Synopses & Reviews
Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelousandmdash;in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises.
and#160;
If we want to rediscover the power of fairy talesandmdash;as Armando Maggi thinks we shouldandmdash;we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In Preserving the Spell, Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basileandrsquo;s The Tale of Tales, then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothersandrsquo; adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.
Review
"Tatar's main concern is with the enduring hold of the tales on children's imaginations. Why should they enjoy stories about other children sent out to die in a wood, or being victimized by cruel stepmothers, or given impossible tasks to perform, and (if female) forced to marry frogs or bears? . . . The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales--related in language that is sharp, lively, and free of jargon--is delightful evidence that Grimm scholarship can give pleasure to the general reader."--Janet Adam Smith, New York Review of Books
Review
"For scholars, students, and general readers, Tatar's book is a balanced, sensitive, and informative guide to the content and context of Grimms' fairy tales."--Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor
Review
"Tatar takes detours into literary history here and into comparative anthropology there. What results is at once intelligently eclectic and refreshingly commonsensical, a thoughtful ramble through the dark childhood woods that haunt our adult dreams."--Carl Maves, San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"A clear, imaginative and fascinating illumination of the stories we thought we knew."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
A clear, imaginative and fascinating illumination of the stories we thought we knew. Carl Maves - San Francisco Chronicle
Review
Tatar's main concern is with the enduring hold of the tales on children's imaginations. Why should they enjoy stories about other children sent out to die in a wood, or being victimized by cruel stepmothers, or given impossible tasks to perform, and (if female) forced to marry frogs or bears? . . . The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales--related in language that is sharp, lively, and free of jargon--is delightful evidence that Grimm scholarship can give pleasure to the general reader. Janet Adam Smith
Review
For scholars, students, and general readers, Tatar's book is a balanced, sensitive, and informative guide to the content and context of Grimms' fairy tales. New York Review of Books
Review
Tatar takes detours into literary history here and into comparative anthropology there. What results is at once intelligently eclectic and refreshingly commonsensical, a thoughtful ramble through the dark childhood woods that haunt our adult dreams. Merle Rubin - The Christian Science Monitor
Review
and#8220;A wonderfully original work. Maggiand#8217;s analysis is erudite but adventurous, and he is an exacting, inquisitive, and often brilliant, reader. He combines and links the macroscopicand#8212;the consideration of major questions in literary and cultural historyand#8212;and the microscopicand#8212;extended close readingsand#8212;in exemplary fashion. This is a book about fairy tales, but it is also an extended reflection on the fundamental human activity of narration itselfand#8212;why and how we tell tales, and how these tales transform over time.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Maggiand#39;s Preserving the Spell is a highly erudite and enthusiastic study of the influence of the fairy tale in western culture. Beginning with the fabulous Giambattista Basileand#39;s andlsquo;dirtyandrsquo; carnavalesque collection, The Tale of Tales, Maggi moves backward to the myths and stories of the Greco-Roman period and forward to tales, memoirs, and films of our contemporary world to demonstrate how fairy tales have tenaciously informed and formed our lives. He is a brilliant and perceptive critic who has grasped the ebb and flow of oral and literary traditions infused by Basileand#39;s spirit. In short, Maggiand#39;s incisive study should be compulsory reading for all students and scholars seriously interested in the magic and history of fairy tales.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Giambattista Basileandrsquo;s The Tale of Tales deserves more critical attention, and refreshingly Maggi treats it as key to fairy-tale intertextuality from Apuleius to the Grimms, Robert Coover, and contemporary memoirs. Focused on how irreverence, real-life traumas, and inventive transformations have animated fairy-tale magic across history, Preserving the Spellandrsquo;s erudite readings are sure to provoke scholarly discussion.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Folklore can tick and whirr just as smoothly in modern times as in times past, and Maggi shows us how and why. Resisting the tendency to fetishize ideal types and create rigid canons, he embraces the transformative energy of magic and malleability in fairy tales. Preserving the Spell moves us out of our intellectual comfort zones and reminds us that the best stories have a high quotient of weirdness.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales figures as the subject matter for this intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Nursery and Household Tales. This updated and expanded second edition includes a new preface and an appendix containing new translations of six tales, along with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar skillfully employs the tools not only of a psychoanalyst but also of a folklorist, literary critic, and historian to examine the harsher aspects of these stories. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this worldwide best-selling book. Few studies have been written in English on these tales, and none has probed their allegedly happy endings so thoroughly.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-314) and indexes.
Synopsis
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales figures as the subject matter for this intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Nursery and Household Tales. This updated and expanded second edition includes a new preface and an appendix containing new translations of six tales, along with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar skillfully employs the tools not only of a psychoanalyst but also of a folklorist, literary critic, and historian to examine the harsher aspects of these stories. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this worldwide best-selling book. Few studies have been written in English on these tales, and none has probed their allegedly happy endings so thoroughly.
Synopsis
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales figures as the subject matter for this intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Nursery and Household Tales. This updated and expanded second edition includes a new preface and an appendix containing new translations of six tales, along with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar skillfully employs the tools not only of a psychoanalyst but also of a folklorist, literary critic, and historian to examine the harsher aspects of these stories. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this worldwide best-selling book. Few studies have been written in English on these tales, and none has probed their allegedly happy endings so thoroughly.
