New Book: Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Ann Schmiesing

Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) by Ann Schmiesing is a new release this month, part of the Series in Fairy-Tale Studies from Wayne State University Press.

As I perused this book, I realized again just how rich a topic it is although there isn't much scholarship on the subject of disability, deformity, and disease in fairy tales and folklore. As I studied the works cited, there were about 10-15 journal articles on the topic as well as two books that deal specifically with the subject, including The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity toward Social Liberation by Betty M. Adelson and Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Tales of Straparola and Basile (Toronto Italian Studies) by Suzanne Magnanini.

Schmiesing's focus, obviously, is on the Grimms. She studied 77 of the brothers' tales and provides interesting discussion of the portrayals of the unusual in fairy tales. After all, what better method than folklore to help explain away the mysterious medical issues of centuries past? Or to help mark the marginalization of characters. Fairy tales are often unkind to the marginalized--if they are not the hero of the story, they are often the antagonist, with physical markers to explain their level of evilness. Or if they are the hero, their good works are usually rewarded with the cure for their physical ailments or limitations.

I myself have always been fascinated with the concept of changelings--what a comforting and frustrating way to try to explain the onset of autism or similar conditions in what was once a "normal" behaving child? Your once loving, affectionate child develops into a different being who abhors your touch and doesn't emote like you? Changeling! Blame the fairies.

So overall, a fascinating book on the topic, a needed book, that will hopefully trigger more thoughtful study and analysis.

Book description:

Although dozens of disabled characters appear in the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales, the issue of disability in their collection has remained largely unexplored by scholars. In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, author Ann Schmiesing analyzes various representations of disability in the tales and also shows how the Grimms' editing (or "prostheticizing") of their tales over seven editions significantly influenced portrayals of disability and related manifestations of physical difference, both in many individual tales and in the collection overall.

Schmiesing begins by exploring instabilities in the Grimms' conception of the fairy tale as a healthy and robust genre that has nevertheless been damaged and needs to be restored to its organic state. In chapter 2, she extends this argument by examining tales such as "The Three Army Surgeons" and "Brother Lustig" that problematize, against the backdrop of war, characters' efforts to restore wholeness to the impaired or diseased body. She goes on in chapter 3 to study the gendering of disability in the Grimms' tales with particular emphasis on the Grimms' editing of "The Maiden Without Hands" and "The Frog King or Iron Henry." In chapter 4, Schmiesing considers contradictions in portrayals of characters such as Hans My Hedgehog and the Donkey as both cripple and "supercripple"-a figure who miraculously "overcomes" his disability and triumphs despite social stigma. Schmiesing examines in chapter 5 tales in which no magical erasure of disability occurs, but in which protagonists are depicted figuratively "overcoming" disability by means of other personal abilities or traits.

The Grimms described the fairy tale using metaphors of able-bodiedness and wholeness and espoused a Romantic view of their editorial process as organic restoration. Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales shows, however, the extent to which the Grimms' personal experience of disability and illness impacted the tales and reveals the many disability-related amendments that exist within them. Readers interested in fairy-tales studies and disability studies will appreciate this careful reading of the Grimms' tales.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Able-bodied Aesthetics? The Grimms’ Preface to the Kinder—und Hausmärchen
2. The Simulacrum of Wholeness: Prosthesis and Surgery in “The Three Army Surgeons” and “Brother Lustig”
3. Gender and Disability: The Grimms’ Prostheticizing of “The Maiden without Hands” and “The Frog King or Iron Henry”
4. Cripples and Supercripples: The Erasure of Disability in “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Donkey,” and “Rumpelstiltskin”
5. “Overcoming” Disability in the Thumbling, Dummy, and Aging Animal Tales
Conclusion
Appendix: Table of KHM Tales Studied
Notes
Works Cited
Index

New Book: The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition translated by Jack Zipes

(Amazon US/UK Links)

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition translated by Jack Zipes is officially released later this week although it is already shipping from online book retailers. If you love Grimms and aren't very fluent in German, this is a book to get excited about. Even if you are fluent, it's pretty exciting, too.

