Fairy tales : a new history

Resource Information

The work Fairy tales : a new history represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Four County Library System. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Fairy tales : a new history

Title remainder

a new history

Statement of responsibility

Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Creator

• Bottigheimer, Ruth B

Subject

• Fairy tales -- History and criticism

Language

eng

Summary

This work overturns traditional views of the origins of fairy tales and documents their actual origins and transmission. Where did Cinderella come from? Puss in Boots? Rapunzel? The origins of fairy tales are looked at in a new way in these highly engaging pages. Conventional wisdom holds that fairy tales originated in the oral traditions of peasants and were recorded for posterity by the Brothers Grimm during the nineteenth century. The author overturns this view in this account of the origins of these well loved stories. Charles Perrault created Cinderella and her fairy godmother, but no countrywoman whispered this tale into Perrault's ear. Instead, his Cinderella appeared only after he had edited it from the book of often amoral tales published by Giambattista Basile in Naples. Distinguishing fairy tales from folktales and showing the influence of the medieval romance on them, the author documents how fairy tales originated as urban writing for urban readers and listeners. Working backward from the Grimms to the earliest known sixteenth-century fairy tales of the Italian Renaissance, she argues for a book based history of fairy tales. The first new approach to fairy tale history in decades, this book answers questions about where fairy tales came from and how they spread, illuminating a narrative process long veiled by surmise and assumption

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

398.209

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

LC call number

GR550

LC item number

.B648 2009

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography