THE RHETORICAL SITUATION

Purpose

Audience

Rhetorical appeals

Modes & media

Purpose

Perrault’s purpose is to convey a message or moral.

Audience

Readers of fairy tales are usually children who are learning about how the world works.

Rhetorical appeals

Perrault establishes the tale’s credibility by beginning with “Once upon a time,” associating the tale with a venerable past (ethos). The author appeals to readers’ pathos by implying that the child is in danger.

Modes & media

Mode = written Author Charles Perrault might have assumed two things about the audiences for his collected fairy tales: (1) that adults would read the stories silently to themselves, and (2) that adults would read the stories aloud for their children. Further, given the long oral tradition of telling tales and the limited options for entertainment (we’re talking seventeenth century, here), it is also likely that the story would have been read aloud as a source of amusement for adults. So there are both written and verbal aspects to fairy tale modes.

Medium = print “Little Red Riding Hood” is presented here in print, and the assumption is that you will read it linearly, that is, from beginning to end. (Though in this case, you might be noticing the annotations in the margins as well.) Printed media are usually presented as pages that you turn; this gives an author the opportunity to create a mini-cliffhanger at the end of a page so that readers will turn the page and stay hooked. In contrast, a digital rendering of this tale might include hyperlinks that would allow you to skip around and read the story in whatever order you like.