1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Fairy Tales from Far and Near," Katharine Pyle presents a captivating anthology that showcases a diverse array of folkloric narratives from around the world. Written with exquisite simplicity and a vivid imagination, Pyle's prose embodies the enchanting qualities characteristic of traditional fairy tales, while simultaneously weaving thematic elements of morality, adventure, and the human experience throughout each story. The book stands as a testament to the universal appeal of fairy tales, drawing on both Western and Eastern traditions, and reflecting the rich tapestry of human culture through whimsical storytelling. Katharine Pyle, an eminent children's author and illustrator of the early 20th century, was deeply influenced by the folklore of her time and her extensive travels. Her keen interest in the cultural narratives of various peoples is evident in the attention to detail and authenticity found in each story. Pyle's background in art and literature, combined with her dedication to preserving these traditional tales, culminated in this masterful collection designed to inspire wonder and imagination in young readers and adults alike. "Fairy Tales from Far and Near" is a must-read for lovers of folklore and fairy tales. It invites readers into a world where magic intertwines with profound life lessons, enriching our understanding of diverse cultures and the shared human experience. Perfect for both children and the young at heart, Pyle's enchanting stories captivate the imagination and make this anthology an invaluable addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Ähnliche
Fairy tales from far and near
Table of Contents
Introduction
In these pages, distance collapses as the marvelous draws close and the familiar reveals its hidden magic. Fairy tales thrive on thresholds—between homes and forests, villages and kingdoms, certainty and dream—and this collection lingers on those borders. The phrase far and near suggests not only geography but the span between the known and the strange, the child’s room and the wider world of wonder. Katharine Pyle’s stories invite readers to cross safely into that liminal space, where courage, kindness, and wit are tested and rewarded. Without giving away destinations, the journey itself becomes the point: an exploration of shared human longings shaped into memorable tale-patterns.
Fairy tales from far and near by Katharine Pyle is a curated gathering of folk and fairy narratives presented for a general audience, especially young readers. Pyle was an American writer and illustrator active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this volume belongs to that era’s lively interest in collecting and retelling traditional stories. First issued in the early decades of the twentieth century in the United States, the book reflects a publishing moment that prized accessible, engaging versions of older materials. Its title signals variety of setting and source, while the arrangement and tone align with the period’s emphasis on clear prose and a storyteller’s welcoming voice.
Readers can expect a brisk, inviting style that balances wonder with lucidity. The narratives move quickly, favoring vivid incident over elaborate description, yet they retain a musical cadence that suggests the rhythms of oral telling. The mood ranges from playful to solemn, with flashes of humor and moments of genuine peril framed to reassure rather than to alarm. Everyday objects and humble characters often stand alongside princes, spirits, and transformations, underscoring the genre’s belief that enchantment may arrive anywhere. Without elaborate apparatus, the book offers a seamless reading experience: a sequence of tales that can be enjoyed singly or in succession, each self-contained yet resonant with the others.
Pyle’s approach to adaptation reflects the ethics of her time: to gather stories from diverse traditions and render them in straightforward English for young listeners and readers. The retellings emphasize clarity of plot and a strong moral center, favoring archetypal patterns—tests, bargains, journeys, recognitions—over regional minutiae. This method preserves the tales’ narrative bones while smoothing variants for coherence. The prose avoids excessive ornament and relies on crisp pacing, allowing images and turns of fate to leave their mark. While the selection inevitably bears the sensibilities of its historical moment, the guiding aim is continuity of wonder, so that sources from different places feel kin without losing their distinct atmospheres.
Themes familiar to the fairy-tale tradition recur with fresh immediacy. Transformation, whether of fortune or form, sits beside questions of justice and desert: what people earn, what they inherit, and what they must learn. Kindness, courage, and cleverness serve as the traveler’s provisions; pride, greed, and folly become obstacles or warnings. The interplay of the far and the near is more than a title—it is a metaphor for understanding others and ourselves, suggesting that what seems distant can become intimate through attention and imagination. Chance and choice share the stage, as do the bonds of family and community that anchor characters amid the marvels they encounter.
For contemporary readers, the collection offers both pleasure and occasion for reflection. Its cross-cultural reach encourages curiosity about how different communities shape similar narrative patterns to meet local needs. At the same time, as with many retellings from its period, some framing choices and assumptions may feel dated, inviting thoughtful discussion about voice, representation, and adaptation. Read with awareness, the tales foster empathy and ethical imagination, offering shared spaces where values are tested in concentrated form. They also lend themselves to reading aloud, classroom exploration, and family conversation, where listeners can compare motifs, consider consequences, and ask how these story-forms continue to live today.
To enter Fairy tales from far and near is to step onto a road whose milestones are wonder, wit, and recognition. The book promises an experience at once varied and coherent: distinct adventures that illuminate one another, bound by a tone that is welcoming, clear, and quietly luminous. It invites readers to linger with old patterns that still feel new, to find companionship in brave and ingenious figures, and to notice how magic estrange and restores what we think we know. Above all, it offers the enduring pleasure of stories well told, carrying us outward and homeward by turns, across distances measured in imagination.
