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Jack and the Beanstalk

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For other uses, see Jack and the Beanstalk (disambiguation).
Jack and the Beanstalk
"Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."
Illustration by Arthur Rackham from
a 1918 English Fairy Tales, by Flora Annie Steel
Folk tale
NameJack and the Beanstalk
CountryEngland
Published inEnglish Fairy Tales
RelatedThe Valiant Little Tailor
Jack the Giant-killer

Jack and the Beanstalk is an English fairy tale, closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions. Benjamin Tabart's moralized version of 1807[1] is the first appearance in print, but "Felix Summerly" (Henry Cole) popularized it in The Home Treasury (1842),[2] and Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in English Fairy Tales (1890).[3] Jacobs's version is most commonly reprinted today and is believed to more closely adhere to the oral versions than Tabart's, because it lacks the moralizing of that version.[4] The story was made into a Theater of the Ridiculous play by Charles Ludlam.

get a life

Origin

In Walter Crane's woodcut the harp reaches out to cling to the vine

The origin of Jack and the Beanstalk is unknown, and little research has focused on the origin of the tale although the author is thought to be British or German. However, Sir Francis Palgrave once wrote that it was most likely that the tale arrived with the Norse boats. The earliest printed edition which has survived is the 1807 book The History of Jack and the Bean Stalk, printed by Benjamin Tabart, although the story was already in existence sometime before this, as a burlesque of the story entitled The Story of Jack is a gay and and the Enchanted Bean was included in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire.

In the usual version of the tale, the giant is unnamed, but many plays based on the story name him as Blunderbore; a giant of that name also appears in Jack the Giant Killer.

The giant's "Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!" was included in William Shakespeare's King Lear.[5]

Variants

Other tales of this type include the Italian Thirteenth and the French How the Dragon was Tricked.

The Brothers Grimm drew analogies between this tale and the German The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs, where the devil's mother or grandmother acted much like the wife in this tale: a female figure protecting the child from the evil male figure.[6]

The tale is unusual in that the hero, although grown, does not marry at the end of it but returns to his mother; this is found in few other tales, although some, such as some variants of Vasilisa the Beautiful, do feature it.[7]

The beanstalk is reminiscent of the ancient Northern European belief in a world tree connecting Earth to heaven.

Controversies

The story portrays a hero unscrupulously hiding in a man's house, playing on his wife's sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner of the house. In Tabart's moralized version, a fairy woman explains to Jack that the giant had robbed and killed his father, thus transforming the acts into justified retribution.[8]

Jacobs dropped the justification on the grounds that it had not been in the version he had heard as a child, and because children knew that robbery and murder were wrong without being told so by a fairy tale.[9]

Many modern interpretations have followed Tabart and painted the giant as a villain, terrorizing smaller folk and often stealing items of value, so that Jack becomes a legitimate protagonist. For example, the 1952 film starring Abbott and Costello blames the giant for Jack's ill fortunes and impoverishment, as he has been stealing food and wealth from the smaller folk of the lands below his home, including the hen that lays golden eggs, which in this version originally belonged to Jack's family. In other versions it is implied that the giant had stolen the hen and the harp from Jack's father. However, Brian Henson's 2001 TV miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story is an alternative version of the tale which abandons Tabart's additions and significantly vilifies Jack, due to Henson's disgust with Jack's morally questionable actions in the original story.[10]

you are all gay fag holes

Other media

In Edward Eager's book Knight's Castle, through the use of magic a modern boy named Jack is able to enter a toy castle with his sister and cousins. When he encounters the inhabitants (his toy knight figurine and the girls' dolls who have come to life), upon learning his name they draw back in terror and ask "Not the Giant Killer?"

The story is the basis of the similarly titled traditional British Pantomime, wherein the Giant is certainly a villain, Jack's mother the Dame, and Jack the Principal Boy.

Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk is the protagonist of the comic book Jack of Fables, a spin-off of Fables which also features other elements from the story such as giant beanstalks and giants living in the clouds.

DI Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crimes Division from the book The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde feels a strange impulse to climb the giant beanstalk that was grown in his mother's yard after she threw out the magic beans he had traded for her Stubbs painting of a cow. He is also thought to be a giant killer though out of the four only one was technically a giant, the others were just very tall. All the killings were in self-defense.

The Man Man song, Engrish Bwudd, features the chorus "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."

Roald Dahl rewrote the story in a more modern and gruesome way in his book Revolting Rhymes (1982). The story of Jack and the Beanstalk is also featured in Dahl's The BFG, in which the evil giants are all afraid of the "giant-killer" Jack, who is said to kill giants with his fearsome beanstalk (Although none of the giants appear to know how Jack uses it against them, the context of a nightmare one of the giants has about Jack suggesting that they think he wields the beanstalk as a weapon).

James Still James Still published Jack and the Wonder Beans(1977, republished 1996) an Appalachian variation on the Jack and the Bean Stalk tale. Jack trades his old cow to a gypsy for three beans that are guaranteed to feed him his entire life. It has been adapted as a play for performance by children.[11]

In the Crash Tag Team Racing game, a track is named " Track and the Beanstalk ".

Peter Combe rewrote the story in an upbeat song ('80s '90s?)

An episode of the BBC television series The Big Knights retold the story with the show's human protagonists as the "giants" to a race of tiny people living in their garden.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon features "Jack and the Beanstalk" on the level "Charmed Ridge". The two magic beans grow two different plants which Spyro and Jack use to get higher up the mountain where Jack wants to find the legendary Golden Goose.

