- Oral Tradition
- Teach a moral or cultural lesson, i.e. not to go off alone into the woods
- Set in past
- Include fantasy elements such as enchanted settings (forests, castles, kingdoms…)
- Include unusual characters such as witches, ogres, talking animals…
- Clear good & bad characters
- Includes typical story layout: problem-climax-resolution
- Happy ending
- Power of Three (also used in telling jokes, marketing, Olympic medals, slogans…)
- Numbers 4 and 7 also important (7 = number of God)
- Christian beliefs & traditions present
- Coming of Age
- Role of female characters, esp. of adolescent girls
- Transformation – often involuntary
- Cleverness – distributed according to gender & age
- Justice – for whom?
- Social Class – rich become poor, deserving poor become rich
fabenglishteacher 