Hello everyone! This is my fourth post and I would like to start expressing my gratitude for your involvement in my previous posts. For this reason I have chosen to talk about a very recurrent topic for all of my blog-partners: The truth about fairy tales. This time I am going to focus my research on different versions of two well-known stories.

I would like to start with “Aladdin”, as a starting point for the workshops that we have to do for next week. As you probably know, the original story of Aladdin was not based on an Arabian context. In fact, the main character of this story was a Chinese boy. I found other interesting differences, such as, the name of the princess (Badrulbudur), the tricks of the antagonist (that pretend to be a family member of Aladdin) or the role of the princess (who is tricked by the evil magician). But basically both stories follow the same structure: Someone from a situation of poverty became rich with tricks. Then a villain ruins the situation. But finally the protagonist recovers the comfortable life style, but in this case as he grows older. Of course there are many more differences. Here I provide you with some interesting resources to discover these differences:

http://interestingliterature.com/2013/01/30/surprising-facts-about-aladdin/ (short introduction)

http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/Brittany.htm (take your time to read)

Another popular story that I would like to mention is “Cinderella”. Last week in our English literature class we were dealing with three different versions of this story: The Grimm brothers’ story, the Perrault version and the Disney story. As I don’t want to be very repetitive I would like to present you other versions and their didactic possibilities. The Chinese version was written between 618 and 907 A.D. It includes some elements which belong to the oriental culture. For example, the taste for the little women (with the little feet), the polygamy, and the use of peculiar good luck symbols. In my opinion the most controversial topic to deal with in the school context is polygamy. In fact I think that it is a great way to introduce a cultural element that it is maybe difficult to understand for occidental students. Another version is the Native American one. It was created by the Abenaki tribe after the European colonization. This one is much more different than the Chinese version. This is because Native American culture is also very different. In this version we can find different spiritual characters and guardians of the elements. I think it could be great to deal with different customs to interpret the foreign cultures, and of course to work in a cross curricular way between cultures and literature.

In conclusion, you can find many different versions of very popular stories, and in my opinion they can work as the perfect link to unpopular topics (which are difficult to understand). With this research I have found a new world of possibilities to provide an extra sense to literature. I hope you find these ideas interesting, and of course I would be grateful to receive your ideas.