Entertainment / Literature / Fairy Tale: In common parlance, a tale about elves, dragons, hobgoblins, sprites, and other fantastic magical beings set vaguely in the distant past (once upon a time'), often in a pseudo-medieval world. Fairy tales include shape-shifting spirits with mischievous temperaments, superhuman knowledge, and far-reaching power to interfere with the normal affairs of humanity. Other conventions include magic, charms, disguises, talking animals, and a hero or heroine who overcomes obstacles to 'live happily ever after.' The most famous compilers include Hans Christian Anderson (Denmark), the Grimm brothers (Germany), and Charles Perrault (France). Fairy tales grew out of the oral tradition of folktales, and later were transcribed as prose narratives. Examples from the European tradition include the tales of Prince Charming, Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella. An example from Middle-Eastern tradition would be Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. In scholarly literature, fairy tales are also referred to by the German term m???¤rchen. In spite of the stories' surface simplicity, many critics note that fairy tales often contain psychological depth, especially in terms of childhood anxiety and wish fulfillment. Modern writers such as Thackeray, Oscar Wilde, Ruskin, Anne Rice, Ursula Leguin, and Jean Ingelow have tried their hand at writing fairy tales. Some critics have suggested that the Wife of Bath's narrative in The Canterbury Tales and the lais of Marie de France also have qualities of the fairy tale--especially wish fulfillment.
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Tale Noun Synonyms: falsehood, lie, fiction, fib, fabrication, untruth, falsification, exaggeration, tall tale or story, (cock-and-bull) story, fish story
Tale Adjective Synonyms: story, narrative, report, account, record, chronicle, history, narration, recital, anecdote
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Entertainment / Literature / Setsuwa Tale: A Japanese tale dating to the10th-14th centuries, typically sharing a grotesque mode of representation, especially a tendency to depict the body and bodily functions in bizarre or fantastic ways. MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Procatalepsis: Procatalepsis is a rhetorical strategy in which the writer raises an objection and then immediately answers it, by doing so, the rhetor seeks to strengthen his argument by dealing with possible object MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Hypercatalectic: A hypercatalectic line is a line of poetry with extra syllables in it beyond the expected number due to anacrusis, as opposed to a acatalectic line (which is missing one or more expected syllables) or MORE