I. Children's literature? -- 1. Sex and violence : the hard core of fairy tales -- 2. Fact and fantasy : the art of reading fairy tales -- 3. Victims and seekers : the family romance of fairy tales -- II. Heroes -- 4. Born yesterday : The spear side -- 5. Spinning tales : the distaff side -- III. Villains -- 6. From nags to witches : stepmothers and other ogres -- 7. Taming the beast : Bluebeard and other monsters -- Epilogue : getting even -- Appendixes -- A. Six fairy tales from the Nursery and household tales, with commentary -- B. Selected tales from the first edition of the Nursery and household tales -- C. Prefaces to the first and second editions of the Nursery and household tales -- D. English titles, tale numbers, and German titles of stories cited -- E. Bibliographical note.
Throughout the book, Tatar employs the tools not only of a psychoanalyst but also of a folklorist, literary critic, and historian to examine the harsher aspects of these stories. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this book. Few studies have been written in English on these tales, and none has probed their allegedly happy endings so thoroughly."--BOOK JACKET.
Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales is the subject of this groundbreaking and intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Nursery and Household Tales. This expanded edition includes a new preface and an appendix featuring translations of six tales with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar draws on the disciplinary tools of psychoanalysis and folklore while also providing historical context to explore the harsher aspects of these stories, presenting new interpretations of tales that engage in a kind of cultural repetition compulsion. No other book so thoroughly challenges us to rethink the happily-ever-after of these classic stories.
In this mischievous and utterly original debut, Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm-inspired tales. As readers follow the siblings through a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind (and beyond) the bread crumbs, edible houses, and outwitted witches. Fairy tales have never been more irreverent or subversive as Hansel and Gretel learn to take charge of their destinies and become the clever architects of their own happily ever after.
Once Upon a Time...Grimm's Fairy Tales have brought magic and delight to millions, throughout the generations all over the world. They collected the oral folktales of their time, which are slightly dark in origin, different from the fairy tales you are used to hearing. In this book, there are timeless classics such as: Little Red-Cap (Little Red Riding Hood) Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) Beauty and the Beast Hansel and Grethel Rumpelstiltskin Snow White Tom ThumbCinderellaRapunzel and 55 others...Collected here are 64 of the most popular stories by the Brothers Grimm with 55 black-and-white illustrations and photos, and a free online link to 62 audio files.
Containing 40 stories in new translations by Tatar this celebration of the richness and dramatic power of the legendary fables also features 150 illustrations, many of them in color, by legendary painters.
In this book -- the first in more than fifty years to treat the entire body of Grimms' Tales -- Ruth B. Bottigheimer provides a thorough analysis of the stories' content, focusing in particular on the matter of gender. By combining a sociohistorical examination of the stories with close scrutiny of the language in which they are told, Bottigheimer reveals coherent patterns of motif, plot, and image and brings new insight into the moral and social vision of the collection.
In a book that confronts our society's obsession with sexual violence, Maria Tatar seeks the meaning behind one of the most disturbing images of twentieth-century Western culture: the violated female corpse. This image is so prevalent in painting, literature, film, and, most recently, in mass media, that we rarely question what is at stake in its representation. Tatar, however, challenges us to consider what is taking place--both artistically and socially--in the construction and circulation of scenes depicting sexual murder. In examining images of sexual murder (Lustmord), she produces a riveting study of how art and murder have intersected in the sexual politics of culture from Weimar Germany to the present. Tatar focuses attention on the politically turbulent Weimar Republic, often viewed as the birthplace of a transgressive avant-garde modernism, where representations of female sexual mutilation abound. Here a revealing episode in the gender politics of cultural production unfolds as male artists and writers, working in a society consumed by fear of outside threats, envision women as enemies that can be contained and mastered through transcendent artistic expression. Not only does Tatar show that male artists openly identified with real-life sexual murderers--George Grosz posed as Jack the Ripper in a photograph where his model and future wife was the target of his knife--but she also reveals the ways in which victims were disavowed and erased. Tatar first analyzes actual cases of sexual murder that aroused wide public interest in Weimar Germany. She then considers how the representation of murdered women in visual and literary works functions as a strategy for managing social and sexual anxieties, and shows how violence against women can be linked to the war trauma, to urban pathologies, and to the politics of cultural production and biological reproduction. In exploring the complex relationship between victim and agent in cases of sexual murder, Tatar explains how the roles came to be destabilized and reversed, turning the perpetrator of criminal deeds into a defenseless victim of seductive evil. Throughout the West today, the creation of similar ideological constructions still occurs in societies that have only recently begun to validate the voices of its victims. Maria Tatar's book opens up an important discussion for readers seeking to understand the forces behind sexual violence and its portrayal in the cultural media throughout this century.
The Grimms Tales as you have never experienced them before – complete, accurate, and authentic - exactly as the Grimms wrote them 200 years ago. A completely new, cover to cover translation with extensive notes and commentary for the 200th anniversary translated in a new style that preserves the original texts in a way that has never been done before. There are 34 stories in the original 1812 edition that never appear in any of the later editions. In the 1812 first edition of the tales, the Grimms also included an extensive 60 page appendix which discussed the oral and literary sources of the tales and often times one or more other versions of the stories. The 1812 appendix was never published in any English versions, so the 60 “new” stories and fragments found therein have been almost entirely unknown to English readers for last 200 years. The appendix is a lost “gem” and arguably as important as the stories themselves.
