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Feb. 12th, 2007 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twincityhackerI've been reading several L. Frank Baum books, and I've learned something.
The Wizard of Oz books are set up to apply the Wodehouse philosophy to fairy tales - light hearted entertainment with very few lessons on morality, skipping the majority of the unpleasentess. Of course, as it grew out of fairy tales there's still death, invasions, kidnapping, and murder. It's just not dwelled on much. Even when the 'unpleasentness' a major plot point!
Best way to point this out would to read the introduction:
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum
Though, letting myself pretend to be a Royal Historian of Oz is way more fun than anything should have any rights to be. Since, really, reconciling the Torchwood faeries with the Oz faeries is a lot easier when you read Baum as similar to Wodehouse.
And that Jack is a lot like the faeries, in some respects.
The Wizard of Oz books are set up to apply the Wodehouse philosophy to fairy tales - light hearted entertainment with very few lessons on morality, skipping the majority of the unpleasentess. Of course, as it grew out of fairy tales there's still death, invasions, kidnapping, and murder. It's just not dwelled on much. Even when the 'unpleasentness' a major plot point!
Best way to point this out would to read the introduction:
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.
Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.
Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
L. Frank Baum
Though, letting myself pretend to be a Royal Historian of Oz is way more fun than anything should have any rights to be. Since, really, reconciling the Torchwood faeries with the Oz faeries is a lot easier when you read Baum as similar to Wodehouse.
And that Jack is a lot like the faeries, in some respects.
