An unlikely story: The Latin 'fairy' tales of a medieval Cistercian

Throughout literary history, fairy tale like stories have frequently met with resistance from critics who deemed their playful disregard of historical empirical realism unfit for more "enlightened" readers. Meanwhile, authors of such stories have often anticipated and responded to this line of criticism in their writings so as to vindicate them(selves). The present contribution discusses the particular case of the Latin framed tale compilation Dolopathos, sive de rege et septem sapientum (Dolopathos, or the King and the Seven Sages, 1184-1212), written by the Cistercian monk John of Alta Silva. Among its embedded exempla, it also features a marvellous story about supernaturally descended children who are victimised by their wicked grandmother and transformed into swans. Through a multi-layered analysis of this story, its encompassing frame narrative and the pro- and epilogue that accompany the entire work, this article aims to shed light on the sorts of methods writers such as John have relied on to imbue their creations with an aura of truthfulness and put them to a specific use, in this case of a religious-monastic nature. These include the introduction of morally exemplary elements to a given story, the fictional dramatization of that story's truthfulness in the specific context of its frame tale, and direct interpretative and literary-theoretical reflections by the narrator/author all of them methods that would be employed again by fairy-tale authors in centuries to come.