ABSTRACT
The English term fairy tales (Feenmärche) initially referred to tales about fairies, but when Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reconceptualized the genre as “Märchen” in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–1815; Grimms’ Tales), they meant magic tales, folk tales, etiologies, anecdotes, animal tales, jests, burlesques, and legends rather than tales about fairies. The Grimms’s definition, because their collection enjoyed so privileged a position among European intellectuals throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries, came to characterize the modern genre, which was often called the “Gattung Grimm.” The English-language term, however, remained fairy tales, which long confused efforts to define the genre, particularly since it was also applied to the Grimms’ tales, which contained many Germanically magic creatures but few fairies. Recent anglophone terminological distinctions between “tales about fairies” and “fairy tales” have begun to ease that problem.
