Reflection of Myths, Folklore & Fairy Tales in Contemporary Children’s Literature of India: A Study
Abstract:
Today, stories have become a very important aspect of our daily lives. The authors today have tried to change the forms of conventional mythology to address the contemporary issues of today. Even though the retellings are changing with a different face each time the core essence of the story remains the same.The intended paper aims to deal with the revival of myths, folklore and fairy tales in the contemporary children’s literature of India. Re-telling Hindu myths has played an important role in revival of culture and in acting as a unifying force within the society. It helped in forming a nation state with an identity, history, and cultural heritage of its own. The paper will highlight how in a techno-mechanical society the influence of myths has shaped our lives and to what extent it has been successful in catering the needs and aspirations of the young minds.
Key Words: myth, folklore, culture, mythology, children’s literature
Introduction:
Mythology is an important part of any culture. It plays an important role in the traditions and rituals followed by people in the society. The intention of Indian mythological tales is to convey subtle facts, rules and laws to guide our daily lives. There are usually multiple stories explaining the same fact, occasion or festival with each version being right in its own merit. It is a result of natural evolution that the stories have passed on through generations but are we confident enough to explain to our children why we celebrate and observe these festivals, what is the significance of myths in our daily lives? Culture is ultimately what defines our society and humanity as a whole. In a world where our morals, beliefs and values are challenged every day, a good foundation and understanding of what made us who we are can help our children stay strong.
Myth transcends the boundaries of science and history. The word ‘myth’ comes from the Greek word ‘mythos’ meaning a word or story. And usually it portrays gods and goddesses, demons and supernatural beings and elements larger than life style that interact in different ways with the mortal ones. The varied symbols in the mythological stories provide frameworks for us to think beyond the restrictions of our horizons, and inspire us to find out the answers of the unanswerable queries like- from where we came from?; why we die?; where we might go after death? and so on. Though it is a world with modern advancement, these myths, folklore and fairytales form the base of storytelling worldwide and children literature is one of the genres which is largely influenced by it. In this context, we can say about archetypes which are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent. Myths on the other hand are products of the human imagination and the innate themes in myths are buried in local stories that become the specific identifiers of folk ideas, ethnic traditions and religions. True to their universal nature, archetypal characters and stories appear in myths across many diverse cultures. In relation to this, Carl Jung postulated that:
‘Humankind has a “collective unconscious, “a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbours themes and images that we all inherit. Literature, therefore, imitates not the world but rather the “total dream of humankind.” Jung has called mythology, “the textbook of archetypes” (Walker, 17).
Indian mythology is an integral part of Indian culture, which enriches it and makes it a unique one. Throughout the times, different stories and tales in Indian mythology have been orally transmitted from one generation to another. The stories and treatment of messages are mostly religious, spiritual and ethical in nature. And sometimes we see that these messages are conveyed through children’s literature for long lasting influence. Myth in children’s literature broadens new cognitive horizons that allow child readers to escape from their tedious lives, and gives a way to identify with the context hero that battles monsters and demons. It helps them to make sense of their place in the world, of birth and death, a move from childhood to adulthood, and of good and evil.
The forms of storytelling have drastically changed over a period of time. From cave paintings to novels, to movies, stories have fascinated mankind. Although the methods have changed, the desire to tell and hear stories has remained unchanged and still greatly impacts the way we look at life.The saying of myths has been intelligible to the masses and children alike, since the story objective is mainly on the physical and not upon psychological predicament. Most folk tales carried the cultural symbols and codes of behavioural expectations comprehensible to every devotee in those days and passed on through the ages on the endurance of the plot, action, humane virtues and the forces of the story. The situations and temperament of the tales fit into the lifestyle of each generation, transfering solutions to suit different places and linguistic groups. The young and old, alike, could relate to the pace of the story, straightforward conflicts, and the amazing actions flowing gracefully with an enchanting narrative. Further enchantment is contained in the sequences of drama and the characters that live in the real world and act in the real world where both, the narrator and the listener lived. No supernatural structures are created; no make-belief canvas is painted for the story to unfold. No parallel worlds exist. There is heaven, the abode of godly people living in luxury and golden glamour who are constantly molested by the demon kingdom of the nether giant-like creatures possessing a repulsive appetite.
