Jack Zipes

Fairy tales and the art of subversion : the classical genre for children and the process of civilization

The fairy tale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on childrens 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 childrens 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. For this new edition, the author has revised the work throughout and added a new introduction bringing this classic title up to date.

Victorian fairy tales : the revolt of the fairies and elves

This is an anthology of fairy tales written by some of the most notable writers of the Victorian period, including Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and Edith Nesbitt.

Relentless Progress : The Reconfiguration of Children's Literature, Fairy Tales, and Storytelling

Preface Acknowledgments Prologue 1. The Reconfiguration of Children and Childrens Literature in the Culture Industry 2. Misreading Children and the Fate of the Book 3. Why Fantasy Matters Too Much 4. The Multicultural Contradictions of International Childrens Literature: Three Complaints and Three Wishes 5. What Makes a Repulsive Frog So Appealing: Applying Memetics to Folk and Fairy Tales 6. And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After: The Feminist Fairy Tale after Forty Years of Fighting for Survival 7. Storytelling as Spectacle in the Globalized World Notes Bibliography Index

Second Thoughts on Socialization through Literature for Children

When we speak in the genitive about childrens literature, we mean a literature aimed at children and adolescents which intercedes on behalf of civilization and its discontents to persuade young readers to abandon themselves temporarily to the style, norms, values, and images of a piece of writing. Literature for children acts as sociopsychological agent, legitimizing and subverting, cop and criminal, compelled by the same laws. It uses many disguises, masks, tricks, and illusions. Literature seduces and challenges children to take sides, see, grasp, tolerate, hate, dream, escape, and hope. Words in print form a context, a frame, in which possibilities for work and play are pictured, as projections of a better life. The frame has borders, sets limits, and curtails the view of the young reader, yet, it sometimes even seeks to contain the mind with contents that dare children to go beyond the borders. Literature for children is not childrens literature by and for children in their behalf. It never was and never will be. Literature

Germans and Jews since the holocaust : the changing situation in West Germany

The germans and jews since the holocaust the changing situation in west germany that we provide for you will be ultimate to give preference. This reading book is your chosen book to accompany you when in your free time, in your lonely. This kind of book can help you to heal the lonely and get or add the inspirations to be more inoperative. Yeah, book as the widow of the world can be very inspiring manners. As here, this book is also created by an inspiring author that can make influences of you to do more.

A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood's Trials and Tribulations

In my book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood,] I argued that the origins of the literary fairy tale can be traced to male fantasies about women and sexuality. In particular, I tried to show how Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers transformed an oral folk tale about the social initiation of a young woman into a narrative about rape in which the heroine is obliged to bear the responsibility for sexual violation. Such a radical literary transformation is highly significant because the male-cultivated literary literary versions became dominant in both the oral and literary traditions of nations such as Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States, nations which exercise cultural hegemony in the West. Indeed, the Perrault and Grimm versions became so crucial in the socialization process of these countries that they generated a literary discourse about sexual roles and behavior, a discourse whose fascinating antagonistic perspectives shed light on different phases of social change. In discussing this development, however, I did not devote sufficient time to an examination of the illustrations which in many cases are as important or even more important for conveying notions of sexuality and violence than the texts themselves. Since a complete reexamination of the illustrations would require another book, I should like to limit my study here to one particular scene, the traditional depiction of the young girl encountering the wolf in the woods, with the intention of exploring further sociopsychological ramifications of the Perrault and Grimm versions. Before reexamining the key illustrations of the standard Red Riding Hood texts, however, I should like once more to summarize my arguments about the sociopsychological implications of the changes made by Perrault and the Grimm Brothers. Here it is important to refamiliarize ourselves with a rendition of the oral tale as it was probably disseminated in the French countryside during the late Middle Ages before Charles Perrault refined and polished it according to his own taste and the conventions of French high society in King Louis XIVs time.2

Breaking the Magic Spell: Politics and the Fairy Tale

Politics and the fairy tale. Power struggles and magic. One is tempted to ask what all those enchanting, loveable tales about fairies, elves, giants, kings, queens, princes, princesses, dwarfs, witches, peasants, soldiers, beasts and dragons have to do with politics. One is tempted by the magic spell of the tales, so it would seem, to obliterate their real historical and social basis and to abandon oneself to a wondrous realm where class conflict does not exist

