The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales
The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales

Author:

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 069122465X

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A collection of magical Italian folk and fairy tales—most in English for the first time The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales presents twenty magical stories published between 1875 and 1914, following Italy’s political unification. In those decades of political and social change, folklorists collected fairy tales from many regions of the country while influential writers invented original narratives in standard Italian, drawing on traditional tales in local dialects, and translated others from France. This collection features a range of these entertaining jewels from such authors as Carlo Collodi, most celebrated for the novel Pinocchio, and Domenico Comparetti, regarded as the Italian Grimm, to Grazia Deledda, the only Italian woman to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. With one exception, all of these tales are appearing in English for the first time. The stories in this volume are linked by themes of metamorphosis: a man turns into a lion, a dove, and an ant; a handsome youth emerges from a pig’s body; and three lovely women rise out of the rinds of pomegranates. There are also more introspective transformations: a self-absorbed princess learns about manners, a melancholy prince finds joy again, and a complacent young woman discovers gratitude. Cristina Mazzoni provides a comprehensive introduction that situates the tales in their cultural and historical context. The collection also includes period illustrations and biographical notes about the authors. Filled with adventures, supernatural and fantastic events, and brave and flawed protagonists, The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales will delight, surprise, and astonish.

Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned

Author: Gretchen Schultz

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0691191417

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"The present volume contains thirty-five fairy tales by nineteen writers, presented chronologically by author"--Introduction.

Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales
Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales

Author: Kurt Schwitters

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780691139678

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Kurt Schwitters revolutionized the art world in the 1920s with his Dadaist Merz collages, theater performances, and poetry. But at the same time he was also writing extraordinary fairy tales that were turning the genre upside down and inside out. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is the first collection of these subversive, little-known stories in any language and the first time all but a few of them have appeared in English. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, one of the world's leading authorities on fairy tales, this book gathers thirty-two stories written between 1925 and Schwitters's death in 1948--including a complete English-language recreation of The Scarecrow, a children's book illustrated with avant-garde typography that Schwitters created with Kate Steinitz and De Stijl founder Theo van Doesburg. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales also includes brilliant new illustrations that evoke the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Schwitters wrote these darkly humorous, satirical, and surreal tales at a time when traditional German fairy tales were being co-opted by the Nazis. Filled with sharp critiques of German life during the Weimar and early Nazi eras, Schwitters's tales are rich with absurdist events and insist that not everyone--and perhaps not anyone--lives happily ever after. In "Lucky Hans," the starving protagonist tries to catch a rabbit only to have it shed its fur like a coat and run off naked into the forest. In other tales, a sarcastic gypsy stands in for a fairy godmother and an army recruit is arrested for growing to monstrous size. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is a delightfully strange and surprising book.

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales
The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales

Author: Juwen Zhang

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-03-08

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0691214417

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"Although the influence of the Brothers Grimm on folklore in virtually every country in the West has been widely studied, a similar development in the early part of twentieth-century China is virtually unknown. This book collects and translates more than 40 tales selected from the "Lin Lan" series, published in China from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. The pseudonym "Lin Lan" was created in 1924, when a group of three literary stories about the legendary Xu Wenchang (1521-1593), himself the author of many literary works still popular today, were published in a morning newspaper. The success of this first attempt encouraged the creators to publish more folk tales and fairy tales, which ultimately played a major role in the development of modern folk literature in China. The series, written and developed by a Shanghai publisher under the pen name Lin Lan, was divided into three subgenres-minjian chuanshuo (folk legends/tales), minjian tonghua (folk fairy tales), and minjian qushi (comic folk tales)-published in 43 volumes containing nearly one thousand tales in all. The tales were collected the tales from oral storytellers throughout China in response to a call from the publisher, and combined elements of European fairy-tale literature with traditional Chinese narratives"--

A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Age of the Marvelous

Author: Suzanne Magnanini

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350285900

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How have fairy tales from around the world changed over the centuries? What do they tell us about different cultures and societies? Drawing on the contributions of scholars working on Italian, French, English, Ottoman Turkish, and Japanese tale traditions, this book underscores the striking mobility and malleability of fairy tales written in the years 1450 to 1650. The essays examine how early modern scientific theories, debates on the efficacy of witchcraft, conceptions of race and gender, religious beliefs, the aesthetics of landscape, and censorial practices all shaped the representations of magic and marvels in the tales of this period. Tracing the fairy tale's swift movement across linguistic and geographic borders, through verse and prose versions, from the printed page to the early modern stage, this volume demonstrates the ways in which these fantastic literary texts explored the ideological borders constructed by different societies. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of literature, history and cultural studies, contributors explore themes including: forms of the marvelous, adaption, gender and sexuality, humans and non-humans, monsters and the monstrous, space, socialization, and power. A Cultural History of Fairy Tales (6-volume set) A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity is also available as a part of a 6-volume set, A Cultural History of Fairy Tales, tracing fairy tales from antiquity to the present day, available in print, or within a fully-searchable digital library accessible through institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Golden Fruit
Golden Fruit

