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The Heroic Industry of the Brothers Grimm

cubefox

At the end of the essay, the author (David Mason) quotes the beginning of Cinderella. I agree with Mason about the beauty of the terse prose here:

> So much is conveyed here about character, time and the natural world, because Cinderella’s piety is natural piety, respect for nature more than conventional Christian belief.

It's something that modern fantasy usually doesn't capture, by being too modern, and by being far too verbose. The latter is one aspect in which Tolkien's Simarillion feels better than his "The Lord of the Rings": The Simarillion leaves all the details out, it has little direct speech, and only mentions what's important. Its style is not as raw and authentic as in Grimm's fairy tales, or as in actual historical legends like King Arthur, but it gets close as times, mainly by avoiding the verbosity that is so common in all modern literature.