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Fascinating profiles of modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy tales. These writers and artists used their remarkable talents to confront political oppression and economic exploitation by creating alternative, imaginative worlds that test the ethics and morals of the real world and expose hidden truths.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, attitudes toward history and national identity fostered a romantic rediscovery of folk and fairy tales. This is the period of the Golden Age of folk and fairy tales, when European folklorists sought to understand and redefine the present through the common tales of the past, and long neglected stories became recognized as cultural treasures. Short introductions to each tale type that discuss its history, characteristics, and variants provide readers with important background information. Also included are annotations, short biographies of folklorists of the period, and a substantial bibliography.

The origins of fairy tales are looked at in a new way in these highly engaging pages. Conventional wisdom holds that fairy tales originated in the oral traditions of peasants and were recorded for posterity by the Brothers Grimm during the nineteenth century. Ruth B. Bottigheimer overturns this view in a lively account of the origins of these well-loved stories. The first new approach to fairy tale history in decades, this book answers questions about where fairy tales came from and how they spread, illuminating a narrative process long veiled by surmise and assumption.

With innovative literary sleuthing, Bottigheimer has reconstructed the actual composition of Straparola's collection of tales. Grounding her work in social history of the Renaissance Venice, Bottigheimer has created a possible biography for Straparola, a man about whom hardly anything is known. This is the first book-length study of Straparola in any language.

This book offers new, often unexpected, but always intriguing portraits of the writers of classic fairy tales. For years these authors, who wrote from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, have been either little known or known through skewed, frequently sentimentalized biographical information. Uncovering what was obscured for years and with newly discovered evidence, contributors to this fascinating and much-needed volume provide a historical context for Europe's fairy tales.

Most early fairy tale authors had a lot to say about what they wrote. These reflections shed a bright light on both the tales and on their composition, but in every case, they were removed soon after their first publication. Remaining largely unknown, their absence created empty space that later readers filled with their own views about the conditions of production and reception of the tales. What their authors had to say about "Puss in Boots," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Rapunzel," among many other fairy tales, is collected here for the first time, newly translated and accompanied by rich annotations.

For years many folklorists have denied the possibility of a truly American folk or fairy tale. They have argued that the tales found in the United States are watered-down derivatives of European fare. With this gathering, William Bernard McCarthy compiles evidence strongly to the contrary. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales represents these tales as they have been told in the United States from Revolutionary days until the present.

In this book, renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes presents a provocative 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.

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. Her book makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.

In this book  Honeyman looks at manifestations of youth agency (and representations of agency produced for youth) as depicted in fairy tales, childlore and folk literature, investigating the dynamic of ideological manipulation and independent resistance as it can be read or expressed in bodies, first through social puppetry and then through coercive temptation (our consumption replacing the more obvious strings that bind us). Reading tales like Popeye, Hansel & Gretel, and Pinocchio, Honeyman concentrates on the agency of young subjects through material relations, especially where food signifies the invisible strings used to control them in popular discourse and practice, modeling efforts to come out from under the hegemonic handler and take control, at least of their own body spaces, and ultimately finding that most examples indicate less power than the ideal holds.

The fairy tale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on children's lives. But until Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, little attention had been paid to the ways in which the writers and collectors of tales used traditional forms and genres in order to shape children's lives - their behavior, values, and relationship to society. As Jack Zipes convincingly shows, fairy tales have always been a powerful discourse, capable of being used to shape or destabilize attitudes and behavior within culture.

This book is an informative collection of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, annotated by one of America's leading folklore scholars. Maria Tatar celebrates the stories told by Denmark's "perfect wizard" and re-envisions Hans Christian Andersen as a writer who casts his spell on both children and adults. Andersen's most beloved tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Little Mermaid," are now joined by "The Shadow" and "Story of a Mother," mature stories that reveal his literary range and depth.

Most of the fairy tales that we grew up with we know thanks to the Brothers Grimm. Jack Zipes one of the more astute critics of fairy tales, explodes the romantic myth of the brothers as wandering scholars, who gathered "authentic" tales from the peasantry. Bringing to bear his own critical expertise as well and new biographical information, Zipes examines the interaction between the Grimms' lives and their work. He reveals the Grimms' personal struggle to overcome social prejudice and poverty, as well as their political efforts--as scholars and civil servants--toward unifying the German states.

The tales--116 in all--are thematically grouped. Each grouping is introduced and annotated by Jack Zipes, the genre's reigning expert. Twenty illustrations accompany the texts. "Criticism" includes seven important assessments of different aspects of the fairy tale tradition. Brief biographies of the storytellers and a Selected Bibliography are included.

Examines the genre, cultural implications, and critical history of six classic fairy tales and presents twelve essays on the social origins and issues of gender and national identity present in many of these children's stories. Also explores tales by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Oscar Wilde, Charles Perrault, Joseph Jacobs, Margaret Atwood, James Thurber, Roald Dahl, et al.

In this book, renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes presents a provocative 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.

As Tatar shows, few of us are aware of how profoundly fairy tales have influenced our culture. Disseminated across a wide variety of historical and contemporary media ranging from opera and drama to cinema and advertising, they constitute a vital part of our storytelling capital. What has kept them alive over the centuries is exactly what keeps life pulsing with vitality and variety: anxieties, fears, desires, romance, passion, and love. Up close and personal, fairy tales tell us about the quest for romance and riches, for power and privilege, and, most importantly, they show us a way out of the woods back to the safety and security of home. Challenging the notion that fairy tales should be read for their moral values and used to make good citizens of little children, Tatar demonstrates throughout how fairy tales can be seen as models for navigating reality, helping children to develop the wit and courage needed to survive in a world ruled by adults. This volume seeks to reclaim this powerful cultural legacy, presenting the stories that we all think we know while at the same time providing the historical contexts that unlock the mysteries of the tales.