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Excerpt from Story Power

"Stories lean on stories, cultures on cultures ..."

-Jane Yolen

"Once upon a time"—that magical phrase conjures up fantastical realms that take place outside of time, in the forever after. Such is the nature of the ancient craft of traditional storytelling, of timeless, wondrous narratives with symbolic patterns and supernatural events, stories told by no one and everyone. It is the fabulous world of folklore, a spontaneous, oral body of literature that has no author, no boundaries, or era, passed down by word of mouth for millennia. Within these captivating tales are talking animals, magical waters, fairy godmothers, enchanted castles deep in a forest, and flying carpets.

But as our global community shrinks to the size of a village, our stories not only lean on one another, they merge and change. The ever-evolving art of storytelling is adapting to our post-modern era of rapid progress. What was once considered the ultimate in transmitting the values of a culture—its traditional tales—is now called into question.

With today's current emphasis on the individual and on truths that are directly experienced, there is a creative shift in the art: away from traditional storytelling and its folklore, to spontaneous, personal tales.

There are several reasons for this shift. All of them contribute to a new oral tradition, or as Chris Anderson states in the prologue, A New Age of Fire, in his book, Ted Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking,  "... there is a new superpower that anyone, young or old, can benefit from. It’s called presentation literacy." Anderson imagines a new campfire and personal ways to convey truth, available to everyone, based on direct experience. It is a tremendously exciting time to practice the art of storytelling.

And so, in current society, the relevance of traditional tales is becoming problematic. Though some ancient tales continue to meet our storytelling needs, many of them do not. These stories are often told in a cultural context that is alien, that no longer connects to our common experience. In fact, in order for some folk and fairy tales to have any meaning at all, they require an extensive introduction to their listeners. For example, even "Jack and the Beanstalk" assumes some prior knowledge: dairy farming, cows, beans, and gardening. It can also be terrifying when children hear the giant's deep throated, sing-song rhyme:

Fee-fi-fo-fum
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive or be he dead
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

Jack's thievery and malice can give rise to ethical questions: Should Jack have stolen the golden harp? Did he have to kill the giant? Somehow Jack's courage and initiative is lost in our modern quandaries. We might attempt an updated version, but sanitizing folktales is a tricky proposition, while fractured fairy tales do not make sense without knowing the original, sometimes brutal version. There are countless examples of a folktale's setting that is so extremely unfamiliar that the story itself, without copious, contextual clues, can be meaningless or offensive.

Further, it is impossible to ignore male dominance in most centuries-old, traditional tales. Sexism abounds in the stories of princesses who need saving, whose protagonists are exclusively male. Most women in folktales play a passive role, while women with any power tend to be secondary characters: wicked stepmothers, fairy godmothers. Feminist collections of fairy tales that feature girls and women as independent-minded maids or princesses, nevertheless exist within a patriarchal authority.

Recent studies show that, though women make up nearly fifty percent of the world’s population, there are not as many folktales about women. In a quantitative study led by Jonathan Gottschall in his book, Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, "... it was found that this phenomenon is prevalent worldwide; that male main characters … outnumbered female main characters by more than two to one."

Gottschall's count is misleading: Even in folktales in which the main character is female, the woman is often powerless and must be rescued, discovered, awoken, or kissed by a heroic male character. Obviously, it is impossible to retell the ancient, traditional tales: That bell has already rung. Female storytellers can begin a new tradition for our time—speaking their own truth as heroines of their own, personal stories.