Bruno Bettelheim has spent his lifetime working on behalf of children and their secure upbringing. Having survived two concentration camps, he came to the United States and created a new therapeutic environment to help psychotic children survive their illnesses. He has frequently written about that experience; now he turns to a seemingly different subject, the fairy tale. He perceives an underlying continuity in his work, maintaining that the familiar fairy tale is, in fact, an art form, delineating the ultimate goal of child and man alike, a life with meaning. He indicates why other children's stories fail to attain this goal, and at the same time, why fairy tales themselves have fallen into disuse. In discussing their virtues, the author employs his extensive clinical experience, his engaging style, and, of course, the fairy tales themselves. Psychoanalytic assumptions constitute the organizing principle of his book, its consistency, and its occasional shortcomings;

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

The persistent microbicidal effect in water exposed to the corona discharge.

Owing to the lack of concrete information provided by the narratives and the genreʼs unspecified setting, narrative space in fairy tales has been largely overlooked or dismissed as an inactive background for the action. Research which has considered this topic typically views it in terms of its symbolic potential, studying space in order to learn about other narrative elements (e.g. characters) or the implied meanings of the texts. This dissertation views narrative space as a concrete, material aspect of the narrative which is significant in itself. The main research question posed in the dissertation is: what do fairy tales tell us about narrative space and what does narrative space tell us about fairy tales? The main aim of the dissertation is therefore twofold: first, it examines how narrative space is structured in fairy tales and how the fairy tale conveys space-related information; second, it asks whether there is anything about the traits and structure of fairy-tale space that can be seen as genre-specific, i.e. that sets the fairy tale apart from other short prose narrative genres. The research is based on a textual analysis of the English translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs collection Kinder- und Hausmarchen (Childrenʼs and Household Tales, 1857). While its primary focus is on fairy tales, the dissertation also considers other genres included in the collection (animal tales, legends, religious tales, etc.). The research combines the knowledge produced within fairy-tale scholarship (folklore and literature studies) with the methodological tools of narratology. By considering narrative space and spatial transference, the dissertation aims to prompt a reconsideration of the fairy-tale genre and its definitions. One of its key findings is therefore a revised definition of the fairy tale as a genre which encompasses two domains – the magical and the non-magical – separated by a firm boundary, which must be crossed in the course of the story. What sets this interdomain boundary apart is the fact that it can be crossed from both sides, but only temporarily and only if certain conditions are met. The examination of genres through the prism of the domain has led to a reconsideration of our initial genre classification and prompted the conclusion that aetiological tales, Schwank tales, and didactic tales, which were initially listed as independent genres, are modes (subgenres) rather than genres. The thesis also shows that fairy-tale space is dynamic and relational, and that the lack of explicit spatial information should not be seen as an indication of the insignificance of space, but rather an expression of the genreʼs stylistic parsimony. Although the findings are based on the study of the Grimmsʼ fairy tales, the dissertation aims to provide an analytical framework that is applicable to other fairy-tale corpora.

/pdf/narrative-space-and-spatial-transference-in-jacob-and-207ns0g6ku.pdf

Narrative space and spatial transference in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs fairy tales

Since the early 1990s, children’s books about trauma, especially the trauma(s) of the Holocaust, have proliferated, as well as scholarly treatments of those books. Despite the difficulties of representing the Holocaust, or perhaps because of them, there seems to be consensus now that children’s literature is the most rather than the least appropriate literary forum for trauma work. Subjects previously thought too upsetting for children are now deemed appropriate and even necessary. Thus, in “A New Algorithm of Evil: Children’s Literature in a Post-Holocaust World,” Elizabeth R. Baer emphasizes the urgency of “a children’s literature of atrocity,” recommending what she calls “confrontational” texts, and proposing “a set of [four] criteria by which to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of children’s texts in confronting the Holocaust sufficiently” (384). 1 “A” is now for Auschwitz, and “H” for Holocaust (if sometimes for Hiroshima). And “B” is still for book, though no longer necessarily the Bible. 2 Baer sees as exemplary texts like Roberto Innocenti’s picture book Rose Blanche (1985), Seymour Rossel’s nonfiction history The Holocaust (1981), and Jane Yolen’s novel The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988). Such books emphasize their protagonists’ direct experiences of the Holocaust, experiences that extend to and presumably interpellate the child reader outside the story. How to explain this shift away from the idea that young readers should be protected from evil and toward the conviction that they should be exposed to it, perhaps even endangered by it? It’s almost as if we now expect reading about trauma to be traumatic itself—as if we think children can’t otherwise comprehend atrocity. Just how new is this faith in exposure, experience, and confrontation, and how do we assess its significance with respect to contemporary children’s literature and trauma studies? Many people believe that the Holocaust fundamentally changed the way we think about memory and narrative, as well as about human nature. Presumably the exposure model became necessary because

/pdf/a-is-for-auschwitz-psychoanalysis-trauma-theory-and-the-3m8v5aty6h.pdf

"A" is for Auschwitz: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, and the "Children's Literature of Atrocity"

http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/Proceedings/2005/docs/p1319.pdf

