The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales: Expanded Second Edition - Hardcover

Tatar, Maria

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691067228 ISBN 13: 9780691067223

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1987

Synopsis

Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales figures as the subject matter for this intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Nursery and Household Tales. This updated and expanded second edition includes a new preface and an appendix containing new translations of six tales, along with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar skillfully employs the tools not only of a psychoanalyst but also of a folklorist, literary critic, and historian to examine the harsher aspects of these stories. She presents new interpretations of the powerful stories in this worldwide best-selling book. Few studies have been written in English on these tales, and none has probed their allegedly happy endings so thoroughly.

About this title

About the Author:

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author of Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (W. W. Norton), Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, and Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (both Princeton).

From Publishers Weekly:

This erudite, cogent perusal of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm's Nursery and Household Tales is, for the most part, accessible to a lay audience. Tatar charts the evolution of the tales through manuscript form and the various editions, and offers what she maintains is the first complete English translation of the prefaces to the first and second editions. The Grimms abandoned a scholarly effort to salvage pure remnants of folk poetry, advances Tatar, and "with each new edition, the tales veered more sharply away from the rough-hewn simplicity of their first versions to a sanitized and stylized literary form that proved attractive to both parents and children." She demonstrates how the Grimms purged the collection of references to sexuality and incestuous desire but intensified violence, particularly when it took the form of revenge. In opposition to child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, Tatar warns that some cautionary tales may instill fear, rather than confidence, in children; regarding "Bluebeard," she faults Bettelheim for turning a tale depicting the most brutal kind of serial murders into a story about idle female curiosity and duplicity. Tatar (Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature) chairs the German literature department at Harvard University. Illustrated.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0691067228
• ISBN 13: 9780691067223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 302