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Donell
Unregistered User
(3/27/01 8:35:05 am)
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Conference at Princeton this weekend
Hello,
I'm a longtime lurker & an admirer of the the creative people who post to this board. I just found out that there will be a conference at Princeton this weekend on the Literary Fairy Tale. I am going to try to move Heaven & Earth so that I can go. Might anyone else be going? The website for information is www.princeton.edu/~cotsen/main/conferences.shtml .
yours excitedly,
Donell
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/27/01 9:10:58 am)
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Princeton conference
Donnell,
Much as I'd like to, I probably won't be able to attend the conference this weekend. The topics of papers being delivered sound really interesting, and I'd like to hear Zipes' talk after catching him at the ICFA last weekend; but time constraints would keep me from showing up for more than a few hours on Saturday.
If you go, please report back to us.
Greg
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Helen
Registered User
(3/27/01 9:19:17 am)
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Yippee!
Moving heaven and earth sounds like a fairly good description of what I'll have to do to my schedule in order to attend ... but I wouldn't miss this for anything. Donnell - I hope to see you there!
P.S. - does anyone know how to get to Princeton from New York?
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/27/01 11:35:11 am)
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Princeton
Helen,
It's about an hour north of Philadelphia. You can take the NJ turnpike south most of the way.
Donell, sorry about misspelling your Username.
GF
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Helen
Registered User
(3/27/01 12:08:48 pm)
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'doh!
Thank you! One problem solved ...
and Donell, ditto on the apology.
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Terri
Registered User
(3/28/01 7:19:59 am)
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Princeton
Helen, Donnell: Since many of us can't make it, *please* let us know how it goes, okay?
I'm particularly curious to know whether they count the work of writers publishing in genre in their definition of literary fairy tales. Because of the renaissance of "adult fairy tales" published as fantasy fiction in last two decades, I think we're doing more work with this material than any other contemporary writers...but this seems to go right by so many academics. <Sigh> Zipes's otherwise-excellent Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales is a case in point. He included genre writers (although I still don't understand why he selected some, like Sean Stewart and Susan Schwartz, who barely touch on the material, while ignoring others, like Midori Snyder, Greer Gilman, Susanna Clarke and Nancy Kress, who have use it extensively), but the entry on "Fantasy and Fairy Tales" is useless, concentrating as it does on classic fantasy and totally ignoring the Angela-Carter-inspired fairy tale movement in the genre since the mid 1980s. (Hmm, I seem to be a little grouchy this morning...)
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Helen
Unregistered User
(3/28/01 11:45:25 am)
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Never fear ...
Dear Terri:
Actually, I think that this kind of material is exactly what they have in mind. Jack Zipe's opening address is supposed to address Neal Gaiman, Angela Carter, and A.S. Byatt (the ones that I can remember off the top of my head, though others are included). Nancy Bacchiliga (who edited the absolutely marvelous book of essays on Angela Carter is going to be speaking; so is Nancy Campena, who wrote _Into The Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale_, which had some very nice sections on what's being done currently. The worm is turning ...
And I LOVE it.
Helen
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Jenna
Unregistered User
(3/29/01 10:35:01 am)
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literary fairy tales
Well I for one keep waiting for academics to figure out that Terri is the person BEHIND the renaissance of fairy tales published as fantasy fiction. (I don't mean to embarrass you Terri, but you KNOW it's true.) It is positively shameful that Zipes did not include an entry on Terri in his Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Not only is her own fiction (Wood Wife, the stories in Armless Maiden, etc. etc.) completely based in fairy tale material but as an editor she has almost singlehandedly promoted modern fairy tale fiction for, what, two decades now? Hmpf.