Objectives of the Paper
Mythology and Children’s literature
“The history of children’s literature is a history of image as well as word. It is a history, too, of artefacts: of books as valued things, crafted and held, lived with and loved”. (322) Seth Lerer
Children’s literature is any literature that is written and produced for the benefit of children. The age range for children’s literature is from early childhood through the period of early adolescence. Fictitious and non-fictional works in various forms- contemporary realism, fantasy, fairy tales, poetry, essays, historical fiction, folklore, legends, myths and epics- all have their equivalent in children’s literature. Even in today’s techno savvy generation , its content attracts, instructs and entertains children. In Children’s Literature: A Very Short Introduction, Kimberley Reynolds defines the term ‘children’s literature’ as follows,
From newspapers and other media to schools and in government documents, it is understood to refer to the materials written to be read by children and young people, published by children’s publishers, and stocked and shelved in the children’s and/or young adult(YA) sections of libraries and bookshops.(1)
The aftermath of independence has helped to flourish children’s literature really to a great extent. Twentieth century has been particularly significant because creative adults produced outstanding fictions loaded with innovative mastery for children in the beginning years of the century. Publishers and authors mainly concentrated on the development of the nation, and here we can say that independence brought a collective spirit of progress focusing upon the newly emerging recognition of the child. The modern Children’s literature developed a philosophy more universal in nature strictly adhering to the current social developments. As a result of socio-political awareness, rise of democratic principles, the change in attitude towards the money-lender, the collapse of the feudal system, the social changes in the caste and class system, the spread of Gandhian principles and above all the changing role of the women in the society, a new framework of standards simultaneously emerged with the changing society. In this connection, we see that children’s literature undoubtedly focused on the real life situations and values, thereby reflecting major shifts in modern ways of the treatment of child’s psychological principles.
Even at present, a large portion of children’s literature caters to developing empathy, delight and pride in our heritage, resulting in reawakening of our genesis again and again. Accordingly, a large section of modern children’s literature consists in retelling folktales , the Ramayan and Mahabharat, Hanuman, Ganesha, Krishna etc in a new manner thereby promoting lifelong learning.
Kimberly Reynolds continues writing about the scope and possibility of children literature firmly as follows,
Currently, everything from folk and fairy tales, myths and legends, ballads and nursery rhymes – many of which date back to preliterate age as e-books, fan fiction, and computer games may come under the umbrella of children’s literature. (2)
When a particular children book content is analyzed from the analytical perspective, many well-defined and connected themes emerge. The common motif found in children’s literature of any age, undoubtedly, is imagination which is a basic element in mythology. A very prominent children’s writer Katherine Paterson states in A Sense of Wonder (1995), “Mythology and fairy tales deal directly with archetypes….they help children….. to face and conquer their inner dragons” (Agrawal 11).
Children’s literature in contemporary times
In a country like ours where tradition is righteous, parents usually select books for their kids, which they feel are far more useful in buying retold versions of tales based on mythology. Being familiar with these tales from their own childhood, they are confident that they are providing the right knowledge for their kids. Reading myths will keep the youngsters in touch with their heritage, culture or religion; and in turn they will follow, relate and inculcate the correct values in different situations of their lives. The greatest achievement of publishing story for children in India is the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) series of comic books, largely based on traditional and mythological stories. It shows the interest and fascination with myths in India.. Amar Chitra Katha (‘Immortal Pictorial Tales’) was first published by India Book House, Mumbai in the later half of the 1960s. It has the distinction of being both the first and the best-selling product of its kind in India. One great observation for the success of Amar Chitra Katha is found here as,
Amar Chitra Katha is an inseparable part of what future generations will inherit as the ‘Indian tradition’. It has found its permanent place on every Indian’s bookshelf. (Guha 162)
This is one of the greatest comics series where a reader can find pictorial presentation of a story. Anant Pai (1929-2011) is the man behind the success story of Amar Chitra Katha and thus, an initiator of children literature in Indian. Ananta Pai was the first person who denied the use of fantasy in his storytelling through his first thought was to use the script of Bhagavad Gita as the basis for the comics.
