In WSJ: Academic Studies of Fairy Tales

Today, the Wall Street Journal offers us:

Academic Studies of Fairy Tales: Holly Tucker selects revelatory studies of fairy tales

I've only seen the online version of the article and it appears rather arbitrary without any explanation beyond the title. Why was this included in today's issue?

Anyway, the article consists of five books which each receive a paragraph length's explanation of their content. A fine list offered by Holly Tucker, herself the author of Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France (pictured above) and the head editor/inspiration for Wonders and Marvels website which I have been saving for an "on the slant" post. She also teaches a class on fairy tales at Vanderbilt in my hometown.

If you want to read Tucker's recommendations, please click through to the article. I'm posting the titles here with Amazon links since I believe WSJ articles tend to not be free after a period of time and I want to at least let the titles remain public. It's a mix of titles by some of the field's heaviest hitters (Zipes, Tatar and Bottigheimer) as well as the ubiquitious Bettelheim.


1. The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim (Can you believe this is out of print? I guess there are enough used copies floating around to fufill the curiosty for this somewhat debunked but influential book.)


2. Off With Their Heads! by Maria Tatar

3. Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys by Ruth B. Bottigheimer

4. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion by Jack Zipes

5. Red Riding Hood for All Ages by Sandra L. Beckett

This Beckett title is confusing and has been on my list to investigate further. Published last year, I believe it is an updated version of Beckett's earlier Recycling Red Riding Hood, but Amazon has a new version of that title listed for this year, too. So perhaps not. The Wonders and Marvels site actually calls the book Recycling Red Riding Hood to confuse the issue more although the cover image doesn't correlate. I'll clear up the confusion when I learn more.

Either way, here's Wayne State Press's description for Red Riding for All Ages:

Red Riding Hood for All Ages investigates the modern recasting of one of the world’s most beloved and frequently told tales. Author Sandra L. Beckett examines an international selection of contemporary fiction for children, adolescents, and adults to find a wide range of narrative and interpretive perspectives in the tale and its revisions. Beckett shows how authors and illustrators from around the globe have renewed the age-old tale in a range of multilayered, sophisticated, and complex textual and visual Red Riding Hood narratives.

With a child protagonist who confronts grown-up issues of sexuality, violence, and death, the Red Riding Hood story appeals to readers of all age groups and is often presented in crossover texts that can be enjoyed by both children and adults. Beckett presents a wide selection of retellings, many of which have been never translated into English. Texts come from a variety of countries in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia and date from the early twentieth to the twenty-first century. This wealth of stories and illustrations is organized thematically into sections that consider Little Red Riding Hood alternately as a cautionary tale, an initiation story, a story focused on the wolf, a tale inspired by the wolf within, and a story of an unconventional girl who runs with wolves.

This volume provides a global survey of Red Riding Hood’s story in contemporary culture, proving that the character is omnipresent in modern literature and that the universal appeal of her story knows no age boundaries. Red Riding Hood for All Ages will be of interest to scholars of folklore, gender studies, and literature, as well as librarians, educators, parents, and all those interested in the many interpretations of the Red Riding Hood tale.

Sounds like a great book (or both are), especially for Red Riding Hood studies.

In contrast, here's a review for Recycling Red Riding Hood originally published in Marvels and Tales.