The Potential of Liberating Fairy Tales for Children

T BEGIN WITH, I want to argue that the very act of reading a fairy tale is an uncanny experience in that it separates the reader from the restrictions of reality from the outset and makes the repressed unfamiliar familiar once again.1 Bruno Bettelheim has mentioned that the fairy tale estranges the child from the real world and allows him or her to deal with deep-rooted psychological problems and anxiety-provoking incidents to achieve autonomy.2 Whether this is true or not, that is, whether a fairy tale can actually provide the means for coping with ego disturbance, as Bettelheim argues, remains to be seen.3 However, it is true that once we begin listening to or reading a fairy tale, there is estrangement or separation from a familiar world inducing an uncanny feeling which is both frightening and comforting. Actually the complete reversal of the real world has already taken place on the part of the writer before we begin reading a fairy tale, and the writer invites the reader to repeat this uncanny experience. The process of reading involves dislocating the reader from his/her familiar setting and then identifying with the dislocated protagonist so that a quest for the Heimische or real home can begin. The fairy tale ignites a double quest for home: one occurs in the readers mind and is psychological and difficult to interpret, since the reception of an individual tale varies according to the background and experience of the reader. The second occurs within the tale itself and indicates a

Pan's Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) (review)

At the very beginning of guillermo del toro’s harrowing fairy-tale film, Pan’s Labyrinth, better known in Spanish as El laberinto del fauno, a pregnant young woman named carmen is traveling with her eleven-year-old daughter ofelia in a bentley limousine. They are being driven through a verdant forest to be with carmen’s fascist husband, captain Vidal, who is rounding up and killing the last of the guerillas in northern Spain. it is 1944, and the Franco regime has been firmly established, but there are still pockets of resistance in the countryside that the fascists need to “cleanse” and control. At one point during the trip, carmen takes the book that ofelia is reading in the limousine and remarks, “Fairy tales? you’re too old to be filling your head with such nonsense.” later on, after their arrival at the fascist encampment, ofelia asks mercedes, the intrepid maid who is clandestinely helping the desperate guerillas in the woods, whether she believes in fairies, and mercedes replies: “no. but when i was a little girl, i did. i believed in a lot of things that i don’t believe anymore.” Then, toward the end of the film, right before her mother dies, she warns ofelia, “As you get older, you’ll see that life isn’t like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place.” She moves to a fireplace carrying a magic mandrake (a root that resembles a human shape and that can have the power of bestowing invulnerability) that ofelia had used to save her pregnant mother and unborn baby brother. “you’ll learn that,” she says, “even if it hurts.” All at once she throws the mandrake into the fire. ofelia screams “noooo!” her mother scolds her: “ofelia! magic does not exist! not for you, me, or anyone else!” The mandrake writhes and squeals in the flames. The mother doubles over in pain and will soon die. Without magic, ofelia cannot save her mother, and it is questionable whether she can save herself. These three scenes are crucial for understanding how del toro uses the fairy tale in Pan’s Labyrinth to offset and comment on the lurid experiences of innocent people struggling to survive in the dark times of the Franco regime. As we know from history, the resistance to the fascists was noble but futile. eventually, however, the Spaniards emerged from darkness in the 1980s to appreciate those wondrous, essential elements of life that are often unseen and neglected. like the flower on the tree at the end of del toro’s film, hope was reborn for a short period. but today, we live in dark times once again, even the liberated Spaniards. Fascism has returned in new and ugly forms throughout the world. perhaps one day we may emerge from all the wars, torture, lies, arrogance, and sadism, as the Spaniards managed to do in the 1980s. but will fairy tales help us? Did fairy tales help the antifascists in Spain? can fairy tales provide light and optimism? What good is it to read fairy tales or even view fairy-tale films in times of darkness? These are some of the questions, i think, that del toro poses in a chilling film that does not mince words nor delude us about the cruelty in our world. Del toro wants to penetrate the spectacle of society that glorifies and conceals the pathology and corruption of people in power. he wants us to see life as it is, and he is concerned about how we use our eyes to attain clear vision and recognition. paradoxically, it is the fairy tale—and in this case, the fairy-tale film—that offers a corrective and more “realistic” vision of the world, in contrast to the diversionary and myopic manner in which many people see reality. There is another very early scene in Pan’s Labyrinth that is a good example of del toro’s emphasis on developing sight and insight

Fairy tales and fables from Weimar days

A collection of literary fairy tales written during the Weimar Republic in Germany, intended to serve as utopian tales for raising the political consciousness of the young people of that period. Includes a scholarly introduction giving the social and cultural background of the tales.