Over the years, one of the top questions I've received as SurLaLune is: "Where are the dark, gritty fairy tales I hear about?" Well, that's a complicated question, but one interpretation of what they ask is: "Where are those lesser edited Grimms' tales that I've heard about?" For some reason, the entirety of the first Grimms' edition has not been translated into English previously. Zipes, in the Acknowledgements of this new book, says that during the Grimms' bicentennial in 2012 he decided, "if nobody was going to undertake this 'task,' I would do it--and do it out of pleasure and to share the unusual tales the Grimms collected as young men when they had not fully realized what a treasure they had uncovered."* After all, the Grimms had seven editions of their famous collection and there were considerable changes between that first and seventh edition.

That's a boon since, after all, Zipes has also translated one of the most used and most recommended editions of Grimms. For that conversation see my blog post: Library Essentials: Picking a Grimm Translation. Nice to have Zipes' translations of both the earliest and later versions of the tales to compare and consider.

From the book's introduction:

In fact, many of the tales in the first editions are more fabulous and baffling than those refined versions in the final edition, for they retain the pungent and naive flavor of the oral tradition. They are stunning narratives precisely because they are so blunt and unpretentious. Moreover, the Grimms had not yet "vaccinated" or censored them with their sentimental Christianity and puritanical ideology.

And, a bonus for scholars like me and some of you, Zipes also translated some of the Grimms' notes to the tales:

As for the sholarly notes to the tales, I have provided a thorough summary of each note to indicate sources, and I have also translated the variants of the tale that I thought were important. These notes reveal, in my opinion, how knowledgeable and erudite the Grimms were at a very young age.

Finally, this means that the table of contents to the book is different from what we consider the standard contents since the Grimms removed and added tales over subsequent editions. Zipes has included several of those omitted tales in his standard Grimms in the appendices but now they are provided in their original context in their original place. For example, "The Summer and Winter Garden"--no. 68 in the first edition and a Beauty and the Beast tale--was omitted in later editions for being too French. In later editions, KHM 68 (the way Grimms tales are referenced by number, abbreviating the title Kinder- und Hausmärchen with the tale's number in the contents) is "The Thief and His Master."

And in this edition, you get the infamous and disturbing "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering." In later editions, you get KHM 22 as "The Riddle" instead which is much more innocuous as the titles imply.

So, yes, I highly recommend this book for fairy tale fans.

Book description:

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Children's and Household Tales in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as "Rapunzel," "Hansel and Gretel," and "Cinderella" would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style. For the very first time, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions. These narrative gems, newly translated and brought together in one beautiful book, are accompanied by sumptuous new illustrations from award-winning artist Andrea Dezsö.

From "The Frog King" to "The Golden Key," wondrous worlds unfold--heroes and heroines are rewarded, weaker animals triumph over the strong, and simple bumpkins prove themselves not so simple after all. Esteemed fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes offers accessible translations that retain the spare description and engaging storytelling style of the originals. Indeed, this is what makes the tales from the 1812 and 1815 editions unique--they reflect diverse voices, rooted in oral traditions, that are absent from the Grimms' later, more embellished collections of tales. Zipes's introduction gives important historical context, and the book includes the Grimms' prefaces and notes.

A delight to read, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm presents these peerless stories to a whole new generation of readers.

*All my quotations from the book are from the unproofed ARC I received several weeks ago. I waited for the final review copy to arrive but the envelope arrived last week split open along a seam and empty with a nice sticker on the front from USPS telling me that my package "Arrived Without Contents." I'm not sure if and when another will arrive.

New Book: Classics Reimagined, Grimm's Fairy Tales by Yann Legendre (Illustrator)

Classics Reimagined, Grimm's Fairy Tales by Wilhelm Grimm (Author), Jacob Grimm (Author), Yann Legendre (Illustrator) was released this month and has some fascinating illustrations of Grimms. Although I have shared the color illustration work primarily below, the B&W is my favorite from the previews I have seen. But one color image of Aschenputtel below is a new favorite, too. Of course, the publisher uses Cinderella as the name here but if there are Grimms involved and a tree, it's Aschenputtel folks!

I haven't seen the book itself yet but it's definitely an art book. The Amazon preview also allows you to read some of the text which is the fairly standard renditions of Grimms--I didn't bother to try to identify the translation.

