The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales

The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove:
The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales
The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is a national treasure of the German people. Among its 210 stories there are a dozen or so which are such masterpieces that they have become a treasure that belongs to the childhood and the adulthood of the wholeworld. Ever since Bruno Bettelheim presented his psychoanalytic interpretation of the tales more than twenty years ago, scholars have been fascinated by the mysterious nature and continuing influence of these stories on the human imagination.One of the most intriguing suggestions originally made by Bettelheim was that underneath the psychological meaning of the stories he found hints of another, deeper layer of religious meaning, which he thought deserved serious attention. This suggestion has largely gone unexamined by contemporary scholarship. This book is an attempt to explore that fascinating challenge and delve into the religious roots of the tales' enchantment by studying them as the poetic expression of what the brothers Grimm thought they were—fragments of ancient faith.