Folktales and fairy tales can be almost anything we want them to be, it seems. One person's folktale could just as easily be another person's religion. Go to any book store and pick up a copy of what somebody has euphemistically called a collection of folktales, and odds are good you're liable to find yourself in the middle of somebody else's creation story, though I doubt many people would ever consider calling The Bible a collection of folktales.
What are folktales if not just what they say they are: tales about a folk. The Old Testament is a history of the Jewish people and The New Testament the story of Christianity. To Jews and Christians, both these books have special significance respectively, but to the rest of the world they have no more intrinsic value than any other tales recounting the exploits of various folk heroes. Job and Jonah are no more or less important than Robin Hood or King Arthur to a Hindu or a Buddhist.
Folk heroes are developed as a means of instructing people in the ways of their civilization. They can either take the form of an idealized role model who exemplifies the attributes that make a person a worthy member of society, or they can be a contrary type character whose behaviour provides a lesson in how not to behave. With that in mind, it stands to reason that periodic attempts are made to update our tales so they reflect how our attitudes have changed over the years.
Over the past few years we've seen many fantasy writers experiment with this idea, and quite a few anthologies have been published with that express purpose in mind. One of the newest entries into the field of folktale revising has been provided by the American poet and author Catherynne M. Valente with her recently published A Guide To Folktales In Fragile Dialects published by Norilana through their Norilana Curiosities imprint.
Much has been made by so called traditionalists about people revising stories to suit their needs and changing them to something other than what they are supposed to be. The only thing is that some of these "traditional" stories have already undergone any number of revisions over the years that have reflected various changes in doctrine and belief. Many stories that predated Christianity, for instance, were altered to reflect the usurping of a matriarchal society by the patriarch.
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