What shapes a fairy tale? This course explores literary fairy tales through texts, traditions, and transformations, probing how fairy tales are presented across media and shaped by their format. Alongside the stories themselves, we will examine the paratextual materials that influence their reception, including first editions, title pages, prefaces, editors' notes, anthologies, and illustrations. We will consider how illustrated editions reframe fairy tales for different audiences, and how the textual apparatus surrounding these stories participates in their meaning across cultures and centuries.
Readings will include Italian, French, German, Scandinavian, and British examples, featuring Straparola, d’ Aulnoy,
Perrault, the Grimms, and Andersen among others. Their diverging framings will guide our close readings and comparative analyses of themes such as social critique, power, magic, the fantastic, and the melding of the real with the supernatural.
We will also experiment with digital humanities tools to consider how methods of visualization and data analysis can open new perspectives on fairy tale traditions.
Sample Readings:
The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ed. Jack Zipes
The Blue Fairy Book, ed. Andrew Lang
Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, Jack Zipes
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, Marina Warner
Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, Cristina Bacchilega
Fairy Tales: A New History, Ruth B. Bottigheimer