BTAN32004BA-K304
Fairy Tale and Myth
Bényei Tamás
Credits: 3
Wed. 10.00-11.40
Room 111
The purpose of the course is to familiarise students with the cultural and literary uses of myths and
fairy tales as well as the relationship between the two. Through the reading of ’original’ myths, fairy
tales, folk tales as well as contemporary adaptations of both, the classes will also address the reasons
for the contemporary popularity of rewriting such stories. We shall compare the different attitudes
adopted by contemporary writers and their texts toward the myth and fairy tales they are reworking, as
well as towards the cultural functions of myth and fairy tale in general.
Course requirements
The success of the seminars will greatly depend on your contributions; it is essential, therefore, that
participants read the assigned material and contribute to the discussion. Since there is no end-term test,
seminar participation will be a very important factor in the grades.
The reading assignment will be kept on a manageable level throughout: we shall read two very short
novels and a few short stories and fairy tales. Your familiarity with the assigned texts will be tested at
the start of each seminar. Failure to prepare for the seminar (i. e. to read the assigned text) will count
as an absence: thus, if you fail more than three such tests, your seminar is a failure (the grade is a
one), and there will be no opportunity to make up for these occasions (unlike in the case of a very poor
end-term test, which can be rewritten if necessary). Thus, theoretically, you may miss three classes, or
miss one class and fail to read the material for two classes, or not miss any classes but fail to prepare
for three seminars, etc. And, of course, you can come to all the classes and stop worrying about all
this.
The required texts are all available in the library in book format or as photocopies.
Most of the texts are available in the Course packet designed for thios course.
NB: always bring the texts along to the class.
Schedule
Week
1
Date
17 Febr.
2
24 Febr.
3
2 March
4
9 March
5
16 March
6
23 March
7
30 March
Topic
Introduction to myth – please come along; this class is
necessary for the rest of the course
Greek mythology; gods, mortals and fabulous
creatures
Reading assignment: a few stories from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses (The creation of the world; Lycaon,
Arachne; Actaeon)
Rewriting the myth of Heracles and Atlas
Jeanette Winterson: Weight
The myth of metamorphosis: the stories of Daphne, Io
and Callisto in Ovid
The history and cultural uses of fairy tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: „Hansel and Gretel”;
„Sleeping Beauty”; „Snow White”
Folk tales and fairy tales
Hungarian fairy tales: „Ribike”, „Virág Péter”, „A
háromágú tölgyfa tündére”, „Világszép nádszál
kisasszony”
CONSULTATION WEEK
8
6 April
9
13 April
10
20 April
11
27 April
12
4 May
Rewriting fairy tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: „The Golden Key”
A. S. Byatt: „The Golden Coffin”; „The Story of the
Eldest Princess”
Sara Maitland: „The Angel Maker”, „The Wicked
Stepmother’s Lament”
Beauty and the Beast
Marie-Catherine D’Aulnoy: „The Ram”
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont: „Beauty and the
Beast”
Andrew Lang: „Beauty and the Beast”
Angela Carter: „The Courtship of Mr. Lyon”; „The
Tiger’s Bride”
Versions of Little Red Riding Hood
FILM. Neil Jordan: The Company of Wolves
„The Story of the Grandmother” (oral version)
Charles Perrault: „Little Red Riding Hood”
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: „Little Red Cap”
Andrew Lang: „Little Red Riding-Hood”
Angela Carter: „The Werewolf”, „The Company of
Wolves”
The Bible, fairy tales and literature:
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
End-term test
Some other novels and stories that you might find of interest:
Angela Carter: other stories in The Bloody Chamber; Nights at the Circus; The Passion of
New Eve; The Magic Toyshop; „Peter and the Wolf”
Jeanette Winterson: Tanglewrack; Art and Lies; „Orion” (in The World and Other Places);
Boating for Beginners
Julian Barnes: The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
Robert Nye: Merlin; Faust
Tankred Dorst: Merlin, avagy a puszta ország
Roberto Calasso: The Marriage Between Cadmus and Harmonia
Ted Hughes: Tales from Ovid
Christoph Ransmayr: Az utolsó világ
Márai Sándor: Béke Ithakában
David Malouf: An Imaginary Life
Lawrence Norfolk: Lemprière’s Dictionary
A. S. Byatt: Possession; The Djinn and the Nightingale’s Eye; Elementals; The Little Black
Book of Stories; Ragnarök
Marina Warner: Indigo; The Leto Bundle
Sara Maitland: A Book of Spells; Women Fly When Men Aren’t Watching; Virgin Territory;
Daughter of Jerusalem
Alice Thomas Ellis: Fairy Tale
Emma Tennant: Sisters and Strangers; Faustine
Jenny Diski: The Vanishing Princess and other stories
Elizabeth Taylor: The Sleeping Beauty
Michèle Roberts: The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene; Daughters of the House; The Book
of Mrs. Noah
Ali Smith: Girl Meets Boy
Salley Vickers: Where Three Roads Meet
Margaret Atwood: Penelopiad
Christine Crow: Miss X or the Wolf Woman
Timberlake Wertenbaker: Love of the Nightingale
Graham Joyce: A Kind of Fairy Tale
William Goldman: The Princess Bride (and Bob Reiner’s film of the same title)
Jane Yolen: Briar Rose
Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak;
Eliza Granville: Gretel in the Dark
Critical sources on myth
Kerényi Károly (Karl). Görög mitológia. Ford. Kerényi Grácia. Szeged: Szukits Könyvkiadó,
1997.
