Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Associate Prof in Persian Language and Literature of Institute for humanities and cultural studies, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Fairy tales have always attracted the attention of children due to their heartwarming narrative structure and style. Throughout history, adult narrators have used the capacity of fairy tales to entertain children and teach them life skills. For this reason, legends and folk stories have always been considered among the important sources of children’s literature. Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of the content of these legends shows that the frequency of inappropriate moral, social, human themes in these texts is very high. Since mental schemas are formed at a young age based on the data that adults (parents) and the environment provide to the child, the transmission of these legends to children, from generation to generation, shapes their mental schemas and cultural ideas. The authentic and powerful narrators of these legends (parents, grandparents, etc.) also help to stabilize these contents in the child's mind and form his “parental record” which will unconsciously affect his decisions and his interpretation of the world around him until the end of his life. On the other hand, common and similar contents in the texts that are provided to the children of a society over time produce similar mental schemas for the members of that society and gradually shape the cultural ideas of that society; Therefore, the traces of many actions and attitudes in every society can be found in the texts that were produced for the members of that society in childhood. This research has investigated one hundred and eighty tales by the use of descriptive-analytical method and has counted and analyzed the schemas in them.
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