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The House That Jack Built: Empire and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century British Versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk"
Brian E. Szumsky
The major nineteenth-century British texts of the fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" are read in light of the colonial impulses and backdrop that helped "write" the story. The oral tradition (represented by Benjamin Tabart) and the literary (represented by Joseph Jacobs) are each inscribed with an ethic in which the "happy ending" is ensured through material success. Importantly, this material success is played out through a colonial mind-set, which uses the character of Jack, acting in the role of both colonizer and trickster, and his bid to overthrow the Giant to demonstrate the moral and social efficacy of an imperial world view.
The Influence of Queen Victoria on England's Literary Fairy Tale
Eric C. Brown
Literary fairy tales proliferated in England under the reign of Queen Victoria, and many of their constructions of power and gender evoke her own intricate legacy. The Queen embodied numerous paradoxes--female authority in a culture preoccupied with domesticity, foremost--and English writers responded to such seeming contradictions in a variety of ways. Paget, Thackeray, Dickens, Carroll, Ingelow, and others all variously explore the complexities of Victoria; characters behave as power figures without power or even suggest the unacceptability of female rulership. Indeed, allusions to the Queen herself are often overt. Fairy tales particularly lent themselves to these conflicting configurations: they offered the opportunity for "quiet rebellion" against social norms, but in other manifestations also served as didactic upholders of the status quo. Victoria, whose iconic representations ranged from Titania to the Queen of Hearts, provided an array of imaginative possibilities for a genre that began to flourish only after her ascent.
A French Fairy-Tale Course: "Net Gains" beyond the Classroom
Mary Louise Ennis
E-mail, news-groups, websites . . . What are the advantages of integrating technology into the fairy-tale classroom? How are new methodologies challenging classic paradigms of teacher-student and author-reader dynamics? This article introduces one teacher's thoughts about going beyond the classroom with computer-mediated communication, Internet Treasure Hunts, and student website projects.
TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS
The Bride, the Spirit, and the Warrior: A Folktale from the Solomon Islands
Michael Lano / Collected and Translated by Robert Viking O'Brien
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