ABSTRACT
In a number of chapters on the ancient versions of fairytales we have noticed that some of our clearest and some of our most complex examples turn up not in short mythographers’ summaries, but in tales long enough to be described as romances in their own right. Several of these we might most conveniently describe as novellas; others seem long enough to be advanced as full-blown novels. Our first example was quite unexpectedly Joseph and Asenath, which no one had suspected hitherto of being a Cinderella, but which is generally now accepted as a novel or novella. Equally clear is the case of Chaereas and Callirhoe, which we have seen as an exceptionally full instance of the Innocent Slandered Maid. We have also vindicated the claim of the central tale of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Cupid and Psyche, to its characterisation by the author himself as an anilis fabula. We have found that one ancient novel, that of Chione (‘Snow-girl’) actually carries the very name of a fairytale heroine. Yet even where scholars have translated the title as Snow White, they have not expected to find the fairytale and the problem has been allowed to go without investigation. We have found that three out of the four fragments substantiated or suspected have thematic connections with one or other of the two principal Snow Whites. And we have noted that Xenophon of Ephesus’ story, though much more problematic, has the names of principal characters and a substantial part of its plot convergent with the same tale of Snow White.