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Terri
Unregistered User
(3/31/01 6:22:30 am)
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fairy tales in fantasy fiction
Jenna, you're a sweetheart. Yes, as an editor I've worked to promote adult fairy tale fiction for a long time now, but not all alone, certainly. I was fortunate to get into genre publishing at a time when there were others interested in the same thing -- Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, Pat McKillip, Robin McKinley, Midori, Delia Sherman, etc. It's been a group effort. Plus Ellen Datlow has done terrific work in this area through the fairy tale anthologies. Fairy tales aren't her particular area of expertise, but she's such a darn fine editor that she raises the level of any project she choses to work with, and I'm forever grateful that when I asked her to edit the first fairy tale anthology with me she was willing to give it a go. She's a pure delight to work with.
What *I'd* like to see is an academic paper on how writers like the women above are the heirs to the French salon tradition -- which was also dominated by women (along with sympathetic men who also felt constrained by the gender roles of the day), also used magical tales in proto-feminist ways to talk about the realities of contemporary women's lives...and also got no respect from the literary establishment, just like modern genre writers. <g>
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/2/01 6:08:15 am)
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Inheritors of the salon
Terri,
You know, I'd been toying with the idea of submitting an academic paper to the ICFA next year (providing I finish "Fitcher" on time), and here's a tremendous topic, untouched by the academicians who attend, too.
If I don't, *someone* on this board should wade in.
Time to slap the intellectuals around a bit.
Greg
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Terri
Unregistered User
(4/3/01 7:23:17 am)
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ICFA paper
Hey, go for it, Greg!!! It would be very wonderful. And (sad to say) it will get more attention delivered by a man. If I did it, all the feminism-leery male writers (including the ones who stood up Wiscon) would avoid it or brush it off, saying, Ah yeah, Terri on her feminist soap box again....
Besides, you could use it four ways: deliver it at ICFA, at Wiscon, and then adapt into an article for Realms of Fantasy...which we could then post on the Endicott Studio web site.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/3/01 9:51:04 am)
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4-way split
Terri,
I'm penciling this article in for late October...
And how absurd is it that if a male suggests Jane Yolen is the inheritor of salon culture, that's a grand thing, but if a woman says it, it's feminist BS?
Greg
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(4/4/01 8:01:36 am)
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Conference at Princeton this weekend
I think it is important to point out that Zipes has many books out and has often addressed Angela Carter and others in those books. So don't tar him with that particular brush. In fact scholastically, it is safe to say that he (with the possible exception of Marina Warner) has written more about the use (and abuse) of fairy tales, both archaic and modern retellings than any other scholar around.
As to the Princeton conference, I couldn't make it. But I went to an earlier one about ten years ago. The whole thing was fascinating, but several of us who were children's book folk and storytellers were appalled that there was nowhere on the program for actual storytelling.
At that conference, my favorite presentation was by an international lawyer who looked at actual laws on the books during the currency of particular folk tales. He showed how many of the "grim" endings actually echoed punishments for such "crimes" as witchcraft, cannibalism, etc.
Jane
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/4/01 8:39:12 am)
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Zipes
Jane,
I would never tar him with that brush. I think his work is terrific. I wish he'd slow down a little though, so I could catch up.
GF
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Don
Unregistered User
(4/4/01 3:20:37 pm)
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Something for everyone
Storytelling was the opening event at last week's Princeton conference on the history and development of the literary fairy tale. Among the tales told was a literary tale of Jane's. Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow's work, along with that of dozens of other contemporary writers, was included in Jack Zipes's opening address.
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(4/4/01 3:28:26 pm)
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Conference at Princeton this weekend
Wow--who told the stories and which one of mine was told? Inquiring minds. . . .
Jane
PS I am off on a twelve day book tour and may not get back to these boards for a while. Going to be at Kent State, OSU, and Minicon, in case anyone else will be there.)
Jane
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Terri
Registered User
(4/5/01 4:53:24 am)
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Re: Conference at Princeton this weekend
Boy oh boy, I wish I'd been there. Don, can you tell us more about what the weekend was like?
Jane, good luck on your travels.
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