Contemporary Fairy Tale Research Articles

Dva modela ženskega pravljičarstva na Slovenskem – pisateljice in pripovedovalke<br>Two Models of Women Storytelling in Slovenia – Women Writers and Women Performers of Fairy Tales</br>

In the article are presented Slovenian women fairy tale writers who were included in the streams of fairy tale writing in the middle of the 19th century, when Josipina Turnograjska published the fairy tale “Rožmanova Lencica” (Rožman’s Lencica) in 1853. This is much later than the start of European women fairy tale writing, which has its roots in the late medieval period with the trobairitz, and continued in the 16th century. After that the new stream of women fairy tale writers developed with the preciosite in the 17th century. The author researches development of women fairy tale writing in Slovenia and classifies their creation of fairy tales in two main models: writing literary fairy tales and storytelling or performing folktales. Lately, among Slovenian women, writing contemporary fairy tales is also popular.

Review

Reviewed by: Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings by Stefan Ekman Christy Williams (bio) Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings. By Stefan Ekman. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013. 284pp. Here Be Dragons is an exceptional study of fantasy literature that pays critical attention to fantasy landscapes and argues that setting-based readings, which Stefan Ekman terms topofocal readings, offer a rich, unexplored area of critical investigation. Ekman’s study is well grounded in fantasy scholarship, and he demonstrates that although setting has been the focus of several studies, it is still an understudied area that typically emphasizes the connections of setting to character and plot rather than focusing on setting as the primary [End Page 133] point of interest. Ekman argues that settings deserve equal critical attention and that fantasy settings in particular are important because of “fantasy’s characteristic ability to create, within its fictive worlds, new rules for how things work” (214). Ekman offers four topofocal approaches—maps, borders and boundaries, nature and culture, realms and rulers—which he demonstrates with extensive close readings of several fantasy texts. The book is organized around the four approaches, with a chapter devoted to each, and includes an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix for the methodology of Chapter 2. The individual chapters are meant to be understandable as stand-alone studies, which would make them easy to use in a classroom. The introduction convincingly argues that topofocal readings can illuminate elements of individual texts and fantasy as a genre that are missed in traditional approaches. Ekman’s “What Is Fantasy?” section is noteworthy for its clear and concise synthesis of the most commonly used critical definitions of fantasy as a genre; it would be an excellent selection for undergraduates as an introduction to the genre. Chapter 2 surveys fantasy maps, a ubiquitous feature of the genre. Ekman clarifies that fantasy maps are not maps in the traditional sense because they do not show real places. Rather, in fantasy, “To create the map means, largely, to create the world of the map” (20). Ekman distinguishes between maps that reflect the fantasy world and those that are artifacts of it, which results in two functions: paratext and doceme. He draws on the work of Niels Winfeld Lund to explain that docemes are part of a document or documentation process that can be “isolated” and analyzed (20). Ekman’s focus on reading maps as part of the world-building process reveals a great deal about the fantasy worlds and the worldviews they contain. The chapter surveys a number of fantasy maps and ends with a thorough close reading of the “Part of the Shire” map in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring (1954). Even though Here Be Dragons includes an appendix outlining Ekman’s methodology in this chapter, the chapter itself could use a more detailed explanation how his sampling was randomly chosen. Chapter 3 explores divisions between different areas, offering a compelling explanation of how narration dictates the description of landscape. In this chapter Ekman examines borders and polders that separate mundane and otherworldly domains, and Ekman argues that these boundaries are more about connections than divisions. He examines thresholds in works by Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, Garth Nix, Tolkien, Robert Holdstock, and Terry Pratchett. The discussion of Nix’s Old Kingdom/Abhorsen series does not mention death as a domain, which is an odd omission given the chapter’s earlier examination of borders that divide the lands of the living from those of [End Page 134] the dead. The attention to Faerie as a realm, however, makes this chapter particularly interesting for those working with fairy lore or contemporary fairy tales that include Faerie as a place as well as fairy tales where quests lead characters into other realms. Chapter 4 complicates the nature-culture binary, introducing a continuum that accounts for human control of nature and nature reclaiming human structures. Ekman traces the philosophical debate of whether humans are a part of nature or distinct from it, and he posits that fantasy works are able to construct nature and culture outside this duality because the worlds themselves are constructed...

