ENGL 4209.03 (Winter)
Fairy Tales
Prof. William Barker
Mondays 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Description:
"But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not talk nonsense." Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 282
The course, a survey of fairy tales with an emphasis on literary and socio?cultural interpretation, looks at the English-speaking reception of stories rising out of the tradition of Straparola, Basile, Perrault, d'Aulnoy, Grimm, and others, and on authored tales of the mid to late nineteenth century (Ruskin, MacDonald, Wilde, Andersen). There is necessarily a wide range of issues: the non?authored text; the text in multiple forms; the problem of definition of genre; the relation of orality and writing in relation to genre; the problem of translation (both linguistic and cultural); the nature of the "wonder text"; role of magic and the other world in a natural setting; function of tales in relieving misery and the setting forth of the conditions of hope; relation of text for children and for adult audience; feminist reading of pre?feminist narrative; parody; illustration of the tales; the function of filmed interpretation by Disney and others. The course will focus on the social role of these oral-literary texts.
Required Texts:
Texts will include the tales of the Brothers Grimm complete, a more general selection of tales edited by Maria Tatar, a selection of Victorian fairy tales, a collection of Newfoundland tales, and a course pack of essays by Walter Benjamin, Bruno Bettelheim, Ernst Bloch, Robert Darnton, Bengt Holbek, Vladimir Propp, Maria Tatar, Eugen Weber, and others.
