No, I haven't forgotten that I have not finished my Grimm Legacies coverage. I have a few papers yet to cover and hope to do that in the next few days. (I have been swamped with some other projects the last few weeks since I returned.) However, I wanted to share this video about fairy tales in Germany that Jack Zipes shared during his keynote at Grimm Legacies, demonstrating both the kitsch and ongoing legacy of the tales in Germany.
Here's a description, too:
In this installment of roving reporter Michael Wigge's quest for the truth about Germany, he explores why Germans are so good at fairy tales. Just look at the Brothers Grimm whose book on fairy tales is the most widely read German cultural book in the world and translated into more than 160 languages and dialects. Wigge visits the Fairy Tale Park "Frau Holleland", and goes to Polle, the alleged home of Cinderella.
I admit that before I heard Cara Zimmerman's presenation, “Henry Darger, Adolf Wolfli, and Tales of Violence in Outsider Art,” at Grimm Legacies, I knew virtually nothing about Darger's work. (Zimmerman didn't include the Adolf Wolfli part of her presentation due to time constraints.) I know I wasn't alone and much of the after conversation of those who did seemed to be based on watching the documentary about Darger, In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger.
I am going to resort to Wikipedia, since my notes are muddled. I spent more time just processing the art displayed and listening to Zimmerman than trying to take notes since my knowledge was near null.
Henry Joseph Darger, Jr. (ca. April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously-discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. Darger's work has become one of the most celebrated examples of outsider art.
Darger's personal library included fairy tale books and Baum's Wizard of Oz. The presentation was fascinating, but the allusion to specific fairy tales is faint so I don't have much to share in that way either. Overall, Darger is a fascinating man who was fascinated with children, children's stories and fairy tale like motifs in his writing and art. There are many great books if you want to read more about him, which I am including in this post.
Finally, the majority of Ruth Lingford's presenation at Grimm Legacies was dedicated to sharing this film, Death and the Mother, a film she animated and for which she received great recognition.
She shared the story of needing child friendly content to animate while she was an artist in residence with the responsibility to sit in a room and let visitors watch her work at a museum. She went to her shelves and pulled down a volume of Hans Christian Andersen tales. She read The Story of a Mother and thought she couldn't do that for children but the story resonated anyway and a film was born.
The audience begged her to animate more fairy tales after the viewing...
Here is another film shared during Grimm Legacies, an early film by Lotte Reiniger, her version of Cinderella (Aschenputtel) from 1922. Reiniger is wonderful and not to be missed. And this film is of special interest since it offers the German version of Cinderella, the Grimms, not the Perrault. There is a tree, not a fairy godmother, heel clipping, etc. Just watch it and enjoy!
Ruth Lingford let this film replay during most of her presentation at Grimm Legacies and addressed the artistry and skill of Reiniger as well as the ability to show more with animation than can be done with live action film. No, heel clipping wouldn't work well in a live action in a film shown to children, would it?
Reiniger created the first feature length animated film with the The Adventures of Prince Achmed which is available on DVD in the US.
Unfortunately, a full collection of her fairy tale films is not on Region 1 (US & Canada DVD) but you can get a Region 2 (UK) at Lotte Reiniger - Fairy Tales [DVD].
This was one of two films shown during one of the breaks during Grimm Legacies and discussed very briefly in Ruth Lingford's presentation, “Animating the Grimms.” Mostly, the film speaks for itself and its time.
This recap is a little easier for me since I am familiar with Gribben's work. She wrote a fairy tale trilogy--The Fairytale Trilogy: Fairytale, The Emperor's Realm, The Three Crowns--starting at the age of sixteen back when SurLaLune was new, too. In fact, the first book was one of the first review books I received from a publisher, if I remember correctly. I don't receive many believe it or not, especially fiction ones, so each one is always a boon to my work here on SurLaLune.
She expanded the piece with some extra insights and telling of some tales for her presentation at Grimm Legacies. Two of the tales she explored more deeply were Godfather Death and The Old Man and His Grandson (often known as The Wooden Bowl among storytellers), both Grimms tales. The latter has a Snopes page, by the way, which is rather fascinating.
Here's an excerpt from her original piece which sums up her presentation pretty well, too, but do click through and read the entire article since it is still available to read for free.
