Dr. JoAnn Conrad – jac5353@aol.com
Thursdays, 7/6/06 - 8/24/06, 6:30-9:30pm
Barrows Hall (room to be confirmed)
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This is a Folklore
course, and thus straddles the Humanities and
Social Sciences -- namely Anthropology, History,
and Literature. Additionally, the nature of this
particular course makes it particularly relevant to the
fields of Women’s and Gender Studies.
This course will investigate Folk and Fairy
Tales as they have emerged in their historical,
social, and ideological contexts, arguing not only that these tales “make sense” in
these contexts, but that they in fact provide critical information concerning
political and social issues and the resultant historical events. We will trace the
relays between the careers of certain tales and issues such as the control of and
to reproductive technologies; the contested life cycle events of birth and
marriage; class conflict; the performance of gender and sexuality; the rise of
nationalism and the phenomenon of nation building; orientalism; colonialism; and
consumerism.
Additionally, since all tales are based on a traditional foundation of
narrative themes, their popular appeal lies in the continuation of these themes
across time and space. This class will therefore address the specifics of each
tale’s re-telling as historically and culturally bound, while simultaneously
investigating the historical layers of meaning and thematic similarities and
differences across time and space to reveal complicated discourses on gender
and familial relationships, class structure, and sexuality.
COURSE OBJECTIVES: When students have completed this course, they will
have knowledge of the following:
 The Folkloristic definitions of narrative forms – fairy tale, folk tale, tale
type, motif, etc.
 The historical antecedents to the classical fairy tale – Basile, Medieval
epics, etc.
 The rise of the classical literary fairy tale in 17th century France
 The interwoven histories of the rise of the study of tales with the rise of the
literary forms of the tales
 The use of the Fairy Tale in 17th and 18th century France as encoded
discourses on reproductive rights
 The rise of the fairy tale to canon status and its institutionalization
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Conrad, Summer 2006
The work of the Brothers Grimm and the interrelationship between their
work and Romantic Nationalism
A review of the Orientalist Tale, embodied in Antoine Galland’s 1001
Nights, and the relationship between these texts and the Orientalist
ideology and its importance to colonialism.
The interrelationship between the rise of the literary fairy tale and
modernity
The connection between the literary fairy tale and the social construction
of Childhood
Non-European examples of tales, and the European influence on them
The commodification and mass distribution of Tales, first in collections,
and later in films – particularly the films of Disney
Modern re-adaptations of tales, in the works of such authors as Lewis
Carroll, A.S. Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, Tolkein, J.K.
Rowland, and C.S. Lewis, and others.
Required Texts:
Jack Zipes. 2002. Breaking the Magic Spell. Univ. of
Kentucky Press.
Maria Tatar. 1998. The Classic Fairy TalesL Texts,
Criticism, Norton Critical Edition.
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Additionally, there will be on-line readings from websites, as well as an electronic
reader (eres.berkeley.edu. look under course listings for Conrad, select Anth
162, password is “conrad”).
Essential Web Sites and Sources:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/ This is an amazing collection of fairy
tales, illustrations, and discussions.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html Ashliman has collected and
organized a huge number of folktale texts on line. He has organized them
alphabetically and thematically.
http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/index.html This is the website
of an on-line course in folklore and mythology. What is of interest to us is the
data…the texts that are on this site and with which this site makes links, and
also, the many examples of art that are derivative of folk and fairy tale themes.
Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Scholarship.
Course Requirements and Grading:
The classes will consist of lecture, discussion, some presentations by the
students, and film analysis (films will be viewed in class, and will be assigned as
extra-class activities).
Course readings will consist of primary material, i.e., tales themselves, and also
secondary materials, that is, interpretations, critiques and analyses, and will be
available in the form of an electronic course reader.
CREDIT AND GRADING:
This course is available for credit, but students may opt to take it on a
pass/nonpass basis, or opt to not take the class for credit. For those taking the
class for credit, there will be a final exam. All other class requirements are the
same. The grading will be based on the following criteria:
Attendance, and participation in discussion
15%
Weekly papers
(see below)
15%
Research Project (see below)
30%
Final Exam (see below)
40%
Weekly papers: Each week, starting with week 2, students will be expected to
bring a general synopsis paper covering the topics of the previous week, and
covering readings. These are not formal papers, but rather thoughts,
impressions, questions, and general musings on the material that will help us in
class discussion.
