7 ms·
Interesting use of Bayesian inference to prove the brothers Grimm were mostly plagiarists
by moneil971 8y ago
Interesting use of Bayesian inference to prove the brothers Grimm were mostly plagiarists
- nikbackm 8y agoI thought it was well known that they collected existing tales rather than writing their own?
- irrational 8y agoThat was my understanding too. Is it plagiarism if they were totally upfront about what they were doing?
- pandesmos 8y agoAnd not only that, it’s always been my understanding that there was a major motivation of preservation. To record the spoken tales before they were lost.
- buovjaga 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm#Methodology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm#Methodology Quote: "According to scholars such as Ruth Bottigheimer and Maria Tatar, some of the tales probably originated in written form during the medieval period with writers such as Straparola and Boccaccio, but were modified in the 17th century and again rewritten by the Grimms. Moreover, Tatar writes that the brothers' goal of preserving and shaping the tales as something uniquely German at a time of French occupation was a form of "intellectual resistance" and, in so doing, they established a methodology for collecting and preserving folklore that set the model followed later by writers throughout Europe during periods of occupation."
- gumby 8y agoThey never pretended to have made up those stories. If you want a villain, consider Disney who tried (sometimes successfully in the US) to exert control of the use of fairytales by other parties after they'd made a film of one.
- goto11 8y agoIn what way? New adaptions of Snow White or Cinderella are done all the time.
- gumby 8y agoExactly, and to do new adaptations, interpretations etc is wonderful and perfectly legit. What Disney has done is sued over trademark claims on Snow White, Beauty and the Beast etc, trying to claim proprietary ownership of public domain stories, characters and ideas. Theese suits were expensive and not always successful so they eventually decided to stop explicitly mining the past and start developing their own characters (e.g. mermaid etc).
- goto11 8y agoThe Little Mermaid is not a Disney creation, it is a story by Hans Christian Andersen, as is The Snow Queen which Frozen is (very loosely) based on. You can't trademark a story or idea, but you can trademark a particular character design. You can make your own Cinderella interpretation as long as you don't copy the exact art and design made by someone else.
- moneil971 8y agoThe plagiarism reference was a joke! nothing is new and everyone is just retelling an old story, as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast sang, it’s a “tale as old as time”
- astura 8y agoThey collected, wrote down, and published well known German folktales of uncertain/indeterminable orgins, they never claimed they were original stories. The brothers had a preservationist goal.