wondertale

plural wondertales

1. Synonym of fairy tale.

   This was done; the pale-face chief read, from his gold-clasped sacred book, / Wondertales, which many an Indian’s heart and fancy captive took.

   1888, Frank Siller, “The Song of Manitoba. […]”, in The Song of Manitoba and Other Poems, Milwaukee, Wis.: T. S. Gray Company, →OCLC, page 9

   5 more examples

   On the whole, he left on my mind the impression that, if he had woven anew the quaintly and brilliantly variegated threads of the threefold wondertale of Alice (Tergeminam Aliciam, tria virginis ora creavit), this trifling blemish in its best-remembered and oftenest-quoted episode would possibly have been removed.

   1898 February 5, Lionel A[rthur] Tollemache, “Among My Books. Reminiscences of ‘Lewis Carroll.’”, in H[enry] D[uff] Traill, editor, Literature, volume II, number 5 (16 overall), London: […] George Edward Wright, at The Times office, […], →OCLC, page 145, column 1

   The legend of “Colter’s Hell” suggests that Colter vividly described certain volcanic manifestations, but for some reason not now discoverable, the full story of his adventures was never given to the world in any authentic version, and survived only as a wondertale among his fellows.

   1926, Stallo Vinton, “Colter’s Yellowstone Discoveries”, in John Colter, Discoverer of Yellowstone Park […], New York, N.Y.: Edward Eberstadt, →OCLC, page 69

   Among the best known forms of oral literature are folk-tales, particularly numerous in the Russian tradition. Of these the best loved are the wondertales (or fairy tales as they are conventionally called in English). […] [W]hat really marks out the Russian wondertale is its stylistic ornamentation and its range of frightening ogres.

   2001, Faith Wigzell, “Folklore and Russian literature”, in Neil Cornwell, editor, The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature (Routledge Companions), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 38

   Early on I realised that I loved listening to and telling traditional wondertales, stories where the human and the more-than-human worlds meet, where the protagonists fall from grace and are driven to undertake demanding quests and long journeys in the course of which they learn who they truly are and how (and with whom) they are meant to spend their lives.

   2011, Geoff Mead, “We Band of Brothers”, in Coming Home to Story: Storytelling Beyond Happily Ever After, Bristol: Vala Publishing Co-operative, →ISBN, section 3 (Men & Storytelling), page 118

   You might decide it is a love story featuring the hero’s search and struggle for a wife, or a wondertale emphasising supernatural belief and prophecy, or a defence of conjugal fidelity, or an agglomeration of psychoanalytic symbols, or a symbolic exposition of the political ideology of a group of people you do not know anything about. You would be right every time.

   2013, Lee Haring, “Introduction: What Ibonia is and How to Read it”, in How to Read a Folktale: The Ibonia Epic from Madagascar (World Oral Literature Series; 4), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Open Book Publishers, →ISBN, page 1

   Synonyms: fairy tale