New Approaches to Little Red Riding Hood

Understanding the Archetype Through the Folktale

Abstract

Folktales -fairy tales- are stories from unknown origin that have been orally transmitted through generations and play a central role in the different national literatures. Getting to know them is a must for pre-service school teachers, since they entail a set of human archetypes that are both simultaneously repeated and transformed. Little Red Riding Hood, one of the oldest tales and at the same time one of the most popular ones nowadays, undergoes constant rewritings. Some of them are aimed for children, while others are written for adults, who are able to unveil hidden details present in the story that are hardly known to children.