Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings

I recently received a review copy of a new release from McFarland, their third fairy tale related release in recent years after Folktales Retold: A Critical Overview of Stories Updated for Children and Grimm Pictures: Fairy Tale Archetypes in Eight Horror and Suspense Films.

The new book is Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings edited by Susan Redington Bobby. To put it simply, this is the type of book students are always seeking when they are researching their own papers. I receive many emails and read many posts from students needing more articles about modern retellings of fairy tales, some very desperate for anything to help them write about the topics they are choosing. This book helps to fill the large gap--at least a little--with analysis of works by Neil Gaiman, Emma Donoghue, Jane Yolen, Pegg Kerr, Gregory Maguire, and Shannon Hale among others. Since the table of contents for the book is virtually impossible to find--and once again I find reading a table of contents more helpful with these collections than critical reviews--I am including one below.

While I found all the essays compelling, I was most impressed with the wide range of topics provided. There is also an extensive--and thus very helpful--index and complete bibliography. Not only does this book provide strong scholarship and topics, it provides an easy jumping point to other sources. It should be included in any university library where classes in folklore, fairy tales and modern literature are offered. Articles like these are usually only available in journals, some often hard to find for the average student.

Table of Contents

Foreword: The Affect of Fairy Tales
KATE BERNHEIMER

Introduction: Authentic Voices in Contemporary Fairy Tales
SUSAN REDINGTON BOBBY

Redefining Gender and Sexuality

Queering the Fairy Tale Canon: Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch
MARTINE HENNARD DE LA ROCHERE

Contemporary Women Poets and the Fairy Tale
CHRISTA MASTRANGELO JOYCE

Struggling Sisters and Failing Spells: Re-engendering Fairy Tale Heroism in Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans
BETHANY JOY BEAR

Found Girls: J.M. Barrie’s Peter & Wendy and Jane Yolen’s “Lost Girls”
JOANNE CAMPBELL TIDWELL

Inventions and Transformations: Imagining New Worlds in the Stories of Neil Gaiman
MATHILDA SLABBERT

Rewriting Narrative Forms

“And the Princess, Telling the Story”: A.S. Byatt’s Sell-Reflexive Fairy Stories
JEFFREY K. GIBSON

Between Wake and Sleep: Robert Coover’s Briar Rose, A Playful Reawakening of The Sleeping Beauty
MARIE C. BOUCHET

Winterson’s Wonderland: The PowerBook as a Postmodern Re-Vision of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books
MAUREEN TORPEY

“I Think You Are Not Telling Me All of This Story”: Storytelling, Fate, and Self-Determination in Robin McKinley’s Folktale Revisions
AMIE A. DOUGHTY

Remembering Trauma and Dystopia

The Complete Tales of Kate Bernheimer: Postmodern Fairytales in a Dystopian World
HELEN PILINOVSKY

The Fairy Tale as Allegory for the Holocaust: Representing the Unrepresentable in Yolen’s Briar Rose and Murphy’s Hansel and Gretel
MARGARETE J. LANDWEHR

“This Gospel of My Hell”: The Narration of Violence in Gaétan Soucy’s The Little Girl Who Was Too Pond of Matches
LAUREN CHOPLIN

Revolutionizing Culture and Politics

Negotiating Wartime Masculinity in Bill Willingham’s Fables
MARK C. Hii

Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat! and the Fairy-Tale Retelling as Instrument of Social Criticism
VANESSA JOOSEN

The Wicked Witch of the West: Terrorist? Rewriting Evil in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked
CHRISTOPHER ROMAN

Embracing Equality: Class Reversals and Social Reform in Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl and Princess Academy
SUSAN REDINGTON BOBBY

Comprehensive Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index