The practice of medicine bestows the sacred privilege to ask about the unmentionable. But what happens when the door to Bluebeard’s horror chamber opens, and the bloody secrets spill onto your aseptic field of study? How do you process the pain of your patients?
I found my way back to stories. The Grimm fairy tales once seemed as if they took place in lands far, far away, but I see them now in my everyday hospital rotations. I’ve met the eternal cast of characters. I’ve taken down their histories (the abandoned prince, the barren couple) or seen their handiwork (the evil stepmother, the lecherous king).
Fairy tales are, at their core, heightened portrayals of human nature, revealing, as the glare of injury and illness does, the underbelly of mankind. Both fairy tales and medical charts chronicle the bizarre, the unfair, the tragic. And the terrifying things that go bump in the night are what doctors treat at 3 a.m. in emergency rooms.
So I now find comfort in fairy tales. They remind me that happy endings are possible. With a few days of rest and proper medication, the bewildered princess left relaxed and smiling, with a set of goals and a new job in sight. The endoscopy on my cross-eyed confidante showed she was cancer-free.
And her lovely conclusion:
Healing, I’m learning, begins with kindness, and most fairy tales teach us to show kindness wherever we can, to the stooped little beggar and the highest nobleman.
Today has become a Beauty and the Beast day as I recap elements of Jerry Griswold's "The Many Conclusions of 'Beauty and the Beast'" presented at Grimm Legacies and highlight some of the vesions he discussed as well as his own book in different posts.
Griswold began his presentation with a play on Claude Levi-Strauss's statement that "Animals are good to think [with]." (See Levi-Strauss's books, Totemism and The Savage Mind, by the way to learn more about that phrase.) Griswold offered an alternative which the audience liked, "Fairy tales are good things to think with."
Part of Griswold's discussion compared the various types of endings to Beauty and the Beast tales:
(1) The traditional in which the beast is transformed, a majority of the versions.
(2) The "Shrek" conclusion in which the heroine is transformed into a beast to join her mate with Angela Carter's short story "The Tiger's Bride"* given as an example.
(3) A final transformation that takes place in perception only, of which Ricky of the Tuft offers the closest example from traditional tales and Tanith Lee's short story "Beauty"* offers perhaps the best example of all.
Griswold also discussed the tales in which the transformation happens in the middle, such as in Cupid and Psyche and East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which are more "equal" as the heroine must prove herself through tasks, too. These were contrasted with the tales in which the transformation happens at the end and usually disappoint the audience to some degree. There is also the irony of the tales offering as a reward the exact thing they were trying to teach against. "You must look past appearances" and when you do, you are rewarded with something beautiful in appearance, the exact thing that is supposedly no longer important to you.
The Disney and Jean Cocteau versions of the tale were also discussed, especially as disappointments once the transformation has taken place. Disney offers an animated Fabio who is not nearly as exciting as the Beast. This version tries to compensate for the loss of the Beast by having Belle recognize her love's eyes after the shock of losing her beast in the transformation.
But perhaps one of the greatest examples of disappointment in the transformation, at least for the audience, comes in Cocteau's film version of the tale when we are presented with a dandified Jean Marais as the transformed beast. (A great history of this film, by the way, is available at TCM. And Griswold pointed out that Marais was Cocteau's lover which certainly had an impact on some of the director's choices.) Reportedly, Greta Garbo, upon seeing the ending, said, "Give me back my Beast." Griswold believes this disappointing ending was a deliberate decision on Cocteau's part. Here is an edited version of the transformation scene:
There was some interesting Q&A about repulsion and disgust with the beast. Ideas were jumping around too much for me to capture them, but it was an interesting discussion with Griswold as well as David Elmer who had presented Apuleius's Cupid and Psyche and discussed its Beauty and the Beast motifs during the same session.
Also mentioned in connection to the repulsion, was Straparola's King Pork (also known as The Pig King) which is a more unusual Beast tale.
