Editing Snow White (section)

==Inspiration==
{{main|Origin of the Snow White tale}}
[[File:Schneewittchen-Otto-Kubel.jpg|thumb|Illustration by Otto Kubel]]
Scholars have theorized about the possible origins of the tale, with folklorists such as [[Sigrid Schmidt]], [[Joseph Jacobs]] and Christine Goldberg noting that it combines multiple motifs also found in other folktales.<ref name="Jacobs, Joseph 1916. pp. 260">Jacobs, Joseph. ''[[wikisource:Europa's Fairy Book/Notes#note25|Europa's Fairy Book]]''. London: G. Putnam and Sons. 1916. pp. 260–261.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Goldberg |first1=Christine |year=1993 |title=Review of Steven Swann Jones: The New Comparative Method: Structural and Symbolic Analysis of the Allomotifs of 'Snow White' |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |volume=106 |issue=419 |page=104 |doi=10.2307/541351 |jstor=541351}}</ref> Scholar Graham Anderson compares the fairy tale to the Roman legend of [[Daedalion#Mythology|Chione]], or "Snow," recorded in [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]''.<ref>[[Ovid]], Metamorphoses, Book XI, 289</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Graham |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2DAAlUrbBIC&q=Fairytale+in+the+ancient+world+rhodopis&pg=PA27 |title=Fairytale in the ancient world |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-415-23702-4 |access-date=4 May 2017}}</ref>

In the 1980s and 1990s, some German authors suggested that the fairy tale could have been inspired by a real person. Eckhard Sander, a teacher, claimed that the inspiration was [[Margaretha von Waldeck]], a German countess born in 1533, as well as several other women in her family.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Schneewittchen: Marchen oder Wahrheit?: ein lokaler Bezug zum Kellerwald|last = Sander|first = Eckhard|year = 1994}}</ref> Karlheinz Bartels, a pharmacist and scholar from [[Lohr am Main]], a town in northwestern [[Bavaria]], created a tongue-in-cheek theory that Snow White was Maria Sophia Margarethe Catharina, Baroness von und zu Erthal, born in 1725.<ref>{{cite book |title=Schneewittchen – Zur Fabulologie des Spessarts |last=Bartels|first=Karlheinz |publisher=Geschichts- und Museumsverein Lohr a. Main, Lohr a. Main; second edition |year=2012|isbn=978-3-934128-40-8 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Das 'Lohrer Schneewittchen' – Zur Fabulologie eines Märchens. Ein Beitrag zu: Christian Grandl/ Kevin J.McKenna, (eds.) Bis dat, qui cito dat. Gegengabe in Paremiology, Folklore, Language, and Literature. Honoring Wolfgang Mieder on His Seventieth Birthday |first=Wolfgang |last=Vorwerk |publisher=[[Peter Lang (publisher)|Peter Lang]] Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien |year=2015|isbn=978-3-631-64872-8 |pages=491–503 }}</ref> However, these theories are generally dismissed by serious scholars, with folklore professor Donald Haase calling them "pure speculation and not at all convincing."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kawan |first=Christine Shojaei |date=June 2005 |title=Innovation, persistence and self-correction: the case of Snow White |url=https://sapientia.ualg.pt/bitstream/10400.1/1671/1/11-12-Kawan.pdf |journal=Estudos de Literatura Oral |volume=11-12 |page=238}}</ref>