Synopsis (Selection)
Fairy Tales from Far and Near is a collection of traditional stories retold by Katharine Pyle, gathered from a range of cultures to present familiar and distant voices in one volume. The book arranges brief and longer narratives to guide readers from homely settings to enchanted realms, emphasizing clear, rhythmic prose suited to oral reading. Each tale keeps its essential pattern while fitting a consistent storytelling style. The emphasis falls on recognizable folk elements such as quests, bargains, trials, and transformations. Across the book, ordinary protagonists encounter wonders that test their character, while outcomes reflect customary folk justice and proportion.
The opening selections favor intimate, household adventures in which a child, a youngest sibling, or a humble worker meets a minor marvel that complicates daily routines. Promises are made and tested, small kindnesses are repaid, and sly bargains lead to comic reversals. Talking animals, helpful old women, and hidden doorways appear without elaborate explanation, establishing the matter of fact tone of folk wonder. Settings are described with enough detail to suggest fields, kitchens, and village roads, keeping the focus on behavior and consequence. These beginnings introduce patterns that the later tales will expand in scale and complexity.
As the collection moves outward, journeys replace errands, and the path leads into forests, mountains, and castles that stand slightly apart from ordinary life. Heroes and heroines accept tasks set by chance, custom, or royal decree, and they rely on courage, courtesy, and patience to proceed. Magical objects are gained through restraint or generosity rather than force. Encounters unfold as tests in which a truthful answer, a restrained appetite, or a timely gift earns passage. The narrative cadence remains brisk, with episodes linked by clear cause and effect, so the logic of wonder stays transparent even when marvels multiply.
Midway, courtly stories introduce questions of rank, identity, and recognition, bringing the rustic virtues of early pieces into halls where appearances mislead. Disguises complicate first impressions, and vows taken under unusual conditions must be honored despite pressure. Suitors face tasks designed to measure their worth in wit as well as strength. Mirrors, tokens, and riddles serve as proofs when memory and reputation falter. Pyle preserves the ceremonial pace of these episodes while keeping the actions direct, so attention stays on the decisive choice at each threshold. Without detailing outcomes, the movement signals that rightful order depends on tested character.
Interwoven with the court tales are nimble trickster pieces that shift the tone toward humor and resourcefulness. In these, clever commoners, quick witted servants, or talking beasts turn the tables on powerful but careless figures. Simple tools and pointed words accomplish more than force, and gains come through timing rather than confrontation. Local customs and turns of phrase give each episode a distinct flavor, indicating the broad range of the sources without heavy exposition. Because the reversals are swift, the stakes feel lighter than in the quest stories, yet the outcomes still underscore fairness and the balancing of advantages.
Another cluster dwells on enchantment and release, where curses, spells, and transformations frame the central dilemma. Characters are changed in form or confined by conditions that only steadfast conduct can unwind. The atmosphere grows more mysterious, with moonlit clearings, silent towers, and thresholds that divide the seen from the hidden. Helpers recur across tales as echoes of an older order that favors compassion and courage. Solutions rarely arrive in a single stroke; instead, repeated kindness or endurance unlocks the final freedom. These pieces deepen the motif of patience introduced earlier, extending it into matters of identity and fate.
In the later stretches, distant landscapes come to the fore, and travel becomes a means of comparison as well as adventure. Voyages over water, crossings of deserts or snows, and meetings with foreign rulers present customs that differ in surface detail yet resemble earlier tales in structure. Assemblies of helpers replace solitary striving, and neighbors or siblings learn to coordinate strengths. The collection thus widens the circle of concern from individual salvation to communal well being. While marvels continue, the narration retains economy, letting a few emblematic images stand for the strange, and steering attention to the choices that bridge divides.
Nearing its close, the book returns to smaller scales and everyday reckonings, where mislaid fortunes, mistaken judgments, and household disputes are settled with clarity. Characters who have learned prudence apply it to resolve quarrels and restore trust. Rewards are modest and fitting rather than grand, emphasizing sufficiency over splendor. The tone softens toward reconciliation, drawing together the lessons of daring, wit, and patience. By narrowing the distance between marvel and hearth, these final selections underline how folk wisdom enters common life, not merely heroic quests. The arrangement thus completes a gentle arc from near to far and back again.
Taken together, the tales present a consistent message about the sources of good fortune and the terms of fair dealing, while preserving the distinct voices of varied traditions. Pyle’s retellings maintain a steady, intelligible flow that allows similarities across cultures to emerge without flattening differences. The sequence moves from familiar settings through high marvels to reflective closures, giving readers a sense of travel and return. Key turns hinge on qualities within reach of any listener, such as kindness, restraint, and courage. The collection’s purpose is to share common patterns of wonder, arranged for clarity and lasting accessibility.