Here is a quick review of Linda Lee's tweets about this session, too:
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies next up: Jerry Griswold on the many conclusions of Beauty and the Beast. -12:15 PM Feb 4th, 2012
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies Jerry Griswold is really funny! -12:16 PM Feb 4th, 2012http://twitter.com/lindajeanlee
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies Griswold: Diverse endings of ATU 425: transformation of beast at end (confusion, surprise), or in middle, or of heroine. -12:31 PM Feb 4th, 2012
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies Griswold: Or not at all, transformation only in eye of beholder, as in Tanith Lee's "Beauty." -12:32 PM Feb 4th, 2012
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies Griswold: For transformation-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder, fear must first subside. #necessarycondition#ATU425 -12:34 PM Feb 4th, 2012
lindajeanlee #GrimmLegacies Griswold: Awfulness becomes awe-full-ness. #ATU425 Love comes before transformation to beauty.-12:36 PM Feb 4th, 2012
And, no, before you ask, none of Robin McKinley's Beauty and the Beast versions were mentioned during the presentation or Q&A although a few audience members discussed them with me after the presentation. McKinley's Beauty and others have deeply impacted many readers over the years, too. It wasn't a slight but a limitation of time.
"Three Beauties" is a short film by Tiffanie Hsu, a student film that won her a Hoopes Prize at Harvard. Ruth Lingford wanted to share this film during her presentation of “Animating the Grimms” at Grimm Legacies, but time ran out after the DVD didn't cooperate.
So I went ahunting and found it on Vimeo and had to share it here. Enjoy!3
From Hsu's description of the film:
A three cultures' tale of Beauty and the Beast.
This animation takes strands from the various evolutions of the "Beauty and the Beast" myth that have evolved across the world and weaves them into its own unique tale. See if you can figure out to which cultures and larger myths each piece belongs.
Red As Blood: Or, Tales From the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee, or at least one story in it, dominated Jerry Griswold's presentation on Beauty and the Beast at the Grimm Legacies Symposium. If you are just interested in "Beauty," the story he discussed and identified as one of his favorite retellings of the tale, it is also reprinted in his The Meanings of "Beauty & The Beast" A Handbook.
And I agree with Griswold that Lee's "Beauty" is an amazing rendition of the story and has been on my short list of favorites since I first read it years ago. I had a xeroxed copy of the story for years before I was finally able to buy a used copy of the collection thanks to the internet. Yes, I read the story long before I ever dreamed up this SurLaLune bit of mine, a library edition that I couldn't check out indefinitely as much as I wanted to.
But...
Don't stop there. This is an impressive collection of tales and the collection shouldn't be missed. This book has been long out of print and rumors of reprinting have been around for a while. A first volume of Lee's short stories is due out this summer--Tempting the Gods: The Selected Stories of Tanith Lee Volume 1--but I haven't seen a table of contents for it nor does it seem to have stories from Red as Blood in it. Fingers crossed for volume 2.
And we can hope for an ebook version, too. After all, lover or hater of ebooks, you have to admit that improving access to out-of-print books is one of the greatest boons of ebooks. And authors get the royalties unlike with used copies. While I have owned two copies of Red as Blood, Lee has never seen the proceeds of those sales since both copies were used, my only option for acquisition. (I eventually replaced a crumbly paperback with a fine hardcover edition.) The book has been out of print for a very long time, too, which means all of the times I have recommended it have not resulted in a sale to her paycheck either. Can you see how this has been a long wish of mine, to see this book back in print? I think it would sell exceptionally well in a year like 2012 in which darker retellings are in demand.
Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer is a short story collection of dark fantasy retellings of popular fairytales by British author Tanith Lee. Contrary to what the title may suggest, it not only includes retellings of fairytales by the Brothers Grimm, but also by Charles Perrault, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve or Alexander Afanasyev. The title story was nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award. This collection was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
Table of Contents for Red as Blood:
1.Paid Piper- Asia: The Last Century B.C. (retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin)
2.Red as Blood- Europe: The Fourteenth Century (retelling of Snow White)
3.Thorns- Eurasia: The Fifteenth Century (retelling of Sleeping Beauty)
4.When The Clock Strikes- Europe: The Sixteenth Century (retelling of Cinderella)
5.The Golden Rope- Europe: The Seventeenth Century (retelling of Rapunzel)
6.The Princess And Her Future- Asia: The Eighteenth Century (retelling of The Frog Princess)
7.Wolfland- Scandinavia: The Nineteenth Century (retelling of Little Red Riding Hood)
8.Black As Ink- Scandinavia: The Twentieth Century (retelling of The White Duck)
9.Beauty- Earth: The Future (retelling of Beauty and the Beast)
The Meanings of "Beauty & The Beast" A Handbook by Jerry Griswold is a must own for fans of Beauty and the Beast (like me). The other is Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale but that's for discussing another day. The books actually make great companions to each other since Hearne focuses on the history and iterations of the tale, avoiding interpretations, while Griswold is focused on many of the possible interpretations of the tale as the title implies.