---. Az örök Antigoné: vallástörténeti tanulmányok. H. n.: Paidion, 2003.
---. Mi a mitológia? Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1988.
Robert Graves: The Greek Myths 1-2 (many editions, also in Hungarian)
---: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. London: Faber, 1971.
Barkan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. Ithaca:
Yale University Press, 1986.
Barnard, Mary E. The Myth of Apollo and Daphne from Ovid to Quevedo: Love, Agon, and
the Grotesque. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.
Berger, Arthur Asa. Media, Myth, and Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Bloomberg, Kristin M. Mapel. Tracing Arachne’s Web: Myth and Feminist Fiction.
Gainesville: University Press, of Florida, 2001.
Bowlby, Rachel. Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities. Oxford UP,
2007.
Bremmer, Jan (ed). Interpretations of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge, 1988.
Bremmer, Jan – Andrew Erskine (ed.). The Gods of Ancient Myths: Identities and
Transformations. Edinburgh UP, 2010.
Brisson, Luc. How Philosophers Saved Myth: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical
Mythology. U of Chicago P, 2004.
Bull, Malcolm. The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art. London:
Allen Lane, 2004.
Bultmann, Rudolf et al. Kerygma and Myth. New York: Harper and Row.
Caldwell, Richard. The Origin of the Gods: A Psychoanalytic Study of Greek Theogonic
Myth. Oxford UP, 1989.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). New York: Bollingen, 2004.
Campbell, Joseph –Boll Moyes: The Power of Myth. NY: Anchor, 1991.
Caruso, Carlo. Adonis: The Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance. London:
Bloomsbury, 2013.
Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. New York: Dover (1946)
Clark, Nora. Aphrodite and Venus in Myth and Mimesis. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars,
2015.
Coupe, Lawrence: Myth (The New Critical Idiom). London: Routledge, 1999.
Doty, William G. Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama
Press, 1986.
Dowden, Ken – Niall Livingstone: A Companion to Greek Mythology. Oxford: Wiley, 2011.
Dumézil, Georges. Mítosz és eposz. Bp: Gondolat, 1986.
Eliade, Mircea. Az örök visszatérés mítosza. Bp: Európa, 1988.
---: A szent és a profán. Bp: Európa, 1982.
Fiske, John. Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by
Comparative Mythology. October Books, 1997.
Fontenrose, Joseph. Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1981
Freer, Scott. Modernist Mythopoeia: The Twilight of the Gods. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015.
Freidenberg, Olga. Image and Concept: Mythopoeic Roots of Literature. Amsterdam:
Harwood, 2006.
Frye, Northrop.Az Ige hatalma. Ford. Pásztor Péter. Budapest: Európa, 1997.
---. Kettős tükör: A Biblia és az irodalom. Ford. Pásztor Péter. Budapest. Európa, 1996.
---. The Anatomy of Criticism. Penguin, 1980 (A kritika anatómiája. Ford. Szili József.
Budapest: helikon, 1992).
---. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1976.
Frye, Northrop – Jay Macpherson: Biblical and Classical Myth: The Mythological Framework
of Western Culture. U of Toronto P, 2004.
Galinsky, Karl. The Herakles Theme. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972.
Goody, Jack. Myth, Ritual, and the Oral. Cambridge UP, 2010.
Gross, Kenneth. The Dream of the Moving Statue. University Park: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2006.
Hardie, Philip – A. Berchiesi – Stephen Hinds (szerk.). Ovidian Transformations. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Heller, Sophia. The Absence of Myth. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006.
Hinds, Stephen. The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1982.
Hynes, William J. – William G. Doty (ed). Mythical Trickster Figures. Tuscaloosa: U of
Alabama P, 1993.
Irving, P. M. C. Forbes. Metamorphosis in Greek Myths. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Ivanov, Vjacseszlav. Nyelv, mítosz, kultúra. Bp: Gondolat, 1984.
Junker, Klaus. Interpreting the Images of Greek Myths. Cambridge UP, 2012.
Kirk, G. S. A mítosz. Bp: Holnap, 1983.
Larson, Jennifer: Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore. Oxford UP, 2001.
Leeming, David Adams. Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero. Oxford UP, 1998.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Strukturális antropológia. Bp:Osiris. (főként a 11. fejezet: „A mítoszok
struktórája”
---: The Savage Mind.
Lincoln, Bruce. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of
Chicago Press, 1999.
Lyons, Deborah L. Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult.
Princeton UP, 1996.
Mali, Joseph. The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s New Science. Cambridge UP, 1992.
McNeil, Lynda. Recreating the World: The Mythic Mode as Symbolic Discourse. SUNY
Press, 1992.
