Fairy Tales: Literary Analysis ENGL 2341
Due Date: 11:59pm on Sunday, October 1 through eCourses.
Length and Format: The literary analysis should be at least 900 words and should not exceed 1200 words in length (which will roughly translate to a length of about 3½ pages) and should be formatted according to MLA guidelines.
Assignment Overview: Students should now be familiar with the analysis of short stories based upon important symbolic evidence and contextual awareness that can then be used to help us create an accurate interpretation of what the story is trying to communicate.
Fairy Tales are stories that have often come into existence as a response to some larger cultural issue and much of what is included within the fairy tale serves to symbolically represent various aspects of that society.
For example, in class we examined the role of the wolf in the one of the “Little Red Riding Hood” stories and identified this particular character as symbolic of a particular issue that the culture would have been responding to, namely sexual predators.
Objective: In this analysis, students will choose a fairy tale and will continue to explore and examine the tale according to both its context and the various symbols that it utilizes in order to convey a larger idea about the culture that produced it.
→ Students should make an attempt to identify 2-3 important symbols within the fairy tale and then fully explore their possible meanings, how they are used throughout the story, and how your understanding of the symbols and their representation shapes or affects your interpretation of the story.
❖ Students should also identify some important points of context that help show what the author might be responding to in the story: look at the author’s life, the culture and time period in which they wrote the story, etc.
◆ Ultimately you will make an argument here about what you believe the author was trying to argue or critique in their culture through this story: the symbols are what you will use to tie your interpretation to the context of what