Griswold was one of the presenters at Grimm Legacies, and not surprisingly, he gave an entertaining presentation on Beauty and the Beast. So to start off the recap, I wanted to offer a post on Griswold's book devoted to the tale. I will share more about his presentation in another post as well as another devoted to his favorite iteration of Beauty and the Beast. Stay tuned to learn more.
Book description:
Using Beaumont’s classic story as a touchstone, this work shows how "Beauty and the Beast" takes on different meanings as it is analyzed by psychologists, illustrated in picture books, adapted to the screen, and rewritten by contemporary writers.
The Meanings of "Beauty and the Beast" provides expert commentary on the tale and on representative critical approaches and contemporary adaptations. This book also includes a variety of original source materials and twenty-three colour illustrations.
The Meanings of "Beauty and the Beast" is for any reader who wishes to explore this classic, endlessly rich fairy tale.
About the Author
Jerry Griswold is a professor of literature at San Diego State University. He is the author of several books, including Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books (Oxford University Press, 1992; reissued as The Classic American Children’s Story: Novels of the Golden Age by Penguin, 1996) and The Children’s Books of Randall Jarrell (University of Georgia Press, 1988). Griswold has also published more than one hundred essays in The Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and elsewhere. He writes frequently for The Los Angeles Times.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Importance of "Beauty and the Beast"
2. The Tale and its Author
3. Among the Critics
4. Sources
5. Folk Tale Variations
6. Illustrations
7. Contemporary Versions
8. Films
Since John Cech mentioned "Female Liberation" during his presentation (or was it the Q&A?) I decided it was a fine time for me to devote a quick post to the book it was reprinted in, Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature by Alison Lurie. Lurie has long been a fairy tale apologist and edited a few fairy tale related books. She also wrote several articles about fairy tales for the popular media.
Lurie's articles, especially "Fairy Tale Liberation," first printed in 1970 in The New York Review of Books inspired a response "Some Day My Prince Will Come": Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale by Marcia R. Lieberman in 1972 (this is an article and I linked to it on JSTOR which requires login to access) which was a key article in the feminist anti-fairy tales stance held by some during the height of the 1970s and beyond. I am oversimplifying here, but some feminist writers accused fairy tales of teaching girls the wrong messages about women's roles, behaviors, etc. These arguments still resonate and echo today. For example, recent books like Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein are a direct inheritor of this decades old discussion.
Needless to say, I am pretty firmly in Lurie's camp myself, but I also understand the other side and sympathize with it, too. After all, I was born the year Lieberman's article was published, so all of these views have informed my life and education. Feminism is not a bad word to me as it is to some.
But that is just one small part of Lurie's book which I highly recommend. It was one of the first books I added to my shelf the year I started SurLaLune and started revving up my personal fairy tale studies and children's literature studies library.
Book description:
In sixteen spirited essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alison Lurie, who is also one of our wittiest and most astute cultural commentators, explores the world of children's literature--from Lewis Carroll to Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain to Beatrix Potter--and shows that the best-loved children's books tend to challenge rather than uphold respectable adult values.
And since it provides a little more insight into the book, Library Journal's review:
While not a comprehensive history of the unorthodox in children's books, the 16 essays collected here (some from the New York Review of Books and Children's Literature ) do offer witty and illuminating insights into the classics they explore. Chapters on folktales, Greenaway, Nesbit, Barrie, and Milne are especially rich. Lurie may win new readers for Shardik , T.H. White, and William Mayne. Essays on Mrs. Clifford's and F.M. Ford's little-known stories unconvincingly stretch the "subversive" to include these writers' very private, and even unbalanced, use of unconventional material, while Chapters 3 and 4, on adult books, have crept in on a subversive mission of their own. Although the theme announced in the subtitle is not so strong a unifying thread as one might wish, the book is worth having for its careful, reasonably feminist, and often fascinating readings of some enduring texts.
