Fairytales, orally passed down from parents to children, have become a precious cultural asset over time, conveying human experience and perhaps even representing an inaugural moment of "organizing experience" for children, a possibility offered by literature. Our proposal here is to carry out a comparative study of the tales Little Red Riding Hood by Perrault, Fita Verde no Cabelo [Green Ribbon in her Hair] by Guimarães Rosa and Chapeuzinho Amarelo [Little Yellow Riding Hood] by Chico Buarque, considering that both Brazilian authors have established an inevitable dialogue with the source text, which dates from the 17th century. Indeed, though all three narratives focus on the issue of child growth, the different views conveyed by each of them will be pointed out: 1. the moralizing and pedagogical approach of Perrault's tale (the dangers of child disobedience, the issue of sexual initiation); 2. the metaphysical bias of Guimarães Rosa's tale (confrontation with finitude and death, going from the psychological to the metaphysical plane); and 3. the focus on the symbolic efficiency of poetry of Chico Buarque's tale (victory over childhood fears through the power of words). All of this is done taking Goethe's statement in his Theory of colors into account: "When the artist gives over to his feeling, it immediately gives rise to a colored object".
Literature and "organization of experience"; Little Red Riding Hood (Perrault); Fita Verde no Cabelo (Guimarães Rosa); Chapeuzinho Amarelo (Chico Buarque); Goethe and the psychology of colors
