If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, ...evolved, and spread--or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. In this book, renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold--and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world.
Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, Zipes presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making his case, Zipes considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's "Bluebeard"; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions.
While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales,The Irresistible Fairy Taleprovides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved--and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.
Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic studies the impact of fairy tales on contemporary cultures from an interdisciplinary perspective, with special emphasis on how literature and film are retelling classic ...fairy tales for modern audiences.
Children into swans Beveridge, Jan
Children into swans,
2014, 20141001, 2014, 2014-10-31, 2014-10-01
eBook
Fairy tales are alive with the supernatural - elves, dwarfs, fairies, giants, and trolls, as well as witches with magic wands and sorcerers who cast spells and enchantments. Children into Swans ...examines these motifs in a range of ancient stories. Moving from the rich period of nineteenth-century fairy tales back as far as the earliest folk literature of northern Europe, Jan Beveridge shows how long these supernatural features have been a part of storytelling, with ancient tales, many from Celtic and Norse mythology, that offer glimpses into a remote era and a pre-Christian sensibility. The earliest stories often show significant differences from what we might expect. Elves mingle with Norse gods, dwarfs belong to a proud clan of magician-smiths, and fairies are shape-shifters emerging from the hills and the sea mist. In story traditions with roots in a pre-Christian imagination, an invisible other world exists alongside our own. From the lost cultures of a thousand years ago, Children into Swans opens the door on some of the most extraordinary worlds ever portrayed in literature - worlds that are both starkly beautiful and full of horrors.
Grimm legacies Zipes, Jack
2014., 20141123, 2014, 2015-01-01
eBook
InGrimm Legacies, esteemed literary scholar Jack Zipes explores the legacy of the Brothers Grimm in Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. Zipes reveals how the Grimms ...came to play a pivotal and unusual role in the evolution of Western folklore and in the history of the most significant cultural genre in the world-the fairy tale.
Folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm sought to discover and preserve a rich abundance of stories emanating from an oral tradition, and encouraged friends, colleagues, and strangers to gather and share these tales. As a result, hundreds of thousands of wonderful folk and fairy tales poured into books throughout Europe and have kept coming. Zipes looks at the transformation of the Grimms' tales into children's literature, the Americanization of the tales, the "Grimm" aspects of contemporary tales, and the tales' utopian impulses. He shows that the Grimms were not the first scholars to turn their attention to folk tales, but were vital in expanding readership and setting the high standards for folk-tale collecting that continue through the current era. Zipes concludes with a look at contemporary adaptations of the tales and raises questions about authenticity, target audience, and consumerism.
With erudition and verve,Grimm Legaciesexamines the lasting universal influence of two brothers and their collected tales on today's storytelling world.
Fantasy, fear, and freedom all play a part in A Story of Witchery, a book-length narrative poem by Jennifer Calkins, and newly illustrated by Thor Harris. Here we meet Emily, our “small and weedy” ...protagonist, an orphan complicit (perhaps) in her own abandonment who is caught up, as poet Amy Gerstler writes in her Introduction, in a story “entwined with science facts and twisted clinical fictions.” In language rolling and tripping with spare precision, Calkins makes a modern pilgrim progress into the imagination and the dark world of medicine. Rich and haunting images create a seemingly familiar environment which, like the internal landscape of the protagonist, dissolves only to reform, until finally resolving into a healed whole.
"In this book the visual artist Natalie Frank interprets eight tales by Madame d'Aulnoy, a seventeenth-century French pioneer of the fairy-tale genre. D'Aulnoy is thought to have influenced the ...development of the literary fairy tale in France and beyond. The tales were written as entertainment for the salons of the time: many contain subtle criticisms of French royalty and aristocrats as well as of enforced social and sexual roles. Her work has been translated into English in the past, but rarely outside of anthologies that include other authors. Frank chose to make d'Aulnoy's tales the subject of this book because "many of her heroines' journeys and conflicts have not changed," she writes. "A suitor's arrogance can destroy happiness; the power of kindness and wiliness, combined with perseverance, triumphs; jealousy poisons families and separates lovers." Frank is deeply interested in the role of women in fairy tales. D'Aulnoy, she says