The Repetition-Break Plot Structure: A Cognitive Influence on Selection in the Marketplace of Ideas

In the 1970s, feminists focused critical attention on fairy tales and broke the spell that had enchanted readers for centuries. By exposing the role of fairy tales in the cultural struggle over gender, feminism transformed fairy-tale studies and sparked a debate that would change the way society thinks about fairy tales and the words "happily ever after." Now, after three decades of provocative criticism and controversy, this book reevaluates the feminist critique of fairy tales. The eleven essays within Fairy Tales and Feminism challenge and rethink conventional wisdom about the fairy-tale heroine and offer new insights into the tales produced by female writers and storytellers. Resisting a one-dimensional view of the woman-centered fairy tale, each essay reveals ambiguities in female-authored tales and the remarkable potential of classical tales to elicit unexpected responses from women. Exploring new texts and contexts, Fairy Tales and Feminism reaches out beyond the national and cultural bound aries that have limited our understanding of the fairy tale. The authors reconsider the fairy tale in French, German, and Anglo-American contexts and also engage African, Indian Ocean, Iberian, Latin American, Indo-Anglian, and South Asian diasporic texts. Also considered within this volume is how film, television, advertising, and the Internet test the fairy tale's boundaries and its traditional authority in defining gender. From the Middle Ages to the postmodern age - from the French fabliau to Hollywood's Ever After and television's Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? - the essays assembled here cover a broad range of topics that map new territory for fairy-tale studies. Framed by a critical survey of feminist fairy-tale scholarship and an extensive bibliography - the most comprehensive listing of women-centered fairy-tale research ever assembled - Fairy Tales and Feminism is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the intersection of fairy tales and feminism.

Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches

V. 1. A-F -- Guide to Tale-Type, Motif, Migratory Legend, and Ballad References Used in the Entries -- Guide to Related Topics -- Introduction -- Aarne, Antti (1867-1925) -- Adaptation -- Advertising -- Aesop (sixth century BCE) -- Afanas'ev, Aleksandr (1826-1871) -- African American Tales -- African Tales -- Age -- Aladdin -- Albanian Tales -- Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888) -- Alcover, Antoni Maria (1862-1932) -- Alexander, Lloyd (1924-2007) -- Ali Baba -- Amades, Joan (1890-1959) -- Amano Yoshitaka (1952- ) -- Anansi -- Andersen, Hans Christian (1805-1875) -- Andersen, Hans Christian, in Biopics -- Anderson, Walter (1885-1962) -- Andersson, Christina (1936- ) -- Anecdote -- Animal Bride, Animal Groom -- Animal Tale -- Animation -- Anno Mitsumasa (1926- ) -- Anthropological Approaches -- Anti-Fairy Tale -- Anti-Semitism -- Aphorisms -- Apuleius, Lucius (c. 124-c. 170 CE) -- Arabian Nights -- Arabian Nights Films -- Archetype -- Archives -- Arnim, Bettina von (1785-1859) --^

The Greenwood encyclopedia of folktales and fairy tales

In 1944 W.H. Auden decreed that Grimms' fairy tales are "among the few indispensable, common-property books upon which Western culture can be founded. ... [IJt is hardly too much to say that these tales rank next to the Bible in importance" (1). Auden was in one sense right. Like the Bible, fairy tales especially the classic tales of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm hold a revered if not sacred place in modern Western culture. Often thought to reach back like sacred works to "times past," to some ancient, pristine age in which their original tellers spoke mythic words of revelation, folk and fairy tales are endowed by many readers with unassailable moral and even spiritual authenticity. Because they had their genesis in an oral tradition, we are tempted to imaginae their original tellers as simple folk endowed with infallible wisdom and, in some cases, divine inspiration. As a consequence of that belief, tampering with the classic texts of Perrault or the Brothers Grimm is considered by some to be tantamount to sacrilege, similar to revising the text of Holy Scriptures. As one of my undergraduate students remarked in a journal he kept while studying fairy tales in the winter term of 1990: "I am not a deeply religious person. However, I have a vague feeling that questioning the origin of fairy tales is somehow sacrilegious." Some traditionalists even go so far as to argue that the common practice of replacing Sneewittchen , Grimms' original German spelling of Snow White, with the more

Yours, mine, or ours? perrault, the brothers grimm, and the ownership of fairy tales

L'A. demontre comment, dans les editions anglaises et americaines d'apres-guerre des Kinder- und Hausmarchen, les paratextes redactionnels affirment l'authenticite et l'universalite des contes, et ce a travers des strategies qui nient leur historicite et par consequent leur nature litteraire et leur specificite culturelle. Il s'agit de savoir, en fin de compte, si ce genre de transmission interculturelle peut constituer une colonisation culturelle, surtout dans une periode de globalisation et de multiculturalisme.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/fabl.2003.44.issue-1/fabl.2003.010/fabl.2003.010.pdf

Donald Haase

Papers

Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches

Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches

The Greenwood encyclopedia of folktales and fairy tales

Yours, mine, or ours? perrault, the brothers grimm, and the ownership of fairy tales

Framing the Brothers Grimm: Paratexts and intercultural transmission in postwar English-language editions of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen