HISTORY, FAIRY TALES AND THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY
HISTORY, FAIRY TALES AND THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: The present paper focuses on fairy tales, folklore, from the point of view of indentitarian construction. This study also reveals the importance of fairy tales as a remedy for a society in distress: the great role they played as a mark of national identity in the period of Bessarabia’s union with the Mother Country (Simion Teodorescu Kirileanu’s Povesti basarabene recorded by the folklorist in March 1918) or as a mark of identity supporting Ireland’s fight for independence ( Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Pesantry by W.B.Yeats). The two fairy tale collections, Povesti basarabene and Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Pesantry, are related by their importance, each in its cultural distinct context, marking the passage towards radically new stages in the two peoples’ history.It is often at a time of crisis that people become aware of their nation’s origin, history and of the necessity to reestablish connections with the heart of national life. It was one of the first collections of Bessarabean Fairy tales, collected by a Romanian from the other side of the Prut River, in order to prove that Romanians on both sides think and feel alike, which was the premise of their spiritual (re)union. This spiritual and cultural likeness served as the foundation on which the political union was to be edified. His collected fairy tales are imbued with all those unconscious wish fulfillments, a symbolic representation of the social-cultural boundary conditions imposed by the imaginary. These fairy tales stand for a reflection of the Romanian spirit and identity, they triggered a process of legitimation by ”the people”.Fairy tales are embedded in their contexts, cultural, historical, sending back the mirror image of the way people appropriate the land they inhabit by weaving stories, fables about it and about themselves.

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