Research Project: This will be on a topic of the student’s choice, related to any
of the topics generally covered within the scope of the class. The “recommended
readings” and also the “essential websites” will be good sources here for
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selecting a topic. The format can be either a traditional research paper (4-5
pages with sources), or it can be a poster project, combining visual and text
material. All students will be given 5 minutes on the last day of class to present
their projects.
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The Final Exam will be a take-home, short essay format, consisting of no more
than 8 questions. It is due on Monday, Aug. 28, and can be submitted by email.
WEEK BY WEEK SUMMARY OF COURSE:
 Week one – July 6: Introduction to Folklore, Tales and Fairy Tales; What
is a Fairy Tale; Classic Fairy Tales and their plots; Overview of the scope
of Fairy tale scholarship; Historical Beginnings and precedents of Literary
Fairy Tale.
READINGS:
Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell, Chapters 1 & 2.
Tatar, Classic Fairy Tales, Introduction.
Browse tales at:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/pentamerone/index.html
Discussion: Do you recognize these tales? Which parts seem familiar, both
thematically and stylistically? Which seem different? Are they combined with
elements you normally don’t associate with a particular tale you know? What
tales that you know can you compare these to?
Start a log of tales and THEMES that seem to crop up over and over
again….are they associated with the same tale each time, or are they
intermixed?
Recommended: Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde,
Introduction.
Jack Zipes. 2003. The Oxford Companion to the Fairy Tale. Oxford Univ.
Press.
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Week two – July 13: The 17th century French women Salon writers, and
their discourses on gender, relationships, sexuality and reproduction and
fertility. The Institutionalization of the French Fairy Tale in the context of
Modernity: the reorganization of the domestic social sphere, and the
reorganization of the international sphere – Colonialism. Fairy Tales as
texts on socialization – primers for children, discourses on the “other”.
Orientalism as represented by the 1001 Nights. (Historical context – The
Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the beginnings of modernity).
READINGS:
“The Literary Fairy Tales of France,” by Terri Windling at
http://www.endicott-studio.com/forconte.html
In Tatar: all the tales by Charles Perrault, and all tales in “Beauty and the
Beast” chapter.
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Contrast these with some of the tales by Mme. D’aulnoy at
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/daulnoy.html
We’ll be looking especially at tales of TRANSFORMATION – animal
spouse tales, like “Beauty and the Beast”:
Additional tales:
Charles Perrault: “Riquet with the Tuft,” and “Donkey-skin.”
Marie-Jeanne L’Heritier: “The Discreet Princess or the Adventures of Finette.”
Catherine Bernard: “Riquet with the Tuft.”
Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy: “The Ram,” “The Wild Boar,” “Finette Cendron,” “the
Yellow Dwarf,” “the Green Serpent,” “the White Cat.”
Henriette Julie de Murat “The Pig King.”
All of these you can find, either in Tatar, at Ashliman’s website, or at
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/index.html
Recommended Reading: “Beautiful Beasts” by Marina Warner, from Six Myths
of Our Time. Also read “Reluctant Brides,” and “Go, Be a Beast,” both from
Warner’s From the Beast to the Blonde.
Marvels and Tales, Vol. 19, no. 1 (2005): Special
issue – Reframing the French Fairy Tale.
Filmography: (outside of class viewing)
FILM: Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast
(1946)
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Orientalism and the vogue of 1001 Nights:
READ: Arabian Nights
Zipes, “The Splendor of the Arabian Nights”
(eres)
Edward Said, Orientalism (excerpt) (eres)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Nights
http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/arabnights.htm
Filmography: “Arabian Nights” by Peter Barnes,
ABC TV, 2000.
Contemporary Adaptations (possible project
topics):
Arabian Days and Nights by Naguib Mahfouz
Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
A.S.Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.
Recommended Reading:
Holly Tucker. 2003. Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early
Modern France Wayne State Univ. Press.
Marvels and Tales, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2004): Special Issue on Arabian Nights.
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Elizabeth Wanning Harries. 2003. Twice upon a Time: Women Writers and the
History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton University Press.
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Week three -- July 20: The fairy tale in Germany. The Grimms and the
rise of Romantic Nationalism. Folklore Scholarship and its relationship to
the rise of the printed fairy tale/folktale collection. The Historic-Geographic
Method, the Tale Type Index. The Creation of “the Folk” and “distressed
Genres.”
READ: Zipes, Magic Spell, Chapter 3.
