Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Anne Kauth's picture

Yeh-Shen

My tale that interested me most was Yeh-Shen, the Chinese Cinderella story. Morals in fairy tales translate into every language and I never really considered that tales like Cinderella or Briar Rose cannot be claimed by one country or culture. I found the Yeh-Shen tale to be the most beautiful of the three Cinderella stories as well as the most profound for me. It is harsher than the story I grew up with because Yeh-Shen violently loses her friend the fish and in the end the step mother and sister are harshly punished, but the descriptions are rich and really bring to life a vivid picture of the fairy tale which makes the moral that much more important. I really enjoyed this reading assignment, I have never read so many tales from different cultures and it was amazing to compare the similarites and differences in storytelling.

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
9 + 6 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.