I'll start with images of the Table of Contents so you can see the tales included:

Book description:

Rockport revisits these classics in a new series lushly illustrated by some of today's most endearing and sought-after artists. These aren't your typical classics--our artists reinterpret these stories and create a stunning presentation unlike any you've ever seen. Book enthusiasts and artisans will want to collect the entire series. French artist Yann Legendre takes readers on a beautiful journey through the stories by the brothers Grimm, with his luscious imagery. These stories take on a whole new meaning when accompanied by Legendre's mystical, colorful interpretations. This edition of the Classics Reimagined series will excite and enthrall all!?

About the Illustrator

Yann Legendre is an internationally recognized illustrator, designer and art director based in Paris. His illustrations have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Reader, Perspective Magazine, le Monde... He is the art director of the French publisher Inculte, designing each book cover and every illustrated book series. He regularly creates illustrations for Universal Music in London, the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Janus Films and the Criterion Collection in New York. In 2011, CB2 (Crate & Barrel) commissioned him to illustrate a new collection of furniture called "Fresh Ink". In 2010 he started a collaboration with the filmmaker Joe Swanberg, designing and illustrating all of the director's movie posters. Yann received an Award of Excellence for the best movie poster design from the South by Southwest Film Festival.

Okay, we all know by now that I love illustrations of Aschenputtel with her tree. This is one of my new favorites.

This appears to be for Frog King. It's in the end papers.

Fairy Tale Highlights of the American Folklore Society's 2014 Annual Meeting

The American Folklore Society's Annual Meeting is coming soon and the deadline to register at a discounted rate is August 31st. The Society's 2014 annual meeting will be held November 5-8 at the Santa Fe Convention Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My own attendance is still undecided but I highly recommend attending as well as becoming a member of AFS if you are not already.

I've pulled the fairy tale related papers from the 56 page program. There is always plenty to hear and see at the meeting but highlighting fairy tale discussions is SurLaLune's purpose. Looking through the papers, you can see a definite influence of ABC's Once Upon a Time and others on the current scholarship. I REALLY want to hear these papers, too, so now I get to see if the personal budget and schedule will accommodate me!

01-05
Channeling Wonder I: Televising Fairy-Tale Genders
Sponsored by the Folk Narrative Section and the Women's Section
See also 02-05

Claudia M. Schwabe (Utah State University), chair
8:00 Kirstian Lezubski (University of Winnipeg), The Power to Revolutionize the World, or
Absolute Gender Apocalypse? Queering the New Fairy-Tale Feminine in Revolutionary Girl Utena
8:30 Shuli Barzilai (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Catherine Breillat's Rescripting of
Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard"
9:00 Brittany Warman (The Ohio State University), Hearing Her Song: Examining (Feminist?)
Messages in the "Briar Rose" Episode of the Japanese Anime Grimms' Fairy Tale Classics
9:30 Patricia Sawin (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Things Walt Disney Didn't Tell
Us (But at Which Rodgers and Hammerstein at Least Hinted): The 1965 Made-for-TV Musical
Cinderella

02-05
Channeling Wonder II: Fairy-Tale (Un)Realities on Television
Sponsored by the Folk Narrative Section
See also 01-05

Pauline Greenhill (University of Winnipeg), chair
10:15 Jodi McDavid (Cape Breton University), Worlds Within Worlds: Depicting Fairy-tale
Superheroes in Children's Television
10:45 John Rieder (University of Hawai‘i, Manoa), The Fairy Tale and the Commercial:
Fractured Fairy Tales
11:15 Claudia M. Schwabe (Utah State University), Magic Realism in Grimm and Once Upon a
Time
11:45 Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai‘i, Manoa), The Fairy Tale and the Commercial:
The Italian Carosello

04-02
At the Crossroads of Folk Narrative, TV, and Gender

Jeana S. Jorgensen (Butler University), chair
8:00 Kim Snowden (University of British Columbia), "What's In the Basket Little Girl?":
Reading Buffy as Little Red Riding Hood
8:30 Linda Lee (University of Pennsylvania), Rehabilitating the Child-Stealing Witch:
Motherhood and Magic in ABC's Once Upon a Time
9:00 Jeana S. Jorgensen (Butler University), Gendering Lost Girl: Transforming Fairy-Tale and
Legend Intertexts in TV
9:30 Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai‘i), discussant

