In my master's thesis I discuss the ideological and psychological effects of fairy tales on children. Through an overview of the development of the sociological function of the fairy tale, I reveal a planned change of the genre for the needs of the social climate in a given historical period. In addition, I explore the definitions of love and the origins of literary writing about love. The concepts of love and fairy tales are later linked in the hypothesis that discusess socializing children into socially acceptable or desirable images of love. A theoretical review of the literature provides an insight into both the history of love as well as fairy tales, and serves as a looking glass for their imprints both in professional texts and in traditional and popular culture. Simultaneously, I am constantly paying attention to the prevailing social discourse on the topic of children in a given period. The work draws from key authors such as Sigmund Freud, Jack Zipes, Bruno Bettelheim, Terry Jones, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Nicholas Sammond, Thomas Scheff and others. With the help of a factual comparison of identical fairy tales from different time periods, I reveal that the role of love in fairy tales has been systematically increasing.
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