“With mythology so many things that we read don’t seem natural or possible ... You know the story of how Krishna lifts the Govardhan mountain on his one finger? Well, is this possible? Scientifically it is not. So I didn’t show this, there was no image of Krishna lifting the mountain. Instead, I just had people talking about it, saying,“Look, Krishna has lifted the mountain to shelter us.” That way I didn’t show anything unscientific, but didn’t completely ignore this episode in the story either.” (Pai, 1969)
Devdutt Pattanaik, one of India’s prominent mythologists, has many books for children at his acclaim. His list includes the Fun in Devlok series and Pashu. He explains, “These books were meant to help parents bring mythology into the lives of their children, make the gods more accessible in the case of Devlok, and make the animals of Hindu mythology more popular” (Varma 1)
The stories in Indian mythology vary from subtle maxim conveying tales of Panchatantra and Jataka-tales to subtle life paradigm defining stories from the Bhagvad-Gita, Ramayan and Mahabharat. A key point to note is that there are usually multiple stories explaining the same fact or occasion or festival or situation. So each version/retold story is right in its own merit. This is a result of the natural evolution the stories might have gone through in the process of being handed over from generation to generation for centuries. Now-a-days, we have animated movies like Bal Hanuman, My Friend Ganesha depicting the larger than life characters as small but playing a boisterous role.
Again if we look at the Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi, we find that the different themes in the mythical stories have captivated the readers and authors over generations. Recently, these stories are taking a new shape and blending in with the popular modern culture.
A Man becomes a Mahadev where he fights for good.
A Mahadev is not born as one from womb.
He is forged in the heart of battle, when he wages a war to destroy evil.
(Part of Neelkanth’s message, p.344, The Immortals of Meluha, 2010)
Here, it can be noted that Amish Tripathi (2010) has changed the whole concept of God; the God according to him is a human, who has been destined to follow his journey as a leader, to fight the war of good versus evil, who then becomes the God in the eyes of the followers. This whole new light on Shiva, The Destroyer God, became so popular that it became the bestseller, and still runs on the popular charts. (Goodreads, 2014)
Constructing Readers
The progression of research on children's responses to literature can be traced from notions about the construction of the reader to descriptions of the intersection of reader and text worlds and, more recently, to a focus on the wider social and cultural context of reading children's literature. Until recently, much of the theory, research, and practice related to children's and young adult responses to literature was influenced by educational studies of response to literature (e.g., Harding,1937; Purves & Rippere, 1968; Richards, 1925; Squire, 1964); work in literary theory, particularly from a reader-response perspective (Rosenblatt, 1978; Tompkins, 1980); and work in cognitive psychology (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Bruner,1990). I briefly address the ways these very different traditions converged to influence our constructions of "the reader" in order to situate more recent theories and practices related to the reception of children's literature.
Response to literature studies carried out in the 1960s and '70s by researchers such as Alan Purves, James Wilson, James Squire, and Arthur Applebee focused on written response preferences or stances and how these develop in real student readers. They found that student response preferences ranged from personal to more descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative (Purves & Rippere, 1968) and from more literal to more analytic over time (Applebee, 1973). It was not until the influence of reader-response criticism that the relationships of readers and texts were more fully theorized by researchers. Reader-response criticism, to the degree that it is a single theoretical perspective focusing on readers, has its origins in structuralism (Tompkins, 1980), but among its most powerful renderings are those that emerged from a post-structuralist concern with the play of meaning in texts.
Prior to post-structuralism, most reader-response theorists were less concerned with actual readers and more concerned with the ways in which texts (and authors) constructed readers. However, post-structuralist theorists (e.g., Bleich, 1978; Fish, 1980; Iser, 1978), particularly Stanley Fish, turned away from texts themselves to search for the creation of meaning, toward the reader and the processes and strategies as the primary source of those meanings. Fish (1980) argues that the play or instability of texts and meaning is not worrisome given the constraints on interpretive strategies provided by the communities of readers in which we reside. Although he abandons any notion of stable meaning in texts, he argues that there will be a fair amount of shared meanings by virtue of our shared beliefs about how we create meaning from text (Fish, 1980).
Modern theories on mythology sum up the branch as that which explains the spiritual potential of individuals and societies. Also contemporary theorists say that myths explore common archetypes and explain mind patterns especially in relation to the pairs of opposites like good and bad, virtue and vice etc. It is a clear indicator that the retellings in mythical tales are an effect or a mirrored image of the period in which they belong. While we have Valmiki’s Ramyana that pre-dates the ancient era, R.K. Narayan’s Ramyana and its short stories in the pre-modern era; we now have new modern and rational concepts in these tales like Amish Triparhi’s Scion of Ikvaku. These are only some examples but content is been produced over and over again, and every time there is a new face to our well-know stories.In the '70s and early '80s, the work of cognitive psychologists interested in the reading process also focused on the ways actual readers construct meaning from texts, with an emphasis on the relationship between new information and what readers already know (Anderson & Pearson, 1984). Psycholinguists, who study the psychological aspects of language use, had already begun to illustrate the way readers process the language systems of texts (Bruner, 1990; Goodman, 1986, Smith,1971). Together, these areas of inquiry influenced a whole new generation of research on children's responses to literature—or "response studies''—that drew attention to the ways in which young readers read and respond to literary texts.
