Reviews Marvels & Tales Editors
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Marvels & Tales Volume 24 | Issue 2 Article 10 10-1-2010 Reviews Marvels & Tales Editors Recommended Citation Editors, Marvels & Tales. "Reviews." Marvels & Tales 24.2 (2010). Web. <http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol24/iss2/ 10>. 24496_10_341-366_r2nj.qxp 9/17/10 1:37 PM Page 341 REVIEWS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Folk and Fairy Tales, 4th ed. Edited by Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. Buf- 11 falo, NY: Broadview Press, 2009. 411 pp. 12 Hallett and Karasek’s fourth edition of Folk and Fairy Tales, an anthology of 13 traditional tales and contemporary adaptations that spans contributions from 14 Giambattista Basile to Tanith Lee, is a well-rounded and critically framed col- 15 lection that is eminently suitable for classroom use. According to the publish- 16 ers, this new edition contains an additional four articles in the “Criticism” sec- 17 tion, an expanded discussion of illustrations, the “Juxtapositions” section, and 18 more cross-cultural variation in the choice of stories. 19 The book is divided into eleven sections: “Little Red Riding Hood,” 20 “Sleeping Beauty,” “Cinderella,” “Growing Up (Is Hard to Do),” “The En- 21 chanted Bride(groom),” “Brain over Brawn (The Trickster),” “Villains,” “A Less 22 Than Perfect World,” “Juxtapositions,” “Illustrations,” and “Criticism.” Clearly 23 the organization of the tale selections is somewhat loose and subjective, and 24 many tales could easily be moved elsewhere, but the editors’ intention is to 25 demonstrate how a single story or theme has been approached by different 26 writers to serve different purposes. Each section begins with a few pages of 27 commentary and critical remarks to frame readers’ reactions. Since the book is 28 first and foremost a collection of primary texts, these orienting remarks are 29 necessarily short, and the criticism is limited and suggestive in order to draw 30 out students’ interpretations rather than close them off. The final three sec- 31 tions take a somewhat different format: “Juxtapositions” contains four compar- 32 isons of two tales rather than six or eight different versions of the same story; 33 “Illustrations” takes as its subject eighteen beautiful color plates; and “Criti- 34 cism” contains eight articles from seminal theorists like Max Lüthi and Bruno 35 Bettelheim to Betsy Hearne’s terrific article on Disney and James Poniewozik’s 36 piece on Shrek. 37 The collection’s introductory essay is a concise, accessible, historical 38 overview of fairy-tale authorship and criticism that distills the complexity of 39 the genre into a very manageable ten pages. The editors sketch briefly the 40 S 41 R Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2010 341 2nd Pass Pages 24496_10_341-366_r2nj.qxp 9/17/10 1:37 PM Page 342 REVIEWS 1 influence of nationalism, the complex relationship of orality and literacy, the 2 use of fairy tales as moral arbiters, and the triviality barrier that haunts the 3 scholarship on children’s literature, touching on many larger discussions with- 4 out overwhelming the reader or shortchanging the genre. While the entire an- 5 thology is well worth reading, the introductory essay could easily be assigned 6 on its own, in any class on folklore, fairy tales, Western literature, childhood, 7 or children’s literature. 8 The editors acknowledge that their selections are largely (really, almost en- 9 tirely) from the Western canon, because this reference book is aimed at stu- 10 dents and intended to give them new critical perspectives on familiar stories. 11 However, because of this there is an emphasis on the universality of the tales 12 that could have been problematized, even in a collection aimed at students. It 13 is presumably left to the teacher to frame stories like “The Indian Cinderella” 14 (even the title tells the story!) and explain how parallels in cross-cultural nar- 15 ratives might be played up for the translator, author, or editor’s own reasons. 16 If this anthology has a weakness, it is that it is constrained by length. Of 17 course, in any comparison of a tale type it is inevitable that some versions will 18 be left out, but I wished that the Grimms’ version had been included in the 19 “Cinderella” section, because it is the pagan undertones of the Grimms’ story 20 that Tanith Lee’s dark retelling draws out, and without it some of the allusions 21 made in Sexton’s poem are lost. The short essays that frame each section are 22 likewise required to do what they can in the space permitted. For instance, the 23 discussion of class and gender preceding “Growing Up (Is Hard to Do)” is brief 24 but good, asking provocatively, Why passive princesses but outspoken peasant 25 girls? This section provides many good starting points for classroom discus- 26 sion. The section titled “Growing Up” is