Historical Context
Fairy Tales from Far and Near is an anthology rather than a narrative set in one locale; its historical setting lies in the circumstances of its compilation in the United States during the early 1920s. Katharine Pyle (1863–1938), a Delaware-born writer-illustrator associated with the Wilmington–Philadelphia print culture, gathered and retold international folk materials for an American juvenile audience. The book emerged amid the late Progressive Era and the immediate post–World War I years, when mass schooling, expanding public libraries, and the juvenile book market converged. Its transnational frame reflects an American moment of heightened encounters with world cultures through immigration, imperial contact, museums, and world’s fairs, while its didactic gentleness suits reform-era expectations for children’s reading.
A major force shaping the book’s aims was the Progressive Era (c. 1890–1920), a period of reform addressing urban poverty, public health, and education. By 1918, every U.S. state had enacted compulsory school attendance, creating an unprecedented need for age-appropriate reading. Settlement houses, social workers, and teachers promoted morally instructive yet engaging stories for civic formation. Public libraries adopted specialized children’s rooms, staffed by trained librarians. Pyle’s anthology mirrors this milieu: clear plots, ethical dilemmas, and culturally framed wonders support the classroom and library mission of molding character and curiosity. The collection’s structure—short, self-contained narratives—aligns with graded reading and storytelling practices in schools and settlement clubs.
Women’s political and civic ascendancy culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), enfranchising women after campaigns by NAWSA leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt, alongside club networks like the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Earlier, Jane Addams’s Hull House (founded 1889, Chicago) modeled women-led educational outreach and cultural programming for immigrant families. These developments normalized women’s public authorship and pedagogical authority. Pyle’s position as a professional woman writing for children grew from this context. The anthology’s emphasis on prudent choices, domestic intelligence, and community obligation resonates with women’s reform agendas, and its retellings often center resilient girls and mothers, echoing contemporaneous arguments for women’s civic competence.
Child welfare reform provided another decisive backdrop. The federal Children’s Bureau was established in 1912; the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children advanced foster care over institutionalization; the Keating–Owen Child Labor Act (1916) sought to curb interstate commerce in goods made by child labor (struck down in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 1918), while the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Act (1921) funded maternal and infant health. These measures framed childhood as a protected stage requiring tailored culture. Pyle’s gentle moral arcs—rewarding honesty, compassion, and diligence—fit reform-era pedagogy that taught social responsibility without harshness. The book’s accessible language and episodic form reflect librarians’ and teachers’ techniques for nurturing attention and empathy in young readers.
World War I (1914–1918) and its American mobilization after April 1917 transformed cultural life through propaganda, relief work, and grief, followed by the 1918 influenza pandemic. In the war’s aftermath, demand rose for materials that could soothe, unify, and reimagine global relationships. Philanthropic networks, wartime publications, and returning soldiers broadened U.S. awareness of Europe, the Near East, and Asia. Pyle’s framing of tales from far and near implicitly proposes a moral commonwealth across borders, offering consolatory narratives where justice prevails and strangers become familiar. The anthology’s international scope thus mirrors a society seeking to rebuild connections and inculcate sympathy after mass violence and disease.
Mass immigration and nativist reaction form a crucial context. Ellis Island processed millions after 1892, with a peak in 1907. Restrictive measures followed: the Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests; the first Red Scare (1919–1920) and the Palmer Raids targeted suspected radicals; the Emergency Quota Act (1921) capped arrivals by national origin. In classrooms and settlement houses, cultural storytelling became a bridge between newcomers and native-born children. By presenting diverse folk materials without caricature, Pyle’s anthology functioned as a quiet counter to nativist suspicion, normalizing foreign names, customs, and moral universals and offering educators material to dignify immigrant heritages within civic education.
American imperial expansion and global exhibitions widened access to non-European traditions. The Spanish–American War (1898) yielded U.S. control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; Hawaii was annexed in 1898. Missionary presses, ethnological museums, and world’s fairs—especially the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago—circulated translated tales and cultural displays to American audiences, albeit through imperial lenses. Concurrently, the Carnegie program (1883–1929) endowed over 1,600 U.S. public libraries, and New York trade publishers built juvenile lists supported by halftone illustration and national distribution. Pyle’s anthology arises from this infrastructure: libraries seeking multicultural story hours, teachers needing readable folklore, and publishers marketing illustrated, durable collections for an expanding child readership.
The anthology operates as a discreet social critique by modeling ethical equality across cultures during a decade marked by quotas, raids, and anxious nationalism. Its recurrent elevation of humble protagonists and just rulers challenges rigid class hierarchies that industrial modernity intensified. Female wit and perseverance in several retellings subtly endorse the civic capabilities newly recognized in 1920. By treating distant traditions with respect rather than exotic spectacle, the book pushes back against imperial condescension and racialized pedagogy. In classrooms and libraries, it offered a practice of cultural reciprocity, aligning child welfare ideals with a normative vision of fairness that exposed the era’s exclusions and invited reform-minded empathy.
