Postmodern Fairy Tales in Anglophone Literature - Einzelansicht

Telling fairy tales has been considered a "domestic art" at least since Plato in the Gorgias referred to the "old wives' tales" told by nurses to amuse and to frighten children. This association of fairy tales with the domestic arts and with old wives' tales has not done much to enhance the status of these cultural stories Although fairy tales are still arguably the most powerfully formative tales of childhood and permeate mass media for children and adults, it is not unusual to find them deemed of marginal cultural importance and dismissed as unworthy of critical attention. Yet the staying power of these stories, their widespread and enduring popularity, suggests that they must be addressing issues that have a significant social function—whether critical, conservative, compensatory, or therapeutic: In that perspective, fairy tales register an effort on the part of both children and adults, women and men, to develop maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the myriad frustrations of everyday life. No surprise, then, that contemporary literatures in the Anglophone world should abound with revisions, reworkings and rewritings of traditional folk and fairy tales.

In our seminar we will combine theory-based discussions of the genre of the fairy tale with in-depth readings of exemplary and influential contemporary fairy tales including, among others, Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, Angela Carter’s and Jeanette Winterson’s feminist rewritings of the Grimm Brothers’ tales, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch

Neil Gaiman, Coraline

More primary and secondary material will be made available on Moodle by the beginning of the semester.

3 CPs for regular and active reading-based participation and an in-class presentation.