Starting with snow white

Snow White, 
[…] the object of 
countless reinterpretations” (Kawan 341). Thus, rather than an inclusive history or 
acknowledgment of how the process of oral storytelling makes and remakes a particular 
tale, this study seems to narrow the lens of the literary fairy tale, in some ways devaluing 
the competing voices of which it had been composed.
Kawan is not the first to pay this sort of homage to the Grimms’ tale. Others have 
recognized the Grimms as having generated the “truest” version based on circulating oral 
narratives.
28
I highlight her study in particular because of its contemporaneity, 
demonstrating that this view of the Grimms’ prominence is still difficult to counter or 
revise. Moreover, I find it interesting that the study proposes a history of the 
Snow White
28
See Bettelheim’s “Foreword” in Brackert and Sander; Dégh’s “What did the Grimm Brothers Give to and 
Take from the Folk?”; and Blamires, 
Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children’s
Books 1780-1918

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tale 
and 
at the same time seems oppositional to providing such a lineage. Because she 
disputes so many probable precursors in the name of a “correct” or “full” version (or, one 
might say, 
the 
“authentic” version), her literary history seems to venerate the Grimms’ 
version as foundational. Relatedly, this chapter has emphasized a similarly oppositional 
folkloric, historical, and literary lineage. This one allows for Basile’s and Musäus’ tales, 
but only to a point—a scholarly point, that is.
What gives Basile’s and Musäus’ tales power to survive alongside the Grimms’ is 
their folkloric positioning, formal stylistic elements, and cultural consciousness.
However, the Grimms prevailed upon the work of their precursors by adapting folklore to 
print culture in a way that Basile, in his time, could not have, and Musäus did not 
endeavor to. It was not only the adaptation of the form, but the adaptation to engage the 
once upon a time told, now written, story in education and childhood entertainment. 
In sum, the Grimms’ influence was contingent upon their evolving adaptation to a 
transforming society. Consider again the conditions under which these tales were 
produced. That which was understood to be “genuine” or “authentic” folklore, the 
Grimms gathered. That which Germanic culture had asked for, the Grimms produced.
The Grimms were not married to their initial volume, but flexible enough to adapt to the 
tastes of print culture and assume a style that would match the needs of a larger, adult and 
child audience. The many revisions of their volumes, and of the 
Snow White
tale 
specifically, are indicative of this quality. In essence, what their world asked of them, the 
Grimms readily gave.

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The conditions under which Disney generated his first full-length feature film, 
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
were not altogether different, as I will show in 
Chapter 4. As the Grimms had, Disney rose to meet the needs of his time with a unique 
representation of the fairy tale, one that had not forgotten its folkloric foundation, but 
transformed it with technology to reach the masses in a new way—both artistically and 
formally speaking. Further, he did so during a time when America was much in need of 
the rejuvenating power which fairy tale provides. Although others had paved the way for 
Disney’s transformation of the fairy tale in the United States, these American precursors 
similarly fall away, leaving Disney’s version in the limelight. One might, therefore, 
equate the dominance of his tale(s) to that of the Grimms’, favored above other German, 
Russian, or even Italian variants of the