Author: Christina Mazzoni

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2019-03-20

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1487515774

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Through a close reading of key texts, including poetic and spiritual writings, fairy tales, and a botanical treatise, Golden Fruit examines the role of oranges in Italian culture from their introduction during the medieval period through to the present day. Featuring a beautiful full-colour spread, Cristina Mazzoni’s book brings together artistic depictions, literary analysis, historical context, and popular culture to investigate the changing representations of the orange over time and across the Italian peninsula. Oranges were introduced to Italy in the 1200s, many centuries after beloved Mediterranean fruits such as grapes, figs, and pomegranates—all well-known since Antiquity. Not burdened with age-old meanings and symbolism, then, oranges in early modern times provided a malleable image for artists, writers, and scientists alike. Thus, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, oranges appear in visual and verbal representations as an effective aid in physical and spiritual health, as symbols of romantic and of divine love, and as signs of geographic allegiance to one’s citrus-rich land. Baroque poets, botanists, and painters regularly compared oranges to women for their shared hybrid nature, whereas later folklore presented this dual character of oranges from an economic standpoint, as both precious and dangerous. The violence intrinsic to oranges in these Sicilian texts from the eighteen and nineteen hundreds returns in the controversial representations of the orange harvest in early twenty-first century Italy.

The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany
The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany

Author: Francois-Marie Luzel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-01-16

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0691252696

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"The French folklorist and Breton-language poet François-Marie Luzel (1826-1895) published several volumes of Breton tales that he collected in Brittany and translated into French. Unlike many nineteenth-century folklorists, including the Brothers Grimm, who relied on correspondents to conduct much of their scholarly research, Luzel and his sister Perrine transcribed nearly all of the tales they collected by spending many winter nights at Breton veillees, social gatherings that took place in houses and cottages throughout Brittany during the winter months of darkness, where communities of family and neighbors would come together to tell traditional stories and share news, gossip, and songs. The folklorist Michael Wilson has translated 29 of Luzel's French tales into English for this volume. Many of these tales have never appeared in English; others have not been translated into English for nearly a century. The tales are organized into a series of five veillees to capture the full context of the tales' original performance at these gatherings. Introductory material provides historical and literary context about Luzel, his surprisingly modern approach to collecting and publishing folk tales, and the Breton culture he worked throughout his life to preserve"--

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales
The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales

Author: Hermynia Zur Mühlen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-04-21

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0691201250

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"Born to an artistocratic Catholic family, Hermynia zur Mèuhlen became a prolific writer and translator, sometimes called the Red Countess for her left-wing ideas and revolutionary spirit. She began to write during the several years she spent in a sanitorium for tuberculosis, a disease she battled for the rest of her life. Exiled from Germany in the 1930s for her anti-Nazi convictions and her relationship with the German Jewish translator Stefan Klein, she eventually fled to England, where she spent her final years. The 17 fairy tales selected for this book were written primarily during her radical Weimar years and demonstrate the innovative techniques she used to raise the political consciousness of readers young and old. In contrast to the classical fairy tales of Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, Zur Mèuhlen's focus was on the plight of the working class and the cause of social justice"--

Workers' Tales
Workers' Tales

Author: Michael Rosen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0691175349

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A collection of political tales—first published in British workers’ magazines—selected and introduced by acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres—the fairy tale, fable, allegory, parable, and moral tale—and penned by a range of lesser-known and celebrated authors, including Schalom Asch, Charles Allen Clarke, Frederick James Gould, and William Morris, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages—and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. In Workers’ Tales, acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume. Throughout, the tales in this collection exemplify themes and ideas related to work and the class system, sometimes in wish-fulfilling ways. In “Tom Hickathrift,” a little, poor person gets the better of a gigantic, wealthy one. In “The Man Without a Heart,” a man learns about the value of basic labor after testing out more privileged lives. And in “The Political Economist and the Flowers,” two contrasting gardeners highlight the cold heart of Darwinian competition. Rosen’s informative introduction describes how such tales advocated for contemporary progressive causes and countered the dominant celebration of Britain’s imperial values. The book includes archival illustrations, biographical notes about the writers, and details about the periodicals where the tales first appeared. Provocative and enlightening, Workers’ Tales presents voices of resistance that are more relevant than ever before.