(Copyright © 2008 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI)
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ARTICLES
Gingerbread Wishes and Candy(land) Dreams: The Lure of Food in Cautionary Tales of Consumption
Susan Honeyman
Gingerbread represents just one of many food lures symbolically pervasive in folktales, fairy tales, and cautionary tales—one that can serve as analogous to all symbols of temptation in industrializing and consumerist cultures, representing the move in such cultural climates towards pacifying (or, better, “passifying”) children by projecting agency onto the lures rather than the children themselves.
A Wave of the Magic Wand: Fairy Godmothers in Contemporary American Media
Jeana Jorgensen
The increased personification of fairy godmothers in contemporary American media corresponds to an aspect of American worldview that emphasizes “magical” quick fixes and solutions. The two fairy-tale pastiche works informing this study are a novel, The Fairy Godmother, by fantasy author Mercedes Lackey, and a movie, Shrek 2. Both of these works feature fairy godmother characters that depart from canonical folktale and fairy-tale depictions. Associated with fate and wisdom, fairy godmothers act much as folklorists do by rewarding traditional behavior with gifts. Recent fairy godmother roles are hybrid and multivocal, illuminating ideologies and power structures in both society and story.
Disenchanting the Fairy Tale: Retellings of “Snow White” between Magic and Realism
Vanessa Joosen
As the fairy tale is recycled in contemporary retellings, the influence of realistic literature is perceptible. This article explores how authors and illustrators have turned magical fairy-tale elements into more realistic or at least more ambiguous events. The retellings exploit the coincidence as an ambiguous space between magic and realism or make clever use of stylistic and narrative devices such as metaphors and unreliable narrators to give a new dimension to supernatural elements. The focus is on illustrated versions and retellings of the Grimms’ “Snow White,” as well as on criticism of that tale, which has also tended to rationalize magic.
Red as Blood, White as Snow, Black as Crow: Chromatic Symbolism of Womanhood in Fairy Tales
Francisco Vaz da Silva
Since Berlin and Kay’s classic study on Basic Color Terms, the universal chromatic trio of white, red and black became a matter of scholarly interest. This paper examines uses of this chromatic trio to depict ideal womanhood in European fairy tales. Chrétien de Troyes wrote that the sight of three drops of blood on snow reminds Perceval of his sweetheart; seven centuries afterwards, the Grimms presented a queen wishing for a tricolor daughter after looking at three drops of blood on the snow. This image is tenacious in the fairy-tale realm, and the time seems ripe for addressing it.
Ancient and Indigenous Stories: Their Ethics and Power Reflected through Latin American Storytelling Movements
Jaime Riascos
Never before has the storytelling panorama in Spanish-speaking countries been so active and connected to their particular audiences. Since the 1980s national and international storytelling movements in Latin America and Spain have been growing and gaining in cultural and artistic importance. Indigenous tales are now present in big cities, and the ethics and new context of these tales are evaluated. This paper explores some aspects about the live performance, persuasive power, beauty of metaphors, and ethics in the Latin American Storytelling Movement. This paper was the keynote address at the Modern Language Graduate Forum at Wayne State University in spring 2006 on the topic Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to The Power of Language and Literature: Values and Ethics for a New Age. It is followed by a transcript of the discussion that took place after the address.
TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS
The Toad Woman
Jaime Riascos / Translated by Robert M. Fedorcheck
Reviews
Mademoiselle de Lubert. Contes (Ed. Aurélie Zygel-Basso)
Kathryn A. Hoffmann
Madame de Murat. Contes (Ed. Geneviève Patard)
Ute Heidmann
The Folk-Stories of Iceland (Einar Ólafur Sveinsson)
W. F. H. Nicolaisen
Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index (Hasan M. El-Shamy)
Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (Ed. Gaston Maspero. Introd. Hasan El-Shamy)
Roger Allen
Return to Culture: Oral Tradition and Society in the Southern Cook Islands (Anna-Leena Siikala and Jukka Siikala)
Guido Carlo Pigliasco
La Fiaba di Tradizione Orale (Giuseppe Gatto)
Andrew Giarelli
The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West (Ed. Yuriko Yamanaka and Tetsuo Nishio)
Daniel Beaumont
Recycling Red Riding Hood (Sandra L. Beckett)
Cathy Preston
Diario di un gatto con gli stivali (Roberto Vecchioni)
Luisa Rubini Messerli
Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal about the Transformations in a Woman's Life (Joan Gould)
Ravit Raufman
Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition (Farah Mendlesohn)
Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
Critical Exchanges
Contributors
Index to Volume 21 (2007)