Marvels & Tales articles from October 2007

Marvels & Tales archives from October 2007

Gingerbread Wishes and Candy(land) Dreams: the lure of food in cautionary tales of consumption.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2007... It is probably in tastes in food that one would find the strongest and most indelible mark of infant learning, the lessons which longest withstand the distancing or collapse of the native world and most durably maintain nostalgia for it. ...

A wave of the magic wand: fairy godmothers in contemporary American media.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2007... With just a wave of my magic wand Your troubles will soon be gone With a flick of the wrist and just a flash You'll land a prince with a ton of cash --Fairy Godmother, Shrek 2 In her book American Folklore and...

Disenchanting the fairy tale: retellings of "Snow White" between magic and realism.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2007... Traditional fairy tales, as we know them from the collections of Charles Perrault, the Grimm Brothers, and Andrew Lang, consist of a mixture of magical and realistic elements. As the fairy tale is recycled in the late twentieth and early...

Red as blood, white as snow, black as crow: chromatic symbolism of womanhood in fairy tales.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2007... This article is intended as a modest follow-up on a classic study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. In Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, these two linguists showed that despite the proven ability of humans to discriminate...

Ancient and indigenous stories: their ethics and power reflected in Latin American storytelling movements.(Critical essay)
October 1, 2007... The new Latin American storytelling movements have occupied places and niches in modern society with a variety of repertoires, diffusing tales from different oral traditions to stories by ancient and modern authors, which are transmitting...

The Toad Woman.(TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS)(Short story)
October 1, 2007... The first time that Jotica saw the Toad Woman was in his hometown, surrounded by men who were not superstitious and by women who were frightened. That circus included the already familiar cow with five legs, the checkered tiger, the dwarf...

Mademoiselle de Lubert: Contes.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Mademoiselle de Lubert: Contes. Edition critique etablie par Aurelie Zygel-Basso. Bibliotheque des genies et des fees 14. Paris: Honore Champion, 2005. 586 pp. This collection of the tales by Marguerite de Lubert (17027-1779?) is a...

Madame de Murat: Contes.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Madame de Murat: Contes. Edition critique etablie par Genevieve Patard. Bibliotheque des genies et des fees 3. Paris: Honore Champion, 2006. 478 pp. This volume of the Bibliotheque des genies et des fees presents the texts written by...

The Folk-Stories of Iceland.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Folk-Stories of Iceland. By Einar Olafur Sveinsson. Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series 16. London: University College London, 2003. 318 pp. The international status of works in folk-narrative scholarship (as in many...

Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index.(Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. By Hasan M. El-Shamy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. xxvii + 1,255 pp. Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt. Edited by Gaston Maspero....

Return to Culture: Oral Tradition and Society in the Southern Cook Islands.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Return to Culture: Oral Tradition and Society in the Southern Cook Islands. By Anna-Leena Siikala and Jukka Siikala. FF Communications Vol. 136, No. 287. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2005. 327 pp. What is the significance of oral...

La Fiaba di Tradizione Orale.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... La Fiaba di Tradizione Orale. By Giuseppe Gatto. Milan: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2006. 230 pp. Giuseppe Gatto's compact but thorough exploration of how scholars have tried to wrest meaning from the magical...

The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West. Edited by Yuriko Yamanaka and Tetsuo Nishio. With an introduction by Robert Irwin. London: I. B. Taurus, 2006. 269 pp. This collection of essays is the product of one of...

Recycling Red Riding Hood.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Recycling Red Riding Hood. By Sandra L. Beckett. New York: Routledge, 2002. xxii + 362 pp. Sandra L. Beckett's Recycling Red Riding Hood is a study of intertextuality in children's literature. Working from her personal collection of "well...

Diario di un gatto con gli stivali.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Diario di un gatto con gli stivali. By Roberto Vecchioni. Torino: Einaudi, 2006. 166 pp. The "Diary of a Puss in Boots" is the latest, only partially successful play by an Italian author using story elements from fairy tales and popular...

Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal about the Transformations in a Woman's Life.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal about the Transformations in a Woman's Life. By Joan Gould. New York: Random House, 2006. 342 pp. Gould's book is a praiseworthy contribution to the manner in which fairy tales provide us...

Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition.(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition. By Farah Mendlesohn. New York: Routledge, 2005. 240 pp. Farah Mendlesohn's book is the first thorough study of Diana Wynne Jones's criticism and fantasy fiction for young...

Critical exchanges.
October 1, 2007... 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,...