New Book: How Fairy Tales live happily ever after: (Analyzing) The art of adapting Fairy Tales by Conny Eisfeld

How Fairy Tales live happily ever after: (Analyzing) The art of adapting Fairy Tales by Conny Eisfeld was published this past summer in the US but just hit my radar. I suspect the book is an adaptation or translation of Eisfeld's Master's Thesis, A Literary and Multi-Medial Analysis of Selected Fairy Tales and Adaptations, which is also available for purchase.

Book description:

What happened to the classic fairy tale? Do we still read the 'old and dusty tales' of wonder to our children or would we rather take them to the cinema? The fairy tale boom has reached Hollywood where popular tales are currently transformed into entertainment movies.

Makers of films and TV series have become the storytellers of the digital age - a transition that frequently leads to discussions about how these new forms limit or contribute to the further development and preservation of the traditional fairy tale.

But what exactly is a traditional fairy tale? The book follows the history of the tale, how it has been changing colors and how it has been adapting and surviving for centuries. The main focus lies on the literary and multi-medial analysis of two popular fairy tales: Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood, which have not only been adapted to the screen recently but have been repeatedly altered throughout the centuries.

Follow the journey of the fairy tale from its most basic form, i.e. oral storytelling, to a written and illustrated commitment that shaped the general image of fairy tales for forthcoming generations, to its newest form: the visualization through new and digital media.

About the Author

Conny Eisfeld, M.A. was born in 1986 in Rostock, Germany. The author successfully finished her Master of Arts studies at the University of Southern Denmark and Flensburg in 2012. During her studies of Culture, Language and Media she gained thorough insights into the transformation of storytelling and the academic field of the collective memory. Fascinated by the transition of narration, she continued researching its further progression into the domain of new and digital media. The author has been living in the US, Denmark, Great Britain and Malta where she collected original and adapted tales as well as echoes of stories long known and told. Her work experience at various publishing companies combined with a passion for visual arts inspired her to further advance into the field of cross-media storytelling and beyond.