Please Don’t Cook Those Sweet Potatoes: Race, Labor, Food, and Subterfuge in Mercer Mayer’s Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp

This article examines Mercer Mayer’s Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp (1976), a picture book that combines elements of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale and the Brer Rabbit stories. I argue that Liza Lou, the preteen African American protagonist, uses subsistence food, as well as food simulacra, to offload her work on her adversaries; as a result she symbolically challenges the subjugation associated with labor that African Americans performed during and after the era of slavery. I conclude that Mayer’s book anticipates the culturally diverse Little Red Riding Hood characters who have increasingly occupied contemporary fairy tale picture books.

Winterfrost by Michelle Houts (review)

Reviewed by: Winterfrost by Michelle Houts Amy Atkinson Houts, Michelle Winterfrost. Candlewick, 2014 [272p] ISBN 978-0-7636-6565-4 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 When her parents must hurriedly depart on Christmas Eve, leaving her to look after her baby sister, twelve-year-old Bettina forgets to leave the traditional pudding out for the nisse. Although she loved listening to her grandfather’s tales of Denmark’s magical people, she’s not sure how much she believes—that is until Klakke, the young nisse who lives in her family’s barn, causes mischief when he doesn’t get his pudding. Emboldened by the magic of the rare winterfrost, Klakke goes so far as to take Bettina’s baby sister while the two girls nap, ultimately leading Bettina deep into the forest on a quest to recover her sister. Simple and sweet, this contemporary fairy tale uses straightforward prose and measured pacing to tell a story both slightly otherworldly and utterly accessible. Bettina is calm, rational, and brave, an admirable if not complex heroine, and Houts paints the nisse with humor and whimsy. Charming and guileless, this story of adventure and enchantment would work well for a young fairy-tale aficionado or as a classroom readaloud in those restless days just before winter break. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

On the Question of Orality behind Medieval Romance: The Example of the “Constance” Group

Some contemporary fairytales have antecedents in pre-modern documents. That oral traditions lie behind much medieval literature is likely; this is no less true for the “Constance” tales (ATU 706 and ATU 706C). Through the historic–geographic method, Alexander H. Krappe determined that these plots originated in Eastern Europe. An ahistorical anecdote in The Chronicle of Morea is related to the earliest documented variants of the “Constance” group, two thirteenth-century romances, Mai und Beaflor and Le Roman de la Manekine, and two episodes in historical narratives by Matthew Paris and Jans der Enikel. In addition to the basic outline of events, the common themes of relationship between an imperial centre and outlying districts are shared. The birth of this plot type, under the influence of both western and eastern sources, may then be situated in the historical context of the Fourth Crusade's aftermath in formerly Byzantine territory.

Susan Redington Bobby (ed.), Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings

Susan Redington Bobby’s collection of essays furthers the discussion of the contemporary fairy tale, following Kate Bernheimer’s observation that “we are experiencing an explosion of fairy tale influences in art and literature” (7). Today’s fairy tales don various guises: they are brought into novels, recycled into novellas, short stories and poetry. The volume explores the latest transformations of classic fairy tales, ranging from the works of A.S. Byatt, Robert Coover or Jane Yolen, to Nei...