- Patricia Dooley, Univ. of Washington Lib. Sch., Seattle
Bio for Alison Lurie:
Alison Lurie edited The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales. She was for many years a professor of English at Cornell University, where she taught writing, folklore, and children's literature. Her novels include The War Between the Tates; Foreign Affairs, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, The Last Resort. She divides her time between Ithaca, New York; Key West, Florida; and London.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
1.Subversive children's literature
2.Folktale liberation
3.Fairy tale fiction: Fitzgerald to Updike
4.Braking for elves: fashionable folklore for adults
5.Child who followed the piper: Kate Greenaway
6.Tales of terror: Mrs. Clifford
7.Ford Madox Ford's fairy tales
8.Animal liberation: Beatrix Potter
9.Modern magic: E. Nesbit
10.Boy who couldn't grow up: James Barrie
11.Happy endings: Frances Hodgson Burnett
12.Back to Pooh Corner: A.A. Milne
13.Heroes for our time: J.R.R. Tolkien and T.H. White
14.Power of Smokey: Richard Adams
15.Games of dark: William Mayne
16.Folklore of childhood
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm translated by Lore Segal and Randall Jarrell and illustrated by Maurice Sendak was the primary focus of John Cech's presentation at Grimm Legacies, titled "The Grimms, Sendak, and the Zeitgeist." I posted about the book almost a year ago and shared the book description and table of contents with some images so go there to see those During his talk, Cech had a rotating slide presentation of Sendak's illustrations for the book. Since these illustrations are rather small format in their book I really enjoyed seeing them in their blown-up glory on the screen where more of the minute details were visible.
I'll share some highlights of the Cech's presentation here interspersed with images from the book.
First published in 1973, The Juniper Tree marked a tipping point in the interest in fairy tales during that era. Up to that point, there hadn't been many fairy tales illustrated with more of a salt and vinegar feel, with perhaps the most recent having been Wanda Gag's collections first published in 1936. (I've posted about Gag's Snow White previously, but need to devote some more posts to her work. Note to self.)
The book was first a collaboration between Randall Jarrell and Sendak, but Jarrell died when the project was barely begun with only five translations. (You can read one of my previous posts about Randall Jarrell here.)
Lore Segal was chosen to complete the collaboration. Together, she and Sendak chose the tales that resonated best with them, some well-known and others not as well-known, resulting in 27 tales with one illustration for each.
Sendak chose to illustrate an important, key point in the plot of each tale. Some have criticized his illustrations as claustrophobic, but Cech interprets the choices as intimate, close-up views of the characters. He studied the engraving work of artists such as Albrecht Dürer and the early illustrated versions of Grimms, too.
Cech referenced a few books, articles and videos in his presentation, including:
Sendak on Colbert: The videos, Part I and Part II, are online and have content warning if that concerns you. They are funny and rather unexpected from Colbert and Sendak, but then again not.
John Cech is the author of fiction, prose, poetry, and criticism for adults and children, including Angels and Wild Things, a study of the work of Maurice Sendak. Cech is Professor of English and Children’s Literature and the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he also directs the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture. Cech has been a commentator on children’s culture for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and he was the creator, producer, and host of “Recess!”--the public radio program about the cultures of childhood, which aired nationally from 1998-2006.
Please note that these are from my own notes and may not be 100% accurate to Cech's presentation. When it comes to these topics and day-long thinking fests, my own brain imposes my knowledge and thoughts into my notes, so any errors will be rightfully mine. He should be consulted for any direct quotations or clarification.
Posts
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--starting at the age of sixteen back when SurLaLune was new, too. In fact, the first book was one of the first review books I received from a publisher, if I remember correctly. I don't receive many believe it or not, especially fiction ones, so each one is always a boon to my work here on SurLaLune.
and 
.
by Tanith Lee, or at least one story in it, dominated Jerry Griswold's presentation on Beauty and the Beast at the Grimm Legacies Symposium. If you are just interested in "Beauty," the story he discussed and identified as one of his favorite retellings of the tale, it is also reprinted in his 
--but I haven't seen a table of contents for it nor does it seem to have stories from Red as Blood in it. Fingers crossed for volume 2.
but that's for discussing another day. The books actually make great companions to each other since Hearne focuses on the history and iterations of the tale, avoiding interpretations, while Griswold is focused on many of the possible interpretations of the tale as the title implies.
by Peggy Orenstein are a direct inheritor of this decades old discussion.
by James Thurber
, a documentary about Sendak by Spike Jonze