Currently Reading Wednesdays 5: I was too tired last night so I posted it today

[healyg]

Currently I'm reading The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales, edited by Jack Zipes. Zipes, in case you didn't know, has translated the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, edited anthologies of radical and feminist fairy tales, and has written about the fairy tale in history and today, just to name a few of his credentials for this book. It casts a pretty wide net over the folk tale collections of the 1800s to early 20th Century, taking tales from the well-known collections of the Brothers Grimm and Joseph Jacobs, to lesser known collections like Round the Yule: Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales. The stories are grouped together by theme and ATU classification, with chapters like Facing Fear: ATU 326--The Youth Who Wanted to Know What Fear Is, The Fruitful Sleep: ATU 410--Sleeping Beauty, Evil Stepmothers and Magic Mirrors: ATU 709--Snow White, and Bloodthirsty Husbands and Serial Killers: ATU 955--The Robber Bridegroom, ATU 311--Rescue by Sister Maiden, ATU 312--Maiden Killer; each chapter begins with some analysis by Zipes and a tale from the first two editions of Grimm's folk tales.

If you get well-read enough in fairy tales, you get pretty used to the same motifs and formulas used in fairy tales from around the world; what got me, in reading this collection, is what some tales lacked in terms of the formula. For example, there's a "Snow White" tale in the book that doesn't have the stepmother's revenge (The Vain Queen, from Portuguese Folk Tales), and a "Cinderella" without the teasing from the stepsisters and the being forced to sweep the hearth et al, which makes Cinderella come off as a bit of a jerk (Date, Oh Beautiful Date, from Giuseppe Pitre). And then there's this Rapunzel variant, Parsillette, where the prince goes up to Rapunzel as usual, but the witch/fairy godmother figure catches them running away, and she makes Rapunzel ugly and kills the prince somehow, I think. Later Rapunzel apologizes and the godmother makes her pretty again. I just don't know.

Anyway, it's a very good book, all the stories are entertaining and Zipes has some good insights. I might write a few treats for the tales that were nominated in once_upon_fic, like "The Robber Bridegroom" or "Vasilisa the Beautiful". We'll see.

Next time, on Currently Reading Wednesdays Somedays: I skipped a comics-related book this week, so I might do that next time. And I'd also like to dig into a book about religion sometime, considering it's Lent and all. Then there's IF, again; Parser Comp games are out, but I'd really like to review them outside of Currently Reading Wednesdays. Who knows?