Topical Guide 818
Mark Dorset
Genres: Folktale: Motif: Tasks and Quests
At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 14:
“Here,” he said, holding the roller out toward me. “Draw your favorite animal.”
I knew what this was. It was a test. I knew from fairy tales that small boys like me in situations like this were always being required to pass tests in order to win the companionship of maidens or escape the wrath of enormous men in leathern garb like aprons or buskins. […]
I made a swipe at the canvas with the roller. It left a low arch of charcoal gray. […]
I made another swipe and left an inverted arch under the first. Then I held the roller with both hands, like a broadsword, and dragged it horizontally, so that it didn’t roll at all, but left a thinner line between the two arches.
Stith Thompson, “The Folktale: Suitor Tests: Tasks and Quests,” Center of Folktales and Folklore:
Prominent in the action of a very large number of folk stories is the performance of difficult, and sometimes impossible, tasks and quests. Frequently such compulsory labors form only a subordinate part of the story, the principal interest of which is an extensive plot in which these tasks are of only incidental importance. In contrast to such tales there are some half a dozen in which the performance of tasks or the accomplishment of quests is the most important event of the entire action. […]
The assignment of tasks to suitors by the father of the prospective bride is a prominent motif in several well-known stories.
Art: Subjects: Animals: Clams
At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 14:
“Ah!” said Mr. Glynn. I think he liked my technique. He looked at what I’d done. He looked at me. He looked at my painting again. He stepped back from it, to the limit of the planking. He moved to the left. He moved to the right. He rubbed his nose. “What is it?” he asked.
“A clam,” I said.
Share the experience:
See also:
Genres: Movie Musical TG 429; Film Noir TG 429, TG 692
Art, Play TG 5; Paint-by-Numbers TG 107, TG 108; Necessity of Transformation in TG 110; Doodling TG 165; Art Materials: Masonite TG 167; Art and Craft and Real Life TG 385; Art: Literature: Responding to: Sharing the Experience TG 367, TG 617; Conceptual TG 482; Commodification of TG 482; The Reciprocal Relationship Between the Artist and the Work TG 742; Painting: Rollers as Tools for TG 817
Artist, Work, and Audience TG 393, TG 742
Art: Framing as an Element of TG 467
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