Terri
Registered User
(9/6/03 9:55 pm)
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Re: ideals for paper on fairy tales
When you select a tale, unless it's a relatively modern one, it will depend on which version you're looking at. The oldest versions of Sleeping Beauty, for instance, are more appropriate for adults, while the modern Disney version is for children.
You might take a look at some of the short articles on individual
fairy tales over on the Endicott site, just to spark some ideas.
There's a good article on Sleeping Beauty by Midori Snyder, one
on Donkeyskin by Helen Pilinovsky, and ones on Bluebeard, Cinderella,
Snow White, and Beauty & the Beast by me (Terri Windling). They're
in the Reading Room section of the site: www.endicott-studio.com/readingRoom.html.
Then, unless this is material you know already, you need to read a good history of fairy tales, such as Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and Their Tellers.Otherwise it's too easy to fall into all the common popular errors and misconceptions about fairy tales in your paper. Another good book is:Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie, and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood by Jane Yolen. And The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales by Jack Zipes is a terrific resource. I'd be wary, however, of Bruno Bettleheim's book The Uses of Enchantment, which many fairy tale scholars today consider to be quite flawed due to the author's lack of knowledge about the history of the tales.
Edited by: Terri at: 9/6/03 9:59 pm
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