Passage 63
学霸导读 还记得童年时代读过的《格林童话》吗？你有没有想过，这些童话为何长盛 不衰？
Once upon a time there l 1 in Germany two brothers. At school they met a wise man who led them to a treasure—a library of old books with tales more fascinating than any they had ever heard. I 2 ， the brothers began collecting their own stories， listening to the folktales people told them. Soon they p 3 their own treasure—a book of fairy tales that would charm （ 吸 引 ） millions in faraway lands for generations to come.
The brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published it in Germany in 1812. The collection has been translated into more than 160 languages up to now. The stories and their characters c 4 to appear in almost every media: theater, opera, comic books, movies, paintings, rock music, advertising and fashion.
Such fame would have shocked the modest Grimms. During their lifetimes， the collection were sold few copies in Germany. The early editions were not even a 5 at children. They had no illustrations， and scholarly footnotes （ 脚注 ） took up almost as much space as the stories t 6 . Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began their work at a time when Germany had been occupied by the French under Napoleon. The new rulers restricted l 7 culture. As young scholars， the brothers Grimm began to work on the fairy tale collection in order to save the endangered oral storytelling tradition of Germany.
In order to make them more acceptable to children and their parents, he stressed the moral of each tale. To this day, parents still read them to their children because they approve of the lessons in the stories: keep your p 8 , don’t talk to strangers, work hard, etc.
Yet despite all Wilhelm’s additions, the most important part of these stories was left untouched. The cruel treatment of children and the violent punishments to bad guys in stories are too much for some parents.
So how to explain the popularity of Grimms’ tales? Some have s 9 that it is because the characters are always striving for happiness. But the truth probably lies in their storytelling tradition without boundaries of age or c 10 . The brothers are skillful at translating these into a universal style of writing, and moods or interests we bring to our reading of them. And so it was the Grimms’ fairy tales that lived happily ever after.
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6.__________7.__________8.__________9.__________10.__________
高频词汇
folktale /'foʊkˌteɪl/ n. 民间传说
faraway /'fɑːrəweɪ/ adj. 遥远的，远方的
occupy /'ɒkjəpaɪ/ v. （军队或一伙人） 占领，占据
stress /stres/ v. 强调，着重
skillful /'skɪlf l/ adj. 娴熟的，熟练的
mood /muːd/ n. 心情，情绪