‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ is an 1838 fairy tale by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. One of the shortest among Andersen’s well-known tales, ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ is about a toy soldier who falls in love with a paper ballerina, and who undergoes a series of hardships, seemingly as […]
Tag: Fairy Tales
A Summary and Analysis of Italo Calvino’s ‘Apple Girl’
‘Apple Girl’ is an Italian folktale which was memorably told by Italo Calvino (1923-85) in his 1956 collection Italian Folktales. The story concerns a queen who gives birth to an apple, which the king of a neighbouring kingdom sees and falls in love with. Before we analyse ‘Apple Girl’ it […]
A Summary and Analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Red Shoes’ Fairy Tale
‘The Red Shoes’ (1845) is perhaps the strangest of all of Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known fairy tales. Divining the meaning of some of Andersen’s other stories for children is relatively easy, but a number of aspects of the meaning and symbolism of ‘The Red Shoes’ remain troubling. Let’s take a […]
A Summary and Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’
‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), included in his 1888 collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Whereas ‘The Selfish Giant’ (from the same collection) deals with Christian love and the title story is about socialism and kindness towards others in society, ‘The […]
A Summary and Analysis of the Three Billy Goats Gruff Fairy Tale
The tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff is well-known throughout Europe, and perhaps even further afield. But what is less well-known is that the story has its origins, not in French or German or Danish literature, like many other fairy tales that are well-known to English-speaking readers, but in […]