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Gini
Unregistered User
(7/27/00 1:36:47 am)
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Violence in fairy tales
Hey everybody,
I'm a french student writing an essay about the violence in fairy tales. Does anybody know some good book about the subject? I already read the classics about the subject (Vladimir Propp, Andr Jolles, Pierre Plju etc...) But none of those books talks about the violence in fairy tales. I also wonder if fairy tales are meant to be read by children, I think some of them are so terrifying that they shouldn't be read to a younger child. ( I think of "Barbe Bleu" as for example). I also write about the shocking elements in fairy tales, as for example the patriarchal world of fairy tales with the passive role of women. So I analyse them from a contemporary and cultural point of view. Besides I'm interested in the magic and marvellous side.
Thanks for all help!
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Karen
Registered User
(7/27/00 3:12:01 pm)
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terror tales
Hello Gini!
Marina Warner's latest book "No Go the Bogeyman" is probably the best investigation of the more terrible aspects of children's tales.
Ta,
Karen.
| Terri
Unregistered User
(7/30/00 11:57:45 pm)
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Violence in fairy tales
Gini: Fairy tales as a form weren't created to be "children's literature," and if you go back to the older tales (such as Basile's Italian tales, which pre-date the more familiar Perrault and Grimms versions) you will see that they are sensuous, bawdy, violent...and intended for adult audiences. It is really only in the last 100 years (more or less) that they became stamped with the mark: "For Children Only." And watered down into sweet pap for children by Victorian editors in the 19th century, Walt Disney and his ilk in the 20th. Of *course* tales like Bluebeard were not meant to read in the nursery. And in the older versions of fairy tales, heroines were not the passive victims of the sweetened modern tales.
Marina Warner's work will give you a good history of the tales in the Western tradition:
From the Beast to the Blonde, in addition to No Go the Boogeyman.
You might also want to take a look at the considerable body of fiction being written today that brings fairy tales back to an adult audience: Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, A.S. Byatt's "Elementals," Emma Donoghue's "Kissing the Witch," Tanith Lee's "Red as Blood," Jane Yolen's "Briar Rose," Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose, Delia Sherman's Porcelain Dove, Midori Snyder's The Innamorati, Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer, etc. etc. etc. (There's a reading list of modern adult fairy tale fiction in the Bookstore section of the Endicott Studio web site: www.endicott-studio.com, if you're interested.)
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