04-06
Theory II

Shandi Lynne Wagner (Wayne State University), chair
8:00 Anne Arundel Locker-Thaddeus (Texas A&M University), Comparison in a Crowded
Field: Choosing a Folk Narrative Analysis Technique
8:30 John Laudun (University of Louisiana), Counting Tales: Towards a Computational Model
of Narrative
9:00 Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (University of Iceland), Andersen and the Grimms: Authors,
Editors, Folk
9:30 Shandi Lynne Wagner (Wayne State University), The Intersection of Folklore and Fairy
Tale in the Ghostly Little Red Riding Hood of Elizabeth Gaskell's "Curious, If True" (1860)

06-07
New Scholarship on German and Russian Folk-Tale Studies

Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (University of Kentucky) and Linda Worley (University of
Kentucky), chairs
2:00 Ann Schmiesing (University of Colorado, Boulder), Disability and Able-Bodiedness in the
Grimms' Fairy Tales
2:20 Veronica Muskheli (University of Washington, Seattle), Unsettling Representation of the
Forest in Northern Russian Memorates
2:40 Zora Kadyrbekova (McGill University), Human-Animal Relationships in Russian Fairy
Tales
3:00 Qinna Shen (Miami University of Ohio), Little "Red" Riding Hood and Soviet Influence on
DEFA Fairy-Tale Films
3:20 Izabela Zdun (McGill University), The Fairy Tale Genre in Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's
Works: The Interplay between Literature and Folklore

06-13
Shakespeare and Spenser: Early Modern Adaptations of Folklore
Sponsored by the Medieval and Early Modern Folklore Section

Kerry Kaleba (independent), chair
2:00 Charlotte Artese (Agnes Scott College), "Like the Old Tale": Shakespeare as Folktale
Adapter
2:30 Sara Cleto (The Ohio State University), "Love, and Be Silent": Fairy Tale Conventions in
Shakespeare's King Lear
3:00 Joshua Commander (California State University, Stanislaus), The Hollow Christ, His
Brittle Glory, and His Sour Cross : An Examination of The Hollow Crown's Representation of
Shakespeare's Richard of Bordeaux as a Counterfeit of Christ
3:30 Amber N. Slaven (University of Louisiana, Lafayette), Continually at the Crossroads? The
Overlapping Liminality of Redcrosse Knight as a Fairy Changeling

08-17
Remapping 19th-Century Fairy Tales

Jennifer Schacker (University of Guelph), chair
10:15 Nancy Canepa (Dartmouth College), The Many Lives of Giambattista Basile's Neapolitan
Cunto
10:45 Christine A. Jones (University of Utah), Victorian Perrault, or the Birth of a Fairy
Godfather
11:15 Molly Clark Hillard (University of Seattle), Fairy Tales and Revolutions: Charles
Dickens's Bleak House
11:45 Jennifer Schacker (University of Guelph), Stage Folk: T. Crofton Croker's "Daniel O'
Rourke" at the Crossroads of Scholarship and Popular Culture

09-06
Diamond Session: At the Crossroads of Tales and Computers: Visualizing Fairy-Tale
Wonder through Filmographies and Computational Folkloristics

Jill T. Rudy (Brigham Young University), chair
2:00 Pauline Greenhill (University of Winnipeg), The International Fairy-Tale Filmography
(IFTF): Collaborating to Create a Digital Humanities Research Resource
2:10 Kendra Magnus-Johnston (University of Manitoba), Fairy Tales on TV: Archival
Methodologies for a Fairy-tale Teleography
2:20 Jill T. Rudy (Brigham Young University), Visualizing Fairy Tales on Television, or,
Everything Old is ATU Again
2:30 Madeleine Dresden (Brigham Young University), Glass Slippers and Small Screens: Rags
to Riches and the American Dream
2:40 discussion
3:00 Megan Armknecht (Brigham Young University), "Fractured Fairy Tales" and Rocky and
Bullwinkle for a Cold War Generation
3:10 Jessie Riddle (Brigham Young University), Red Hoods and Gold Locks: Motifs and Mash
Ups in Fairy-Tale Land
3:20 Kristy Stewart (Brigham Young University), Lost in the Genres: Hansel and Gretel across
TV Production Types

Once Upon a Time... by Studio C

Studio C is a skit based comedy show on BYUtv. This week they had two skits inspired by fairy tales. The above draws inspiration from the Brothers Grimm, "Once Upon a Time..." The comments say it is Pythonesque. What do you think?