An episode of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, titled "Mario and the Beanstalk", does a retelling with Bowser as the giant (no explanation as to how he becomes a giant).

Garfield and Friends parodied the story with a U.S. Acres segment titled "Jack II: The Rest of the Story". After Orson reads the original story to them, Booker, Sheldon, Roy, and Wade write up a satirical sequel patching up plot holes they noticed and villainizing Jack (who ends up in prison).

In The Magic School Bus episode "Gets Planted", the class put on a school production of Jack and the Beanstalk, with Phoebe starring as the beanstalk after Ms. Frizzle turned her into a bean plant.

An episode of The Goodies, entitled "The Goodies and the Beanstalk" is a retelling of the tale, containing a spoof of the game show It's a Knockout and Tim, Graeme, and Bill's own rendition of the song "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" There are also geese and hens that lay gold eggs and even gold bars, and the giant turns out to be only the same size as the Goodies!

Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods features Jack along with several other fairy tale characters. In the second half of the musical, the Giant's Wife climbs down the stalk to exact revenge for her husband's death, furious at Jack's betrayal of her hospitality. She is eventually killed as well.

The chorus from the song CRUA CHAN of the Argentinian rock Band Sumo (lead by the Scottish-Italian singer Luca Prodan) says "Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman."

In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko & Heffer take turns telling an amalgamated fairy tale to a flu-ridden Filburt. At one point in the story, Hansel & "Debbie" (represented by Heffer & Rocko, respectively) scale the beanstalk where they encounter the giant (Filburt) who exclaimes, "Fee, fie, foe, fum... something stinks!

In the game, Harvest Moon for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, if your farmer (named Jack in other versions of the game) sells a full-grown, happy cow in fall, a peddler will come and trade her for a bean (this makes the live-stock merchant angry, but he forgives you). Plant the bean in the spring (non-rainy day) at the top of the mountain, and it will sprout. Leave the mountain top, then return. The sprout will have become a beanstalk. Climb the beanstalk, and you'll find a castle in the clouds. In the castle is a golden chicken. Talk to the golden chicken, and she'll give you a golden egg. The next scene has you selling the gold egg to the peddler in the town market for a whopping 60,000 gold!

Dunce Upon A Time, an episode of Happy Tree Friends, is a parody of Jack and the Beanstalk. Giggles is Jack and Lumpy is the giant; there are 11 deaths in the episode. Nutty grew a tree in his mouth and the house raised up in the sky and to the giant's castle.

In the game 1 Adventure written by William Crowther & Donald Woods, there is a section of the cave which is themed after the giant: the player has to climb a beanstalk which is growing out of a bottom of a pit to get to a hole in the ceiling, which leads to a room called, appropriately, "the giant room" where there is a nest of golden eggs, and "fee fie foe foo[sic]" written on the wall.

In an episode of the popular BBC sitcom Bottom, the television is taken back to Rumbelow's, and Richie blames Eddie for falling behind with the rent as he had apparently bought five magic beans from a strange and wizened old man which cost exactly the £86.23 they owed in back rent, which is an obvious reference to the story.

The Super Why! PBS series focuses on the adventures of four fairy tale friends - the main character, Whyatt Beanstalk, is Jack's younger brother; Red of "Little Red Riding Hood" fame; Littlest Pig from "The Three Little Pigs"; and Princess Pea of the classic "The Princess and the Pea."

Bart Simpson plays the role of the main character in The Simpsons video game Bart & the Beanstalk.

A rock musical called Jack et le Haricot Magique (Jack and the Magic Bean) has been created in France by Georges Dupuis & Philippe Manca .

A recent parody occurred on Suite Life on Deck, with Zack as Jack, Mrs. Tutweiler as Jack's mother, London as the goose, Cody as the harp, Moseby as the giant, Bailey as the cow and Marcus as the person who gave Jack the magic bean.

References

  1. ^ Tabart, The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk (1807) introduces a new character, a fairy who explains the moral of the tale to Jack (Matthew Orville Grenby, "Tame fairies make good teachers: the popularity of early British fairy tales", The Lion and the Unicorn 30.1, (January 2006:1-24).
  2. ^ In 1842 and 1844 Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake, reviewed children's books for the Quarterly Review (volumes 71 and 74), recommending a list of children's books, headed by "The House [sic] Treasury, by Felix Summerly, including The Traditional Nursery Songs of England, Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, and other old friends, all charmingly done and beautifully illustrated." (noted by Geoffrey Summerfield, "The Making of The Home Treasury", Children's Literature 8 (1980:35-52).
  3. ^ Joseph Jacobs, "Jack and the Beanstalk", English Fairy Tales
  4. ^ Maria Tatar, p 132, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  5. ^ Maria Tatar, p 136, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  6. ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales, "The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs"
  7. ^ Maria Tatar, Off with Their Heads! p. 199 ISBN 0-691-06943-3
  8. ^ Maria Tatar, Off with Their Heads! p. 198 ISBN 0-691-06943-3
  9. ^ Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, Notes to "Jack and the Beanstalk"
  10. ^ Joe Nazzaro, "Back to the Beanstalk", Starlog Fantasy Worlds, February 2002, pages 56-59,
  11. ^ [1]
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