Some of the novels make it a point to tell the story from the feminine perspective and finally, these stories are retold not only because of an interest in or a fascination for the mythical past but they also consist of commentaries on the present socio-political situation.Where we have human Gods, we also have many stories that we might not have even heard from the old tales. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions (2008) is based on Draupadi’s friendship with Krishna which is completely ignored in popular culture. The author has considered Draupadi as a woman rather than as a princess stuck with five husbands.
“...this time I didn’t launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement that stopped me? I saw something I hadn’t realized before: words wasted energy.” – Draupadi in The Palace of Illusions (2008)
On the other hand, The Daughter from a Wishing Tree: Unusual Tales about Women in Mythology by Sudha Murthy is an unusual children book which contains twenty four inspiring stories of women characters from Indian mythology. The author herself stated how she felt the need to retell about the women as they have not been represented in the popular circle in the desired way. This book deals with stories of women often hidden and dismissed in the tales of our times. It reestablishes the character and characteristics of mythological characters like Parvati, Damayanti, Suparnakha,Satyabhama, Urvashi, Bhamati,etc. Some of these episodes are already familiar for the epic readers while other stories are completely re-discovered, re-told and well-enlarged.
Mythology, Devdutt Pattanaik believes, shapes the way we think. He clarifies, “Greek myths evoke ideas of heroism. Abrahamic myths evoke values of submitting to authority. Hindu myths evoke the idea of adapting to circumstances and different people” (Varma 1). The presence of mythology in recent Indian children’s literature in English reaffirms that the future of Indian children’s literature has a bright and meaningful future.
Manish Purohit from Authors Up Front (and ex-Publisher for Disney Publishing, India) stresses, “Old Stories can be told in a contemporary manner to engage children. Bheem and Hanuman have been retold in a new context – visually and textually.” In the new avatar, nine-year old Chhota Bheem, modelled after his Pandava namesake, is blessed with extraordinary strength, and loves laddoos that give him a surge of energy. In the New Adventures of Hanuman, as the bad guy-fighting superhero, Hanuman becomes an icon for the little ones. Both characters have become more real for children who love them. (Singh 1) Even in today’s world, a technically beautiful presentation in a story attracts children. They tend to read the books with colourful images with the unique combination of storytelling and imagination.
Every generation has related to the rich tradition of storytelling and found meaning within the framework of every social situation and age. The age-old oral tradition has found expression in art forms, dramas, musical ballet and classic theatre. The publishing industry does not tire of producing fresh presentations of the stories. Each revised book on the epics or stories from epics and folklore presents a pristine approach, stylistically and aesthetically appropriate for the tales. A leading publisher of books for children, the Children’s Book Trust began with churning the folk tradition before filling the demand of children’s literature with creative modern fiction and adventures, National Book Trust, a government venture has produced colourful folk tales for the young and older readers.
So, we can say that these narratives dive into the mindset of children’s imagination fully, including the quizzical attitude. Children are relentlessly asking questions and trying to determine their place in the world. Simultaneously children with every new experience and passing memories outwardly wonder where they belong to, and likewise readers are doing the same. The everyday world is constantly moulding into a new shape and approach, though less extreme and fabulous as the caricatures in wonderland. These playful attributes quite diverting from the decorum of the times solidify a place in literary history too.
Myths are stories that originate in folk belief of a nation and races present the supernatural as the dominant element. Some interpret the natural phenomena by concretizing through story to imagine the human perception of the universe. The essence of folklore rooted into the psyche of India entreats over issues in Children’s literature varied and spread over different genres and readership delivering a healing spirit over today’s stresses. Newer and imaginative expressions of folktales never cease to gratify in every art form. An entire range of graphic paperbacks popularly known as Amar Chitra Katha has now, thrived through two generations like a cultural treat. Many publishers of Children’s literature continue to uphold the magic of unreal realism of the timeless folktales in picture book format, abundantly illustrated paperbacks, with graded school readers. The flow of retelling old stories, fairytales and myths is relentless and consistent in disseminating enchantment for the generations to come.
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