Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies.(Book review)

Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies. By Jan M. Ziolkowski. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Pp. 500, introduction, appendix in five parts, notes, bibliography, general index, index of tale types and motifs.)

Conceived as a way to present medieval Latin literature in a manner congenial to "today's culture" (p. 1), Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales offers a selection of thirteen examples of Medieval Latin poetry from AD 1000 to AD 1200 that include motifs or tale types now present in popular culture. Two of these so-called fairy tales are "tales of magic" (ATU 300-749). The others are mostly tall tales or trickster tales in the "anecdotes and jokes" section of the tale type index.

Five chapters, revised from their earlier publication as individual articles, are each devoted to a tale type. The first tale, represented in modern popular culture by Pinocchio's sojourn in the stomach of a whale, tells of a fisherman rescued from a whale's stomach, his …