Researching Folk Tales, Fairy Tales, and Fables Presented by The Brothers Grimm.

A wonderful resource exists for researching old stories, particularly Folk and Fairy Tales and Fables. This resource is easily accessible on the World Wide Web at the University of Pittsburgh official website, and features a a special section on The Brothers Grimm, entitled, Grimm Brothers Home Page.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html

What you will find at the Grimm Brothers Home Page: pertinent biographical and historical information, dates of important events in the lives of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, scholarly publication dates of the Brothers Grimm works, information on tale-types, motifs, etc.

The University of Pittsburghs site, section on the Brothers Grimm offers plentiful links away from the site where Brothers Grimm works can be found online, in original language works as well as translated works and documents. Some of the links lead to Google Books documents, scanned pages, as well as Wikipedia, National Geographic, and German Language sites. A significant amount of text and information, however, exists right on the University of Pittsburgh website, and many of the links, when clicked, lead to other University of Pittsburgh hosted pages.

The Grimm Brothers were born in Hanau, Germany, and this city keeps a special web space maintained in honour of the famous scholars. The University of Pittsburgh provides the links to Hanau, Germany hosted pages about the Grimm Brothers.

The website link route (on the Hanau, Germany page) to find more information is to select the following links from the available menus:

Directory - Archives and Libraries - Museums - Brothers Grimm House or Brothers Grimm Museum Kassel

The Brothers Grimm House selection shows a map where the Brothers Grimm once lived, and provides outbound links to: HYPERLINK "http://www.brueder-grimm-haus.de/"

The Brothers Grimm Museum Kassel selection provides an outbound link to: HYPERLINK "http://www.grimms.de/"

To read from many of the non-English websites listed in the Brothers Grimm pages at the University of Pittsburgh site, you can use Chrome browser with a translator installed in the browser (if it isnt already installed, its a simple process to go to Chrome add-ons or extensions and add a translator) to read the pages. Firefox browser has translator add-on and extension applications, as well.

If youre interested in scholarly information on The Brothers Grimm, the University of Pittsburgh site is definitely a great place to start. Information found here is presented by persons qualified to provide accurate historical details and University level theories and arguments about the Grimm Brothers material. Youll even be able to locate several high quality articles on Grimm Tales here - not all, but many of the most popular and commonly studied pieces and folklore/fairy tale and fable themes/types, such as, The Frog King (story), Cinderella Stories (theme), Little Red Riding Hood (story), Animals in Exile (tale type), Witchcraft Legends (tale type), Old Dogs Learn New Tricks (fable type 101) are on-site.

Scholars have also published, on this site, information on tale types, motifs, etc., using the Aarne-Thompson tale type index. The Aarne-Thompson Motif-Index and Tale Type Index (abbreviated, A-T or AT) is what accomplished folklorists, fairy tale and fable researchers use to classify story motifs, types, themes, etc. The base of Aarne-Thompson classifications have been updated to include (since around 2004) Hans-Jorg Uthers developments to the Aarne-Thompson system of classification (which allows for International Tales classification, whereas the former and long-standing AT system was based on primarily European and Near Eastern tales). Basically, the University of Pittsburgh scholars who have maintained the Grimm Brothers pages use the Aarne-Thompson-Uther system (often provided as a ATU number), so readers can be sure the most updated methods are being used to display information about stories, tales, motifs, themes, folklore, fables, fairy tales, and related details.

For more information on AT system details and types of folktales and their classifications:

http://oaks.nvg.org/folktale-types.html

At the lowest portion of the University of Pittsburghs Grimm Brothers Home Page, you can veer away from Grimm topics and follow a link to other works, listed as Germanic Myths, Legends, and Sagas. Following this link leads to similarly scholarly information on the link topics, and is well worth checking out.

Unfortunately, on the Germanic Myths, Legends, and Sagas page, I found a lot of dead links and Error 404 (page not found) pages. These may be being moved or updated at this time and may work correctly in the near future. Despite the 404 errors, many of the links DO work and connect to more information on Folk and Fairy Tale research and story resources both on-site and at other places on the Internet.

A lot of work has been put into the site area concerned with The Brothers Grimm and things related to stories, folklore, fables, fairy tales, etc. A reader/researcher can easily spend several hours of learning time at this site and it will never be a moment or second of time wasted here (save for backtracking back off of some of the error 404 pages). Although this information is presented, posted and maintained primarily by scholars and people connected with the University of Pittsburgh, the information found on-site is accessible to all. Most of the information is reader-friendly for people from grades 7 or so on up. A few of the more technical, difficult to understand articles have links leading to break-down or supplemental information and articles that ARE easier to understand. There are very few difficult articles here.

All in all, the Grimm Brothers Home Page is a gem of information on The Brothers Grimm, folklore, fairy tales, fables, tale types and related information. If you bookmark the page, youll be able to return to continue learning over a long term. So much information is in these pages and links it is doubtful that a visitor would visit just once and come away with curiosity or scholarly needs sufficiently satisfied.

Date of writing: March 22, 2014. Author: Mythbuster (Alias).