another place where brevity is a nec- 27 essary evil—childhood as a natural state is so unconsciously romanticized that 28 the brief paragraph devoted to the creation of “childhood” as a cultural con- 29 cept may well startle and upset an unfamiliar student. The orienting remarks 30 that begin each section cannot discuss exhaustively the complexity of the sto- 31 ries, nor do they attempt to. This book is a starting point, not an ending point, 32 and the thorough bibliography that closes the book ensures that interested 33 readers will know where to go next. 34 Also particularly valuable is the section “Juxtapositions,” new to this edi- 35 tion, in which the editors provide the social and historical context for each of 36 the two versions. Typically the comparison is between an earlier version, con- 37 sidered to be “the original,” and a later, literary adaptation. However, some- 38 thing this book does particularly well is to dispel the notion of immaculate 39 original texts: the modern tales are generically tight, though they use the con- S 40 ventions of older texts to create more pointed satire and commentary. The R 41 more recent, literary revisions underscore the collection’s ongoing focus on 342 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2010 2nd Pass Pages 24496_10_341-366_r2nj.qxp 9/17/10 1:37 PM Page 343 REVIEWS how markers of orality are reinvested in literary tales in order to emphasize 1 their authenticity and immediacy. 2 The analysis of the illustrations is eloquent, succinct, and assuredly wel- 3 come to those students drawn to fairy tales for their rich, symbol-laden im- 4 agery. Indeed, this volume takes care to include some small element of nearly 5 every angle of study on traditional fairy tales. There is something for budding 6 psychologists, historians, and literary theorists as well as artists, animators, 7 and illustrators. This section concludes with some discussion of the currently 8 popular “salad” approach (also discussed in an essay in the “Criticism” sec- 9 tion)—the active engagement of story and the artifact of the book in works like 10 The Stinky Cheese Man, which finds characters referring openly to the type size 11 or dragging each other onto the next page. A reference to the comic book se- 12 ries Fables may have been fitting during the discussion of graphic novels, but 13 admittedly any one of these topics could be developed far beyond the scope of 14 this book. Moreover, a section on visual representations could hardly ignore 15 Disney entirely, but it is left to a dismissive postscript, to be dealt with more 16 thoroughly in an essay in the “Criticism” section. 17 Hallett and Karasek have drawn together a diverse array of authors and 18 time periods, from Joseph Jacobs and Madame d’Aulnoy to Angela Carter, Italo 19 Calvino, and Gabriel García Márquez. An engaging, accessible anthology of 20 well-loved as well as overlooked tales, the latest edition of Folk and Fairy Tales 21 would be my first choice among the many fairy-tale anthologies available for 22 students. 23 Kristiana Willsey 24 Indiana University 25 26 Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales. By Kurt Schwitters. Translated by Jack 27 Zipes. Illustrated by Irvine Peacock. Oddly Modern Fairy Tales 1. Princeton, NJ: 28 Princeton University Press, 2009. xiii + 235pp. 29 When thinking about Germany and fairy tales, one inevitably thinks of the 30 Grimms. The Grimms, as numerous accounts from the sociohistorical approach 31 to fairy-tale studies have shown (see John Ellis’s One Fairy Story Too Many: The 32 Brothers Grimm and Their Tales [1985], Maria Tatar’s The Hard Facts of the 33 Grimms’ Fairy Tales [1987], or Ruth B. Bottigheimer’s Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold 34 Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales [1989]), edited and reshaped tradi- 35 tional oral fairy tales into literary fairy tales that were compliant with the bour- 36 geois ideology of nineteenth-century Germany. Jack Zipes has no small share in 37 this reevaluation of the Grimms’ collection as sanitized and ideology-shaped 38 tales through his own studies, such as Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion 39 (1991) or The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World 40 S (1989). Through his work as an editor and translator, however, Zipes has also 41 R Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2010 343 2nd Pass Pages 24496_10_341-366_r2nj.qxp 9/17/10 1:37 PM Page 344 REVIEWS 1 been introducing a different set of German fairy tales to English-language read- 2 ers. In Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days (originally published in 1989), 3 he collects fairy tales from the time of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), when 4 Germany had successfully rebelled against its kaiser, embraced the democratic 5 experiment, and enjoyed a period of artistic license and liberty.