Fairy Tales House In Real World

Although the fairy tale is a distinct genre within the larger category of folktale, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute. Once universally agreed-upon matter is that fairy tales do not require fairies. (The term itself comes from the translation of Madame D'Aulnoy's conte de fées, first used in her collection in 1697.) Common parlance conflates fairy tales with beast fables and other folktales, and scholars differ on the degree to which the presence of fairies and/or similarly mythical beings (e.g., elves, goblins, trolls, giants) should be taken as a differentiator.
Originally, stories we would now call fairy tales were not marked out as a separate genre. The German term "Märchen" literally translates as "tale"—not any specific type of tale. The genre was first marked out by writers of the Renaissance, stabilized through the works of many subsequent writers, and emerged as an unquestioned genre in the works of the Brothers Grimm. 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.