Girlhood, Sexual Violence, and Agency in Francesca Lia Block’s “Wolf”

This essay examines the representation of adolescent girlhood, sexual violence and agency in Francesca Lia Block’s contemporary fairy tale collection The Rose and The Beast. Focusing specifically on the tale “Wolf,” the author provides a literary analysis of how Block draws on and reworks traditional Western fairy tale variants to reintroduce repressed material about father–daughter incest and sexual violence within the family. This theoretical analysis is augmented by a discussion of how 25 students enrolled in an undergraduate young adult literature course for pre-service English education students read Block’s “Wolf.” The author concludes that despite Block’s revisionist attempts to attend to the rapacious father figure, evidence from student readings reveals that they interpret “Wolf” in ways that fit broader cultural pedagogies of femininity that position the girl as a victim who must learn to defend her body. The author concludes with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of how gender, sexual violence, and agency can be represented, read, and taught in a contemporary context amidst conflicting cultural scripts of girlhood vulnerability and empowerment.

"All Wound Up": Pullman's Marvelous/Uncanny Clockwork

"All Wound Up":Pullman’s Marvelous/Uncanny Clockwork Shelley King (bio) British novelist Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has garnered high praise from young readers and critics alike; its final volume, The Amber Spyglass, earned Pullman Britain's Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year in 2002 (the first children's book so honored). Pullman's debt to the British literary tradition, especially the works of William Blake and John Milton, has received extensive comment, as has his interest in Heinrich von Kleist's "Essay on the Marionette Theatre."1 The emphasis on His Dark Materials, however, has overshadowed the author's earlier textually ambitious engagement with German Romanticism in Clockwork–or All Wound Up (1996), his brief tale for younger children. Indeed, if the trilogy can be regarded as Pullman's contemporary dialogue with Western myth and the epic traditions of Blake and Milton, Clockwork holds the same relationship to the more contained genres of the fairy tale and the short story. This essay examines Pullman's blending of the traditional fairy tale with the later novella of the German Romantics to construct a complex literary experience for a wide range of readers. Clockwork captures both the wonder and transformative power of the fairy tale and the dark psychological and narrative complexity of post-Enlightenment Romanticism. The resulting narrative combines elements of the fantastic, the marvelous, and the uncanny to produce a darkly optimistic contemporary fairy tale that suggests the potential of compassion, courage, and love to transform human relations in the face of the threat posed by a culture of radical self-interest. In an interview with Amazon.com, Pullman celebrates the connection between Clockwork and the Romantic movement, commenting, "Glad you saw the Hoffmann influence! Yes, I love that whole German romantic thing—love it to death" ("It's No Fantasy"). If Clockwork is anything to judge by, what Pullman loves about Hoffmann is his ability to revise the fairy tale tradition, to combine elements of fantasy and realism, and to offer self-aware narratives filled with references to their own fictionality. Pullman stands out among contemporary [End Page 66] children's authors as a writer committed not only to telling a good story (as he so frequently reminds critics), but also to fostering a textual awareness and facility with narrative that develops only with exposure to books that exemplify the complex set of thematic, stylistic, and structural elements that constitute the literary experience. As Dudley Jones has noted, "Pullman's Clockwork . . . familiarize[s] young readers with narrative techniques more usually associated with experimental fiction for adult readers" (87). Jones connects this practice with the metafictional strategies of contemporary postmodernism, but many of these techniques are rooted in the textual practice of German Romantic writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann.2 "Der Sandmann," for example, features a narrator who asks the reader directly to sympathize with his struggle to choose a genre through which to present the protagonist's experiences: "I tormented myself to devise a way to begin Nathanael's story in a manner at once creative and stirring: 'Once upon a time,' the nicest way to begin a story, seemed too prosaic. 'In the small provincial town of S_____, there lived'–was somewhat better, at least providing an opportunity for development towards the climax" (Hoffmann 149). Pullman similarly engages the reader in the authorial struggle to produce the fictional construct. In Clockwork the narrator comments directly concerning the difficulty of writing a story: "Fritz had had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily—as we shall see with Fritz's own story in a page or two" (11). Even the persona of Pullman's narrator is reminiscent of the teller of "Der Sandmann," described by Kent and Knight as "alternately sensitive and sympathetic, and critical and even sardonic" (Selected Writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann 30). This self-conscious narration serves an important function for the reader. Birgit Röder comments, If we assume that Hoffmann's works are about more than simply highlighting the impossibility of constructing...