Marvels & Tales articles from October 2005

Marvels & Tales archives from October 2005

Foils and fakes: the Hydra in Giambattista Basile's Dragon-Slayer tale, "Lo mercante".("The Merchant's Two Sons")(Critical essay)
October 1, 2005... Vicious devourers or fierce guardians, dragons are a fixture in the myths, legends, and folklore of the Western tradition. Hercules slew the Hydra of Lyrna as one of his seven labors; Saints George and Martha succeeded in converting infidels by...

Beauty's chambers: mixed styles and mixed messages in Villeneuve's Beauty and the Beast.(Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve)(Critical essay)
October 1, 2005... Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's original novel version of Beauty and the Beast, published in 1740, (1) is one of those literary works whose reception history speaks volumes. Although the novel was reasonably successful when it first...

Whose talk is it? Almodovar and the fairy tale in Talk To Her.(Pedro Almodovar)(Critical essay)
October 1, 2005... So, face to face with the Sleeping Beauty--who has long been the dream of every man and the hope of every woman--we find ourselves compelled to ask: what is it in us that at a certain moment suddenly falls asleep? Who lies hidden deep between...

The Bluebeard syndrome in Atwood's Lady Oracle: fear and feminity.(Margaret Atwood)(Critical essay)
October 1, 2005... Why is there such a wide readership for books that essentially say, "Your husband is trying to kill you"? People aren't interested in pop culture books out of some pure random selection. They connect with something real in people's lives. ...

Spatial representation in European popular fairy tales.(literary studies)(Critical essay)
October 1, 2005... Using selected examples, this article investigates the problem of spatial representation in European fairy tales and brings together a number of elements for a systematic analysis of its significance for narration. Aesthetic space, which Ernst...

Juan Soldado.(Short Story)
October 1, 2005... Translator's Introduction Cecilia Bohl de Faber (1796-1877), one of the great women writers of nineteenth-century Spain, was a novelist, short-story writer, and folklorist who published under the pen name Ferndn Caballero. (For...

Juan Bobo and the Riddling Princess: a Puerto Rican folktale.(Short Story)
October 1, 2005... Translator's Introduction "Juan Bobo and the Riddling Princess" is one of the tales that J. Alden Mason (1885-1967) brought back from his monumental field trip to Puerto Rico in 1914-15. Mason was born in Orland, Indiana, but grew up in...

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales. Edited by Marguerite Gordon. New York: Norton, 2002. 144 pp. The American publication of this volume follows its earlier release in South Africa under a slightly different title. It is a...

The Robber with a Witch's Head: More Stories from the Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Robber with a Witch's Head: More Stories from the Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach. Edited and translated by Jack Zipes. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Laura Gonzenbach's is a...

The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics. Studia Fennica Folkloristica. Edited by Lauri Honko. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2002. When a folk-literary scholar, not herself an expert in epic poetry, digs into the thick...

Animal Motifs in Asian Art: An Illustrated Guide to Their Meanings and Aesthetics.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Animal Motifs in Asian Art: An Illustrated Guide to Their Meanings and Aesthetics. By Katherine M. Ball. 1927. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004. 286 pp., black and white illustrations, index, bibliography (pre-1927), pbk. Few reference texts...

The Tale of Bluebeard in German Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Tale of Bluebeard in German Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. By Mererid Puw Davies. Oxford: Clarendon P, 2001. ix + 279 pp. The Tale of Bluebeard, as Mererid Puw Davies writes in her preface, is the first...

Language and Gender in the Fairy Tale Tradition: A Linguistic Analysis of Old and New Story Telling.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Language and Gender in the Fairy Tale Tradition: A Linguistic Analysis of Old and New Story Telling. By Alessandra Levorato. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 230 pp. In Language and Gender in the Fairy Tale Tradition, Alessandra...

A Companion to the Fairy Tale.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... A Companion to the Fairy Tale. Edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri. London: D. S. Brewer, 2003. 294 + viii pp. University presses have recently begun publishing "companions" at a terrific rate. As Judith Ryan suggests in...

The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Edited by Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen (with the collaboration of Hassan Wassouf). Vols. 1-2. Santa Barbara, CA, Denver, CO, and Oxford, England: ABC-Clio, 2004. xxvii + pp. 1-464; viii + pp. 465-921,...

Ideological Variations and Narrative Horizons: New Perspectives on the Arabian Nights.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Ideological Variations and Narrative Horizons: New Perspectives on the Arabian Nights. Special issue of Middle Eastern Literatures (incorporating Edebiyat). Edited by Wen-chin Ouyang. 7.2 (July 2004). Evelyn Fishburn, one of the nine...

Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception.(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception. By Diane E. Goldstein. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. 210 pp. In Once Upon a Virus, Diane Goldstein, professor of Folkloristics at Memorial University in St. John's Newfoundland,...

Critical exchanges.(Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Fairy-tale studies are made especially interesting by the controversies that inevitably accompany them. Accordingly, Marvels & Tales will publish critical exchanges between readers and authors. Concise, professional responses that augment,...

The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm Accepted into UNESCO's Memory of the World Registry.(Professional Notices)
October 1, 2005... In June 2005 the Grimms' annotated reference copies of the Kinder- und Hausmarchen were officially inscribed in UNESCO'S Memory of the World Registry, which is dedicated to preserving the world's documentary heritage. The following text by Dr...

"Hidden but Not Forgotten": The Legacy of Hans Christian Andersen in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.(Professional Notices)(Cotsen Children's Library of Princeton University's conference)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... In honor of the bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, the Cotsen Children's Library of Princeton University will host an academic conference assessing Andersen's impact as the creator of some of the greatest literary fairy tales ever...