Warning: The skit is fun but it will also inspire you to play a round of "Guess the first line of famous books."

Below is another that certainly finds inspiration in Disney's Maleficent, "Our Wedding Day" by Studio C:

New Book: Grimms' Tales around the Globe: The Dynamics of Their International Reception edited by Vanessa Joosen and Gillian Lathey

Grimms' Tales around the Globe: The Dynamics of Their International Reception edited by Vanessa Joosen and Gillian Lathey is released this week. It is the first release of several in 2014 in Wayne State University Press's Series in Fairy-Tale Studies.

That cover will certainly grab your attention! It's not like any other fairy tale criticism book sitting on my shelves! Manga fans will recognize it from Junko Mizuno's Hansel and Gretel (Viz Graphic Novel).

WSUP sent me a review copy (thank you!) and while I haven't finished reading it, it is fascinating reading so far. When I first read about it several months ago, the book description reminded me of Reception of Grimm's Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions edited by Donald P. Haase (which is bargain priced currently!). Haase's book has a narrower geographic focus. Haase also happens to be the general editor of this series from WSU Press so he in a way is getting to expand the published works on a topic he is quite knowledgeable about specifically--the Grimms, their translations, and their impact that is. He knows a lot about other fairy tale areas, of course, but the Grimms are one of his specialties.

But back to the new book. This new title, Grimms' Tales around the Globe: The Dynamics of Their International Reception, expands the geography of the discussion about the Grimms' impact globally. Yes, Europe is here with articles about Spain, Croatia, and Poland, for example. But we also get China, India, Korea, and Japan. Colombia is represented, too. I've included the table of contents below to illustrate the breadth of topics and regions.

The book starts strong from page one with a robust introduction discussing how the Grimms have generally been translated, disseminated, and even assimilated into other cultures. The intro is worth the price of admission alone. After all, as it points out, "the Brothers Grimm are also listed in the top ten most frequently translated authors in the world." Anyone who has ever dabbled in translation literary works can appreciate the diversity of those translations, depending on the purposes of the translator (and his/her publisher). Economics and cultural preferences impact the decisions made as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the translator and the diversity between languages.* The accompanying articles delve into these topics from a variety of perspectives that will fascinate you. You will not find the usual suspects of fairy tale literary criticism within, at least not much. This book feels--starting from its cover--very fresh and modern.

On a practical note, it will also provide some fun scope for student papers, for those students searching for academic resources for unusual Grimms discussions.

Book description:

Grimms' fairy tales are among the best-known stories in the world, but the way they have been introduced into and interpreted by cultures across the globe has varied enormously. In Grimms' Tales around the Globe, editors Vanessa Joosen and Gillian Lathey bring together scholars from Asia, Europe, and North and Latin America to investigate the international reception of the Grimms' tales. The essays in this volume offer insights into the social and literary role of the tales in a number of countries and languages, finding aspects that are internationally constant as well as locally particular.

In the first section, Cultural Resistance and Assimilation, contributors consider the global history of the reception of the Grimms' tales in a range of cultures. In these eight chapters, scholars explore how cunning translators and daring publishers around the world reshaped and rewrote the tales, incorporating them into existing fairy-tale traditions, inspiring new writings, and often introducing new uncertainties of meaning into the already ambiguous stories. Contributors in the second part, Reframings, Paratexts, and Multimedia Translations, shed light on how the Grimms' tales were affected by intermedial adaptation when traveling abroad. These six chapters focus on illustrations, manga, and film and television adaptations. In all, contributors take a wide view of the tales' history in a range of locales-including Poland, China, Croatia, India, Japan, and France.

