Welcome to the English 101 Research Guide for Cliff Davis
This Guide includes books, eBooks, articles, web sources and more on the topic of fairy tales. Use the tabs at the top of the page to navigate to specific types of sources for specific topics.
"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life" – Schiller
Research Paper Tips
Your paper should include deep reading and analysis of the actual fairy tales themselves.
A manageable paper will focus on a single fairy tale or a few.
The required paper length is 2100 words (7 pages).
Six outside scholarly sources, other than the primary work (the fairy tale) are required.
Some topic ideas include:
comparing a fairy tale over time (analyzing the social and cultural history);
comparing different fairy tales to explore a common theme, characters, plot, stylistic elements;
comparing the original tale(s) to film or TV adadptations;
exploring conventions of fairy tales such as the moral lesson, characters (good versus bad), overcoming obstacles, magic, happily ever after, etc.;
using Propp's theory of functions (Tatar 502-7) to identify recurrent elements in a specific cycle of fairy tales like Cinderella.
