Source
The tale appears to be Andersen's invention though the punishing of proud princesses is a stock theme in folk and fairy tales. In Basile's Pentamerone (1634) a tale tells of proud Cinziella and her wooing by a prince disguised as a gardener. In the Grimm collections, "King Thrushbeard" is a similar tale of a royal disguising himself to woo an arrogant princess. Andersen's tale is less sentimental than the traditional tales. In traditional tales, the woman is softened and continues to love the man once he is revealed to be royalty but in Andersen she is cast away and left alone mourning the loss of love and status.
Read more about this topic: The Swineherd
Famous quotes containing the word source:
“There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)