Grimms' Tales around the Globe shows that the tales, with their paradox between the universal and the local and their long and world-spanning translation history, form a unique and exciting corpus for the study of reception. Fairy-tale and folklore scholars as well as readers interested in literary history and translation will appreciate this enlightening volume.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

I. Cultural Resistance and Assimilation

1. No-Name Tales: Early Croatian Translations of the Grimms’ Tales
Marijana Hameršak

2. Polishing the Grimms’ Tales for a Polish Audience: Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen in Poland
Monika Wozniak

3. The Grimms’ Fairy Tales in Spain: Translation, Reception, and Ideology
Isabel Hernández and Nieves Martín-Rogero

4. The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm in Colombia: A Bibliographical History
Alexandra Michaelis-Vultorius

5. “They are still eating well, and living well”: The Grimms’ Tales in Early Colonial Korea
Dafna Zur

6. The Influence of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales on the Folk Literature Movement in China (19181943)
Dechao Li

7. The Grimm Brothers’ Kahaniyan: Hindi Resurrections of the Tales in Modern India by Harikrishna Devsare
Malini Roy

8. Before and after the “Grimm Boom”: Reinterpretations of the Grimms’ Tales in Contemporary Japan
Mayako Murai

II. Reframings, Paratexts, and Multimedia Translations

9. Translating in the “Tongue of Perrault”: The Reception of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen in France
Cyrille François

10. Skeptics and Enthusiasts: Nineteenth-Century Prefaces to the Grimms’ Tales in English Translation
Ruth B. Bottigheimer

11. German Stories/British Illustrations: Production Technologies, Reception, and Visual Dialogue across Illustrations from “The Golden Bird” in the Grimms’ Editions, 18231909
Sara Hines

12. Marvelous Worlds: The Grimms’ Fairy Tales in GDR Children’s Films
Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

13. Retelling “Hansel and Gretel” in Comic Book and Manga Narration: The Case of Philip Petit and Mizuno Junko
Marianna Missiou

14. Fairy-Tale Scripts and Intercultural Conceptual Blending in Modern Korean Film and Television Drama
Sung-Ae Lee

Contributors
Index

*I've never shared my woe over translating tales and spending HOURS trying to decide on what words to use for spinning and cloth production implements. The implements could be regional, archaic, and hard to describe, especially to a world who mostly doesn't spin any more. Sometimes the implements were archaic and not well known when the tale was written down two hundred years ago. How could I hope to choose the right words for them for English readers? Never mind the further difficulties of narrator's tone, setting, character names, etc.

Bargain Book: Reception of Grimm's Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions edited by Donald P. Haase

For 15 more copies, Reception of Grimm's Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions edited by Donald P. Haase is bargain priced in PAPER not EBOOK for $8.78. I discovered this today when I was composing another post that is forthcoming and had to share. This is a great price for a great book. It is out of print, so getting brand new used copies for a used price is a grand thing.

This book is an important volume in reading about how the Grimms have been used and interpreted. The scope is definitely Western culture--European and U.S.--but it is a fine book to add to your fairy tale library for a GREAT price.

Book description:

The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales brings together premier scholars of the fairy tale, including Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, and Jack Zipes, with acclaimed creative writers such as Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, and award-winning artist Trina Schart Hyman. The essays address the reception of the Grimms' texts by their readers; the dynamics between Grimms' collection and its earliest audiences; and aspects of the literary, philosophical, creative, and oral reception of the tales, illuminating how writers, philosophers, artists, and storytellers have responded to, reacted to, and revised the stories, thus shedding light on the ways in which past and contemporary transmitters of culture have understood and passed on the Grimms' tales.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 8

Introduction 9

The Brothers Grimm as Collectors and Editors of German Folktales 24

Heinrich Prohle: A Successor to the Brothers Grimm 41

The Spoken and the Read: German Popular Stories and English Popular Diction 59

The Publishing History of Grimms' Tales: Reception at the Cash Register 78

Trivial Pursuit? Women Deconstructing the Grimmian Model in the Kaffeterkreis 102

Little Brier Rose: Young Nietzsche's Sleeping Beauty Poem as Legend and Swan Song 127

Fairy-Tale Allusions in Modern German Aphorisms 149

The Struggle for the Grimms' Throne: The Legacy of the Grimms' Tales in the FRG and GDR since 1945 167

Wilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Literary Culture of Childhood 207

Response and Responsibility in Reading Grimms' Fairy Tales 230

Once Upon a Time Today: Grimm Tales for Contemporary Performers 250

Personal Reflections on the Scholarly Reception of Grimms' Tales in France 269

The Brothers Grimm and Sister Jane 283

Grimms' Remembered 290

"Cut It Down, and You Will Find Something at the Roots" 293

Ashputtle: or, The Mother's Ghost 301

Notes on Contributors 304

Index 309

Today Only: Bargain Ebook The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein is $1.99

The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein is $1.99 today only in ebook format as one of the Kindle Daily Deals. The book was previously discounted to this price in December 2012--which is when I previously posted about it and when I bought a copy for myself.