Tatar, Classic Fairy Tales. Article by Donald Haase, “Yours, Mine, or Ours,
Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and the Ownership of Fairy Tales,” and also
excerpt from Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, on the Folk Tale Index.
Visit: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grimm
And http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimmtales.html pay particular attention to the
table which compares the KHM numbers with the AT numbers (this will help you
locate tales in other sources to compare with the Grimms’ versions).
http://surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms.html#CONTENTS
Filmography: The Brothers Grimm (2005).
Related – The rise of Norwegian nationalism and the role of folklore.
Read: http://odin.dep.no/odin/engelsk/norway/history/032005-990474/indexdok000-b-n-a.html (This is a good example of nationalist claims!!!)
http://www.rootsweb.com/~norway/NorgeFolktales.htmhttp://www.rootsweb.com/
~norway/NorgeFolktales.htm
One of the Themes we’ll
focus on this week will
be that of the prevalent
and recurrent motifs and
themes in fairy tales of
Incest, Cannibalism,
murder, disfunction
within the family…and
how these relate to
larger social discourses,
i.e., colonialism,
consumerism, capitalism,
etc.
READ: Tatar, all tales in
“Hansel and Gretel”
chapter.
Also: Marina Warner,
“Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum: The
Child in the Jaws of the
Story,” (eres).
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Recommended Reading:
Maria Tatar. 2003. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton U. P.
Jack Zipes. 2002. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern
World. Palgrave Macmillan.
Valerie Paradiz. 2005. Clever Maids: The Secret History of The Grimm Fairy
Tales. Basic Books.
Filmography: “The Juniper Tree” (1990) with Bjork.
“Snow White: Tale of Terror” (1997)
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Sam Neill
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Week four – July 27: Russian
folk/fairy tales. Themes specific to
Russia and Slavic folklore – Baba
Yaga, Koschei, etc. Russian
Formalism leading to Structuralism.
Propp’s morphology. The folklore of
the Russian ethnographic expeditions
– folklore of the eastern peoples of
Russia/Soviet Union.
READ: Use these websites
to find various classic
Russian Folk/fairy tales, and
their accompanying
illustrations.
http://www.geocities.com/At
hens/Delphi/6422/tale.html
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/images.html
http://www.lacquerbox.com/tales.htm
http://surlalunefairytales.com/russian/index.html
Readings -- Tales from the Soviet Far East: Kira Van Deusen. 1999. Raven
and the Rock: Storytelling in Chukotka. Univ. of Washington Press. Tales
excerpted on eres.
Structuralism -- Read: “Vladimir Propp: Folklore and Literature” in Tatar. And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp
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http://mural.uv.es/vifresal/Propp.
htm
And play around with a “fairy tale
generator” based on Propp’s
functions at:
http://www.brown.edu/Courses/F
R0133/Fairytale_Generator/prop
p.html
Read: Stephen Benson, “Tales
in Theory,” from Cycles of
Influence: Fiction, Folktale,
Theory. Wayne State Univ.
Press. 2003. Available on eres –
go to Katherine Young, Anth.
261, “theories of narrative;” Password “young”.
Other structural typologies: “The Hero Pattern” – discuss.
Week five – Aug. 3: 19th century literary adaptations – the work of Lewis
Carroll, H.C. Andersen, etc. The Fairy Tale as “children’s Literature” and
Fairy Tales as “lessons”.
Read: Jack Zipes, “The Flowering of the Fairy Tale in Victorian England,” in
When Dreams Came True, 1998, Routledge (eres).
Maria Tatar, “Rewritten by Adults, The Inscription of Children’s Literature,”
and “Teaching them a Lesson,” from Off With Their Heads, Princeton U.
Press, 1993 (eres).
Jack Zipes, in Breaking the Magic.., “Taking Children’s Literature Seriously.”
Alice in Wonderland:
http://www.sabian.org/alice.htm
This site offers all the chapters as
well as a 1928 commentary, and
the original illustrations.
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H.C. Andersen:
Read: ALL of Andersen’s works in Tatar.
Also Visit http://hca.gilead.org.il/tin_sold.html
Laura Sells. 1995. “Where Do the Mermaids Stand?” Voice and Body in The
Little Mermaid. In Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, eds., From
Mouse To Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture (Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press), pp. 175-191.
In Class we’ll be discussing two of Andersen’s stories: “The Brave Tin Soldier,”
and “The Little Mermaid.” We’ll be looking at them from a Structuralist and from a
Feminist Perspective.