Synopsis
Once upon a time, glass slippers, poison apples, evil stepmothers, fairy godmothers, and princes charming exerted a magnetic hold, cast a magic spell, on adults and children alike.and#160; Real-life anxieties fostered a need forand#160; stories that assuage.and#160; But the world changes, and Maggi asks here whether fairy tales have found a way to transform themselves to keep up.and#160; He says no, they havenand#8217;t.and#160; The genre of fairy tale has become contaminated, it has been entitized, like processed food, fossilized as Disney-esque icons.and#160; We need to rediscover the marvelous, the oneiric trance of dazzling dreams or horrid torments.and#160; We need a new mythic lens to help us understand reality, but to chart what that might be, it is necessary to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that intersect with each other across time and space.and#160; He goes to Giambattista Basile for the Ur fairy tales, with a special focus on the emblematic Cupid and Psyche myth, an anchor for Maggiand#8217;s wide-ranging investigation of essential variations on fairy tales (with oppositions of beauty/ugly, human/divine, apparent/real).and#160; The transformations of later Italian, French, English, and German traditions come to a head with the Brothers Grimm in 19t-century Germany.and#160; Maggi brilliantly weaves the traditions into the 20th century, in memoirs such as those by Joan Didion, in postmodern novels such as Robert Cooverand#8217;s, and, in a final manifestation, in the convulsively, bleakly beautiful movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild.and#160; This book offers profound reflections on reading fairy tales, on the inherent human need for narrative-myth (and, ultimately, for hope), showing us why we tell tales and how these stories transform over time.and#160; He offers, in an appendix, the first translation of the original Grimm edition of Basileand#8217;s 50 tales.
About the Author
Armando Maggi is professor of romance languages and literatures and a member of the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including Satanandrsquo;s Rhetoric and The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Sade to Saint Paul, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Dancing Backward: An Introduction
and#160;
Part One: andldquo;Cupid and Psyche,andrdquo; The Tale of Tales, and the Birth of Western Fairy Tale
1 A Never Ending and Never Told Tale: Basileandrsquo;s Undoing of andldquo;Cupid and Psycheandrdquo;
2 Orpheus, the King of the Birds, Moves to Sicily with Cupid and Psyche: Laura Gonzenbachandrsquo;s andldquo;King Cardidduandrdquo;
3 Melancholy Is the Best Storyteller: Oil, Water, and Blood from Gonzenbach back to Basile
and#160;
Part Two: The Italian Tales and German Romanticism: The Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, Novalis
4 What We Leave Behind: Fairies, Letters, Rose Petals, and Sprigs of Myrtle
5 The Fairy, the Myrtle, and the Myrtle-Maiden: From Basile to the Grimms and Brentano
6 How to Undo The Tale of Tales: Brentano and the End of Fairy Tales
7 Where Are the Ogresses of Yesteryear? The Neapolitan Cupids and Psyches in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm
8 Beauty, Zulima, and Aline: The Marvel Preceding and Following the World According to Novalis
and#160;
Part Three: American Postmodernism, Memoirs, and a New Beginning
9 andldquo;You Will Never Awaken Because the Story You Were In No Longer Existsandrdquo;: Coover, Postmodernism, and the End of an Era
10 andldquo;Disney World Has Become a Kind of Reverse Lourdesandrdquo;: From Stanley Elkin back to Basile
11 andldquo;A Benign Fairy Tale out of the Brothers Grimmandrdquo;: Memoirs and the Magic of Reality
12 andldquo;Everything Beautiful Is Goneandrdquo;: Beasts of the Southern Wild and a New Beginning
and#160;
Appendix: The Grimmsandrsquo; Adaptations of Basile
Notes
IndexDancing Backward: An Introduction
and#160;
Part One: andldquo;Cupid and Psyche,andrdquo; The Tale of Tales, and the Birth of Western Fairy Tale
1 A Never Ending and Never Told Tale: Basileandrsquo;s Undoing of andldquo;Cupid and Psycheandrdquo;
2 Orpheus, the King of the Birds, Moves to Sicily with Cupid and Psyche: Laura Gonzenbachandrsquo;s andldquo;King Cardidduandrdquo;
3 Melancholy Is the Best Storyteller: Oil, Water, and Blood from Gonzenbach back to Basile
and#160;
Part Two: The Italian Tales and German Romanticism: The Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, Novalis
4 What We Leave Behind: Fairies, Letters, Rose Petals, and Sprigs of Myrtle
5 The Fairy, the Myrtle, and the Myrtle-Maiden: From Basile to the Grimms and Brentano
6 How to Undo The Tale of Tales: Brentano and the End of Fairy Tales
7 Where Are the Ogresses of Yesteryear? The Neapolitan Cupids and Psyches in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm
8 Beauty, Zulima, and Aline: The Marvel Preceding and Following the World According to Novalis
and#160;
Part Three: American Postmodernism, Memoirs, and a New Beginning
9 andldquo;You Will Never Awaken Because the Story You Were In No Longer Existsandrdquo;: Coover, Postmodernism, and the End of an Era
10 andldquo;Disney World Has Become a Kind of Reverse Lourdesandrdquo;: From Stanley Elkin back to Basile
11 andldquo;A Benign Fairy Tale out of the Brothers Grimmandrdquo;: Memoirs and the Magic of Reality
12 andldquo;Everything Beautiful Is Goneandrdquo;: Beasts of the Southern Wild and a New Beginning
and#160;
Appendix: The Grimmsandrsquo; Adaptations of Basile
Notes
Index