Editing Fairy tale (section)

===History of the genre===
[[File:Perrault1.jpg|left|thumb|alt=A picture by Gustave Doré showing Mother Goose, an old woman, reading written (literary) fairy tales to children|A picture by [[Gustave Doré]] of [[Mother Goose]] reading written (literary) fairy tales]]
Originally, stories that would contemporarily be considered fairy tales were not marked out as a separate genre. The German term "{{lang|de|Märchen}}" stems from the old German word "{{lang|de|Mär}}", which means news or tale.<ref>{{cite OED|Märchen|id=113957|access-date=22 September 2022}}</ref> The word "{{lang|de|Märchen}}" is the [[diminutive]] of the word "{{lang|de|Mär}}", therefore it means a "little story". Together with the common beginning "[[once upon a time]]", this tells us that a fairy tale or a märchen was originally a little story from a long time ago when the world was still magic. (Indeed, one less regular German [[once upon a time|opening]] is "In the old times when wishing was still effective".)<ref>{{Cite news|last=Healy|first=Marti|date=2019-01-19|title=Marti Healy: Begin anywhere|url=https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/lifestyle/marti-healy-begin-anywhere/article_63f41df0-cd07-5efe-8460-6b979334269c.html|access-date=2023-01-30|work=[[Aiken Standard]]|language=en|archive-date=30 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230130144821/https://www.postandcourier.com/aikenstandard/lifestyle/marti-healy-begin-anywhere/article_63f41df0-cd07-5efe-8460-6b979334269c.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

The French writers and adaptors of the ''conte'' ''de fées'' genre often included fairies in their stories; the genre name became "fairy tale" in English translation and "gradually eclipsed the more general term ''folk'' tale that covered a wide variety of oral tales".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Zipes|first=Jack|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/185/monograph/book/3591|title=Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales|date=2002b|publisher=The University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-7030-5|location=Lexington|pages=28}}</ref> [[Jack Zipes]] also attributes this shift to changing sociopolitical conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that led to the [[trivialization]] of these stories by the upper classes.<ref name=":1" />

Roots of the genre come from different oral stories passed down in European cultures. The genre was first marked out by writers of the [[Renaissance literature|Renaissance]], such as [[Giovanni Francesco Straparola]] and [[Giambattista Basile]], and stabilized through the works of later collectors such as [[Charles Perrault]] and the [[Brothers Grimm]].{{Sfn|Zipes|2001|pp=xi–xii}} In this evolution, the name was coined when the ''[[précieuses]]'' took up writing literary stories; [[Madame d'Aulnoy]] invented the term ''Conte de fée'', or fairy tale, in the late 17th century.{{Sfn|Zipes|2001|p=858}}

Before the definition of the genre of fantasy, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", including Tolkien's ''[[The Hobbit]]'', [[George Orwell]]'s ''[[Animal Farm]]'', and [[L. Frank Baum]]'s ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]''.{{Sfn|Attebery|1980|p=83}} Indeed, Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" includes discussions of [[world-building]] and is considered a vital part of fantasy criticism. Although fantasy, particularly the subgenre of [[fairytale fantasy]], draws heavily on fairy tale motifs,{{Sfn|Martin|2002|pp=38–42}} the genres are now regarded as distinct.