The story creates a "lost Grimms' tale" as its impetus and plays with fairy tale tropes in general. Hence my posting about it here.

Book description:

An ages-old family secret breaches the boundaries between reality and magic in this fresh retelling of a classic fairy tale. When Berkeley student Will Taylor is introduced to the mysterious Feierabend sisters, he quickly falls for enigmatic Livvy, a chemistry major and accomplished chef. But Livvy’s family—vivacious actress Maddie, family historian Rose, and their mother, absent-minded Sylvia—are behaving strangely. The Feierabend women seem to believe that luck is their handmaiden, even though happiness does not necessarily follow. It is soon discovered that generations previous, the Feierabends made a contract with a powerful, otherworldly force, and it is up to Will and his best friend to unravel the riddle of this supernatural bargain in order to save Livvy from her predestined fate.

New Book: Original Bavarian Folktales: A Schönwerth Selection: A Dual-language Book by M. Charlotte Wolf

Do you remember the media hype a few years ago about the lost German fairy tales? I posted about the story at Five Hundred New Fairytales Discovered in Germany and Maria Tatar Discusses Franz Xaver von Schönwerth if you need your memory jiggled.

Well, now 150 of the tales have been translated for your reading pleasure by Dr. M. Charlotte Wolf. Better yet, they are offered side-by-side with the original German for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. I do. I have a few other books in the dual-language series by Dover. The other great news is that Dover is a thrifty publisher so the book is well-priced for just about everyone--no academic pricing here although the book is a fine academic tome--don't let the price let you think otherwise. It should entice you to pick up this collection since it is about the the price of a lunch at a sit-down restaurant.

I asked Dr. Wolf to share some insider information about the book with us along with her favorite tales in the collection. Thanks to her for sharing with us! I have a review copy of the book to peruse and will share more later, but wanted to share this now with you.

From M. Charlotte Wolf:

I would like to announce the upcoming publication of my book, Original Bavarian Folktales: A Schönwerth Selection: A Dual-language Book. The Kindle version is already available (March 2014) and the print version will be published in May.

The book contains 150 fairy and folk tales culled from a three-volume scholarly work by Franz von Schönwerth and published in the 1850s. In the introduction to Original Bavarian Folktales, readers will find footnoted critical material on the German and East Bavarian stories as well as Schönwerth and his legacy. The tales of giants, witches, death, mermaids, dwarfs, the wind, the sun and the moon, and other subjects are grouped thematically.

Franz Xaver von Schönwerth collected a treasure trove of material, traditions and tales, about the people of the East Bavarian region known as Upper Palatinate. In folklorist circles he is mainly known for his 3-volume work Aus der Oberpfalz: Sitten und Sagen, 1857 – 1859 (From the Upper Palatinate: Traditions and Tales, 1857-1895). Schönwerth’s famous contemporary Jacob Grimm, one half of the famous Grimm Brothers, was much impressed by Schönwerth’s work, and his all-around positive review in a letter he sent to the Bavarian folklorist in late September of 1858, may have been based on the realization that the much younger man was indeed a kindred spirit. While both the Grimm Brothers and Schönwerth collected tales during the 19th century, there is a distinct disparity between the different set of tales. This may also be because the Grimm Brothers frequently softened the message of tales they thought too violent for children, whereas Schönwerth had tried to preserve the tone and flavor of the Upper Palatinian stories along with their simplicity. These differences become most evident in tales that appear both in the Brothers Grimm and the Schönwerth collections, such as the widely known tale “The Gallant Tailor” (German, „Das tapfere Schneiderlein“), published in the 1857 edition of the Grimm Brothers' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). In Original Bavarian Folktales, Schönwerth’s version is called “The Tailor and the Giants” (German, „Der Schneider und die Riesen“).

In the Grimm version, the story begins with a detailed description of the purchase of sweet compote, tells of the flies that “landed on it in droves” (KHM 111), relates the tailor’s win over the seven flies with one stroke (as the tailor tells it!), and ends with the following words, “You are such a [tough] guy?[…] The entire world shall hear of this!” (KHM 111).

