Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction
Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Author: Susan Sellers

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1403919208

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Woman as gorgon, woman as temptress: the classical and biblical mythology which has dominated Western thinking defines women in a variety of patriarchally encoded roles. This study addresses the surprising persistence of mythical influence in contemporary fiction. Opening with the question 'what is myth?', the first section provides a wide-ranging review of mythography. It traces how myths have been perceived and interpreted by such commentators as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Roland Barthes, Jack Zipes and Marina Warner. This leads to an examination of the role that mythic narrative plays in social and self formation, drawing on the literary, feminist and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous and Judith Butler to delineate the ways in which women's mythos can transcend the limitations of logos and give rise to potent new models for individual and cultural regeneration. In this light, Susan Sellers offers challenging new readings of a wide range of contemporary women's fiction, including works by A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Anne Rice, Michele Roberts, Emma Tennant and Fay Weldon. Topics explored include fairy tale as erotic fiction, new religious writing, vampires and gender-bending, mythic mothers, genre fiction, the still-persuasive paradigm of feminine beauty, and the radical potential of comedy.

Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction
Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Author: S. Wilson

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2012-12-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781137289865

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Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction explores contemporary feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial women writers' use and revisions of fairy tales and myths. With close readings of works ranging from Margaret Atwood to Doris Lessing to Toni Morrison, Wilson examines meanings of myths and fairy tales as well as their varying techniques, images, intertexts, and genres. Although the writers represent several different nationalities and racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, they employ a type of postcolonial literature that urges readers and societies beyond colonization. Wilson argues that the use of myths and fairy tales generally convey characters' transformation from alienation and symbolic amputation to greater consciousness, community, and wholeness, and it is in and through story that characters construct a hybrid way of establishing themselves in the larger world.

Kissing the Witch
Kissing the Witch

Author: Emma Donoghue

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1999-02-27

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0064407721

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Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.Cinderella forsakes the handsome prince and runs off with the fairy godmother; Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror; Snow White is awakened from slumber by the bittersweet fruit of an unnamed desire. Acclaimed writer Emma Donoghue spins new tales out of old in a magical web of thirteen interconnected stories about power and transformation and choosing one's own path in the world. In these fairy tales, women young and old tell their own stories of love and hate, honor and revenge, passion and deception. Using the intricate patterns and oral rhythms of traditional fairy tales, Emma Donoghue wraps age-old characters in a dazzling new skin. 2000 List of Popular Paperbacks for YA

How to Be Eaten
How to Be Eaten

Author: Maria Adelmann

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2022-05-31

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0316450820

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One of NPR's Best Books of the Year: This darkly funny and provocative novel reimagines classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for trauma. In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all. Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed . . . What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other? ​Dark, edgy, and wickedly funny, this debut for readers of Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Arnett, and Kelly Link takes our coziest, most beloved childhood stories, exposes them as anti-feminist nightmares, and transforms them into a new kind of myth for grown-up women. *Belletrist June Book Club Pick* Named a Best Book of May by TIME Magazine & Glamour One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year

Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale
Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale

Author: Stephen Benson

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780814332542

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Considers the profound influence of fairy tales on contemporary fiction, including the work of Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson. Recent decades have witnessed a renaissance of interest in the fairy tale, not least among writers of fiction. In Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, editor Stephen Benson argues that fairy tales are one of the key influences on fiction of the past thirty years and also continue to shape literary trends in the present. Contributors detail the use of fairy tales both as inspiration and blueprint and explore the results of juxtaposing fairy tales and contemporary fiction. At the heart of this collection, seven leading scholars focus on authors whose work is heavily informed and transformed by fairy tales: Robert Coover, A. S. Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, and Salman Rushdie. In addition to investigating the work of this so-called fairy-tale generation, Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale provides a survey of the body of theoretical writing surrounding these authors, both from within literary studies and from fairy-tale studies itself. Contributors present an overview of critical positions, considered here in relation to the work of Jeanette Winterson and of Nalo Hopkinson, suggesting further avenues for research. Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale offers the first detailed and comprehensive account of the key authors working in this emerging genre. Students and teachers of fiction, folklore, and fairy-tale studies will appreciate this insightful volume.

Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction
Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Author: Sharon Rose Wilson

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Published: 2008-08-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women's Fiction explores contemporary feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial women writers’ use and revisions of fairy tales and myths. With close readings of works ranging from Margaret Atwood to Doris Lessing to Toni Morrison, Wilson examines meanings of myths and fairy tales as well as their varying techniques, images, intertexts, and genres. Although the writers represent several different nationalities and racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, they employ a type of postcolonial literature that urges readers and societies beyond colonization. Wilson argues that the use of myths and fairy tales generally convey characters’ transformation from alienation and symbolic amputation to greater consciousness, community, and wholeness, and it is in and through story that characters construct a hybrid way of establishing themselves in the larger world.

The Wood Wife
The Wood Wife

Author: Terri Windling

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1997-08-15

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780812549294

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A woman writer moves into a house she inherited from a poet in the hills of Arizona. The man died in mysterious circumstances and Maggie Black wants to find out why. So begins a terrifying introduction to the Indian spirits which roam the hills and feed on people's creative juices.

The Book of Lost Things
The Book of Lost Things

Author: John Connolly

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2006-11-07

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0743298853

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A 12-year-old boy, mourning the death of his mother, takes refuge in the myths and fairytales she always loved--and finds that his reality and a fantasy world start to meld.

Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction
Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Author: Susan Sellers

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Published: 2001-11-10

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9780333720141

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Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction explores contemporary women's rewritings of myths and fairy tales. It examines the nature and role of myth, reviewing existing theories in an attempt to explain the ongoing potency of mythical paradigms in contemporary women's fiction despite the distorted images of gender they frequently present. To illustrate this, the book offers a series of readings of texts by a range of contemporary women writers whose fictions draw on, interrogate, or rework mythic models, including A. S. Byatt, Michele Roberts, and Angela Carter.

Gender Swapped Fairy Tales
Gender Swapped Fairy Tales

Author: Karrie Fransman

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0571360203

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Discover a collection of fairy tales unlike the ones you've read before . . . Once upon a time, in the middle of winter, a King sat at a window and sewed. As he sewed and gazed out onto the landscape, he pricked his finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell onto the snow outside. People have been telling fairy tales to their children for hundreds of years. And for almost as long, people have been rewriting those fairy tales - to help their children imagine a world where they are the heroes. Karrie and Jon were reading their child these stories when they hit upon a dilemma, something previous versions of these stories were missing, and so they decided to make one vital change.. They haven't rewritten the stories in this book. They haven't reimagined endings, or reinvented characters. What they have done is switch all the genders. It might not sound like that much of a change, but you'll be dazzled by the world this swap creates - and amazed by the new characters you're about to discover.