In-Class Film: “The Brave Tin Soldier”
Filmography: Any “Alice in Wonderland” movie (Disney, 1951; 1972;1999)
Finding Neverland (2005).
Week six -- Aug. 10: Various approaches to Fairy Tale Interpretation –
Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic
Read: From Zipes, Breaking the Magic…,Chapter 4, “Instrumentalization of
Fantasy: Fairy Tale, Culture Industry and Mass Media”
Zipes, “Breaking the Disney Spell,” in Tatar, Classic Fairy Tales.
Kay Stone. 1975. Things Walt Disney Never Told Us. Journal of American
Folklore 88: 42-50.
Recommended Reading: Lynda Haas, Elizabeth Bell,
Laura Sells, eds. 1995. From Mouse to Mermaid: The
Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. Indiana University
Press.
Feminist Theory -- Read: Donald Haase, “Feminist
Fairy-Tale Scholarship,” in Fairy Tales and Feminism,
ew Approaches. 2004. Wayne State Univ. Press (eres).
We will be applying these various theories not only to
Disney adaptations of the Fairy Tale, but to a close
analysis of one tale in particular: “Bluebeard”
For this READ: Tatar, Classic Fairy Tales, All of the
Bluebeard Tales.
Filmography: The Piano (1993) by Jane Campion.
Any of the many Disney Fairy Tale adaptations to film.
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Week seven – Aug. 17: Non-European Fairy Tales and Folktales.
Japanimé. Can we use European Genres to talk about Non-European
material?
Japanese Folktales:
http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/japan/index.htm
http://surlalunefairytales.com/books/japan/ozaki/.html
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For those interested in Japanime and the adaptation of the fairy tale see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_mononoke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_away
These films, along with others, use fairy
tale themes and topoi. Do they resonate
with previously discussed material? The
work of Miyazaki is also in contrast to the
Disney industry, and in philosophical
opposition to it. How can we read Anime
in terms of postmodern and global sensibilities, and how can we argue that
they are part of, and yet in opposition to “the culture industry?”
Filmography: Princess Mononoke: Howl’s Moving Castle; Spirited Away;
Nausicaa.
For those of you interested in more traditional
forms of non-European folk tales, we’ll be
looking at Eskimo tales:
http://www.sacredtexts.com/nam/inu/tte/index.htm
peruse the on-line texts, especially Kagsagsuk,
Igimarasugsuk, The Girl who married an
Atliarusek, The Barren Wife, The Brothers Visit
Their Sister, The Man who mated himself with a
Sea-Fowl, The Girl who went away in search of
her brother, The Child Monster.
Questions: do these tales relate in any way to
those fairy tales we’ve been discussing in previous weeks? Are the themes
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related? Do they have similar structures, similar concerns? Additionally, do
any of the analytical tools we’ve discussed apply to these tales? Can you
speculate that “the Fairy Tale” is (or is not) a culturally specific genre?
Week eight – Aug. 24: Contemporary Fairy Tales, feminist reworkings of the
fairy tale.
Tolkien, -- Lord of the Rings
C.S. Lewis – Chronicles of Narnia
Read:
Jack Zipes, in Breaking the Magic.., “Utopian
Function of the Fairy Tale and Fantasy.”
Frank. L. Baum -- The Wizard of Oz
http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading
/oz/reading.htm
Read: Jack Zipes, “Oz as American Myth,” from Fairy
Tale as Myth, (eres).
J.K. Rowling – the Harry Potter Books
Read: Jack Zipes, “the Phenomenon of Harry Potter:
or Why all the Talk?” in Sticks and Stones,
Routledge, 2002. (eres).
What about the other adaptations, and reworkings?
For Example:
Eragon and Eldest, by Christopher Paolini.
American Gods, and Stardust, by Neil Gaiman.
Filmography: Mirror-Mask (2005), by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
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The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
White as Snow by Tanith Lee
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice and
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass by Philip
Pullman
Transformations by Anne Sexton
Today, we’ll discuss if the Fairy Tale is alive and well in Contemporary
America, and, if so, where??? In the reprinting of Classic Fairy Tales? In the
Post-modern readaptation of them? Or, in totally new forms, which share
themes and structures of the Fairy tale, such as reality TV, Tabloids, cheap
romances, soaps, etc.
Finally, for the last hr. of class, you will present (short) your research and/or
poster project to the class.
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