In Schönwerth’s version, the tailor is a much humbler lad who one day finds in the forest a red silk sash on which appear the words, “Seven with one stroke; who can match that?” which he picks up and ties around his waist. The two stories then follow two obviously similar threads, but the Grimm version is more refined and built on much more dialogue, whereas the Schönwerth recounts it as it may have been told by a story teller to a group or crowd of listeners, in a much more narrative style and involving little dialogue. In the Grimm version, the tailor survives by using his wits and boasting of seeminlgy heroic deeds, while in the Schönwerth version we learn of the tailor‘s acts of true heroism.

But like Schönwerth’s Sitten und Sagen, the inspiration for the publication of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie and the Grimm Brothers’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, was a shared focus on the importance of folk traditions. Schönwerth and the Grimm Brothers preferred the preservation of everyday culture of rural and small-town Germans, to keep alive traditions that reflected a Germanic folk-culture reaching back into a distant past.

As a true romantic, among my favorite Schönwerth tales is the story of a wager between King Solomon and the Devil (story 145). The story ends with the words: “Those who belong together will come together, even if the Devil has to gather them in his wheelbarrow.” I found the story appealing because not only is the Devil not depicted as the “bad guy” this time, but moreover, he even appears as an, albeit reluctant, matchmaker for two young lovers.

New Book: Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome

Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm and Gruesome by Stephen Jones (Editor), Alan Lee (Illustrator) was released this past October in the UK but won't be released in the US--see Fearie Tales (US Edition)--until September 2014. This may be of particular interest to fans of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films since their designer Alan Lee illustrates this book.

And, of course, for those of you always seeking darker fairy tales--those of you who prefer Grimm to Once Upon a Time, for example. I've included the usual book description below as well as some illustrations. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Joanne Harris and Garth Nix for their fans, too.

Book description:

Two hundred years ago two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, collected together a large selection of folk and fairy tales and published them as Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales). So successful was the first collection of 88 stories that they kept adding more to subsequent editions. Since then, the tales of the Brothers Grimm have been translated into upwards of a hundred different languages and are known and loved throughout the world.

Now award-winning editor Stephen Jones has tasked some of the brightest and best horror writers in Britain, America and Europe with reinterpreting some of the traditional Hausmärchen, putting a decidedly darker spin on the classic stories.

Stephen Jones is the multiple-award-winning editor and author of more than 100 books in the horror and fantasy genres. A former television director/producer and movie publicist and consultant (including the first three Hellraiser movies), he has edited the reprint anthology Best New Horror for more than 20 years. He lives in Wembley, Middlesex, and travels widely.

Alan Lee was born in London, where he studied graphic art and design. Over the years he has established himself as one of England's preeminent book artists, creating illustrations for, among other works: The Mabinogion, Castles, Merlin Dreams, Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Illiad and the anniversary edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He was also the conceptual designer working on the Lord of the Rings films, responsible for creating the 'look' of Middle Earth. He currently lives on Dartmoor.

The Star Child by the Grimms, illustrated by Bernadette Watts

(US / UK Links)

The Star Child is a picture book of Die Sterntaler by the Grimms, usually known as The Star Money or The Star Talers (talers as in coins) in English. It's not as well known but it is beloved by many who do know it. The most famous image from the story is of the little heroine gathering falling stars into her dress. It appears regularly in fairy tale materials and many readers do not recognize the short tale. It is one I see the most questions about, so I thought I would highlight it here today.

This book--the only English language picture book version I am aware of--is illustrated by Bernadette Watts who has illustrated many fairy tales, especially the Grimms for picture books. The cover image is sweet, here's a slightly larger version:

For me, the story has become a Christmas tale although it is not Christmas related. However, it's theme of generosity and giving along with the star imagery make it feel like a Christmas tale, one that is much happier than the usual focus on "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen, the fairy tale perhaps with the strongest ties to Christmas in popular culture. Much less death and guilt, but a joy in giving is conveyed.

Book description:

There was once a young girl whose only possessions were the clothes on her back and a piece of bread some kind soul had given to her. But even these few things meant much to others less fortunate than herself, and in selfless love, the girl gave the little she had away. In this beautiful Grimm tale, her virtue is rewarded a thousand times over.