unemployment support during the coronavirus pandemic, which “has meant smokers have not been forced to switch to cheaper brands, smoke less or quit”. Perhaps if you follow Mr Armstrong’s principles, than companies like BAT should carry on doing what they do, and continue being one of the biggest dividend payers in the FTSE 100. You would be a dupe to think otherwise. 

Postscript: about a week later, the Chief Executive of Rio Tinto was sacked. 

The English Terraced House (Stephan Muthesius)

At the very mention of the word “house”, I start asking questions. After all, houses are quite close to our hearts – we all grew up in a house. How does a house influence the way we live? Do people in big houses and in bungalows lead different lives? One of these questions that I ask whenever I see a new housing development is, why is there a preference today for detached and semi-detached houses over terraces? In some places today (Oxford and Cambridge) terraced houses are wildly fashionable, in other places (Hartlepool, Newcastle) they are slums to be removed and all traces obliterated.

So I turned to Stephan Muthesius, The English Terraced House (1984), with great anticipation. Will it answer my questions?

Sadly not. But is it fair to condemn a book so full of detail simply because it doesn’t ask the same questions you ask? Well, I think so. Especially because this book not only fails to answer the questions I had, but often fails on its own terms. Mr Muthesius has written about 100,000 words, so he should have space to answer some at least of these questions. And one question I have is why a book on the English Terraced house uses the American term “row house” when the book doesn’t consider American examples. 

Instead, what we have, although wonderfully detailed, is rather complacent, and uncritical. For many people, the horrors of industrialisation are revealed most starkly by row upon row of grim terraced housing imposed without feeling on Welsh valleys or Peak District hills; but there is little condemnation here. 

By concentrating on the English terraced house, the author fails to compare and contrast to determine what is distinctive about English development. It would be good to understand why so 19th- and early 20th-century housing in Danish towns is mainly flats, compared with terraced housing in England. Worse, he accepts without question many general assertions about things English that have no place in a scholarly essay: 

Architects and planners from abroad still come to study the English set-up, as they have done for the past hundred years. We have those better dwellings because we seem more capable of a more judicious, small-scale kind of planning than other countries.

 Notice the imperceptible shift from the third person to “we”. Muthesius doesn’t mention that his own father was one of those “architects from abroad” who became an evangelist for the garden city in the early years of the 20th century. This is another problem with The English Terraced House. Muthesius senior wrote about “The English House”, not “The English Terraced House”. Much of what Muthesius writes about – speculative development, building controls, the ‘ideal’ family dwelling – is not restricted only to terraced housing. The debate, and the results, were about housing generally, including many different building types. In fact the garden city development at Letchworth include few if any terraced houses. But all this is rather incidental to Muthesius, who devotes much more space to small-scale changes in style within the terraced house, as if it were unconnected with other types of accommodation. For the detailed information we are grateful, but it only represents a part of the story. There is no mention of the systematic development by Oxford and Cambridge colleges that led to the creation of much of the housing of those cities. 

I grew up in a terraced house in a suburb (Orpington) that pretended to be part of the garden city movement. There was a garden in front, a garden at the rear, and a small green area between our house and the other side of the street (with a sign saying “no ball games”). The fact that it was a terraced house was not really the point; the houses could have been detached or semi-detached, but the values would have been the same.   

The terraced house was a regional phenomenon. Although it is found in other countries, it appears to be something characteristic about the England and Wales (I don’t know enough about Ireland to judge), at a particular historical period, say between 1800 and 1960. Terraced houses are still being built, but far less frequently today. 

Does the book define its terms? I can find no definition of “terraced house” in it. It is a house adjoining others, with access only from the front or from both front and rear. They often (but not always) have access from front to back via a passageway, which is typically shared between several properties. 

One key implication of the terraced house is that it was typically built to minimize cost of development by sharing some of the outer walls with neighbouring properties. In other words, the terraced house is the result of a large-scale development rather than an individual builder creating one building at a time. One implication of the terraced house, in other words, is speculation. Muthesius does include speculation in the index, but the passages on speculation are few and unsatisfying: “it would be pointless even to try and give an account of all major speculative developments”. Why? For example, the pattern of some building in North Oxford makes much more sense when it is understood that the Oxford colleges parcelling out the land provided it to speculative builders in lots that could be bid for, which accounts for the variety of buildings in some streets rather than homogeneous development.

In fact, I find Muthesius’ book maddening for three reasons:

First, its accretion of detail without providing signposts to interpret it. The book is poorly organised. Page numbers are placed on the inside of pages, near the gutter, rather than the outside where a reader can see them more easily. Colour plates are scattered unsystematically through the book, so the reader has to hunt without a signpost. The index appears to have a reference for every proper name in the book, with no indication of major or minor references.

2.   Secondly, there is a failure to quote sources for many of its statements. References, where given, are often inadequate as a source. Here are some examples, the first three all from page one, none of which has an attribution:

Most town walls had lost their importance by the 16th century, and there was no need to squeeze into a narrow area within these walls, as there was in so many continental cities.

 

The leading “estates” in the country were often the most important developers of “estates” of houses in the towns. The use of the same word in both contexts is significant and seems peculiar to the English set-up.

 

The suburb developed early in England.

 

Work on the building site was generally well paid. [p28]

Finally, the book focuses on architectural detail when the real interest of terraced housing is not so much the architecture (much of it repetitive, low quality and lacking in innovation) as the social and political environment that led to this kind of housing being built. Plus, there is a more recent angle. The author seems almost unaware of the phenomenon he was participating in himself, as a lecturer living in Norwich in the 1970s, and choosing to occupy an older terraced house rather than a more contemporary house (a decision that might even have been slightly bohemian for its time). Today, in Cambridge, some of the most desired housing is to be found in poorly-built terraced housing largely for railway workers off Mill Road near Cambridge Station. How did terraced housing become so fashionable? The book doesn’t answer this question.  

4.     There are no references in the index for “housing association” or “council house” or “social housing”, but there are over 50 index references for “brick”. This suggests a sense of priorities many of us don’t share. Could the state raise standards and provide beauty?

To be fair, the merits of the book are many. There is a wealth of detail. This is a useful book to refer to. Many of the illustrations are fascinating and documents in themselves. Muthesius is clearly very well read on 19th-century books on housing, such as J J Stevenson, House Architecture (1880), and T Webster and Mrs W Parkes, An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, 1844. There is no denying their contemporary validity as primary sources.

But ultimately, at the end of the book, Muthesius returns to the issue that clearly concerns him most. Can the terraced house be an art form? Not according to Ruskin, Morris, and Unwin, who “condemned millions of houses with their countless items of craftsmanship belonging to the polite vernacular - if such a formulation is permissible” [p256]. Ultimately, such a question is meaningless today, as the industrialization of building led to a mechanical standardization, which is what we for the most part live with today. As with many other aspects of this book, it is an answer to the wrong question: We don’t read a book on terraced housing to worry about if it is art. Perhaps another book might address how local authorities attempted to bring beauty to the working-class house. But not this book.