Meletyinszkij, Jeleazar: A mítosz poétikája. Bp: Gondolat, 1986.
Morgan, Kathryn. Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. Cambridge UP, 2004.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. A tragédia születése (a zene szelleméből).Bp: Európa, 1984
O’Donoghue, Heather. From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse
Myths. London: Tauris, 2007.
Otto, Walter F. Dionysus: Myth and Cult. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1965.
Panofsky, Dora and Erwin. Pandora’s Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol.
New York: Pantheon, 1956.
Radford, Andrew. The Lost Girls: Demeter-Persephone and the Literary Imagination, 18501930. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. Berkeley: U of California
P, 2005.
Strenski, Ivan. Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History. Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1987
Szilágyi János György. Paradigmák: tanulmányok antik irodalomról és mitológiáról.
Budapest: magvető, 1982.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre. Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992.
--: Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. NY: Zone Books, 1990.
--. Myth and Thought Among the Greeks. NY: Zone Books, 2006.
Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? U of Chicago P, 1993.
Wall, Kathleen. The Callisto Myth from Ovid to Atwood: Initiation and Rape in Literature.
Lingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.
Weston, Jessie L. From Ritual to Romance (1919).
Wind, Edgar. Pagan Myths in the Renaissance.
Woodard, Roger D. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology. Cambridge UP, 2007.
Zajko, Vanda – Miriam Leonard. Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist
Thought. Oxford UP, 2006.
Critical sources on fairy tales
(1) Collections.
The Classic Fairy Tales. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. Ed. Jack
Zipes. 2001
The Virago Book of Fairy Tales. Ed. Angela Carter. London: Virago, 1990.
The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales. Ed. Angela Carter. London: Virago, 1992.
Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England.
Ed. Jack Zipes, 1987
Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves. Ed. Jack Zipes. London:
Routledge, 1989.
Forbidden Jounreys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers. Ed. Nina
Auerbach and U. C. Knoepflmacher. University of Chicago Press,
The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales. Ed. Alison Lurie. Oxford UP, 1993.
(2) Criticism
Bacchilega, Cristina. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies.
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
--: Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2013.
Sandra L.Beckett. Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy-Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural
Contexts. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2008.
Stephen Benson. Cycles of Influence: Fiction, Folktale, Theory. Detroit: Wayne State UP,
2003
Stephen Benson (ed.). Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale. Detroit: Wayne State UP,
2008.
Bettelheim, Bruno. A mese bűvölete és a bontakozó gyermeki lélek. (The Uses of
Enchantment)
Bottigheimer, Ruth: Grimms’ Bad Girld and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the
„Tales”. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.
--: Fairy Tales and Society. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1986. (includes: "To Spin A
Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale", 53-74)
Dollerup, Cay. Tales and Translation: The Grimm Tales from Pan-Germanic Narratives to
Shared International Fairy Tales. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999.
Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales. Toronto: Inner City Books,
1997.
---. The Feminine in Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1993 [German original 1977]. Női
mesealakok. Bp: Európa, 1992.
---: Individuation in Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1993.
---: The Interpretation of Fairytales. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1987
---. The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1995. Az árnyék és a gonosz a
mesében. Bp: Európa, 1998.
Greenhill, Pauline – Terry Juddy (ed.). Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2014.
Haase, Donald (ed.). Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches. Detroit: Wayne State UP,
2004.
Honig, Edith Lazaros. Breaking the Angelic Image: Woman Power in Victorian Children's
Fantasy. Greenwood Press, 1988.
Joosen, Vanessa. Critical and Creative Perspectives on fairy Tales. Detroit: Wayne State UP,
2011.
Kérchy Anna (ed.). Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales: How Applying New
Methods Generates New Meanings. Lewiston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2011
Knapp, Bettina L. French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.
Knoepflmacher, U. C. Ventures into Childhood: Victorians, Fairy Tales and Femininity. U of
Chicago Press, 2000.
Kolbenschlag, Madonna. Kiss Sleeping.Beauty Good-bye (1979) (Búcsúcsók
Csipkerózsikának. Debrecen, Csokonai Kiadó)
Lurie, Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature. Boston: Little,
Brown and Co, 1990.
Lüthi, Max. The European Folktale: Form and Nature. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986.
MacCara, Catriona Fay – David Calvin (eds.). Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment.
Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011
Orenstein, Catherine. Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of
a Fairy Tale. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Propp, Vlagyimir. A varázsmese történeti gyökerei. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2007.
---: A mese morfológiája. Budapest: Osiris, 2006.
Roemer, Daniella M – Cristina Bacchilega (ed). Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Detroit:
Wayne State UP, 2001.
Seifert, Lewis C. Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690-1715. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1996.
Sellers, Susan. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
Smith, Kevin Paul. The Postmodern Fairytale: Folkloric Intertexts in Contemporary Fiction.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence. Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and
Sensation Fiction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
Tatar, Maria. The Hard facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987.
---: Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1992.
Teverson, Andrew. Fairy Tale (New Critical Idiom series). London: Routledge, 2013.
Tiffin, Jessica. Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in the Modern Fairy Tale.
Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2009.
Warner, Maria. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London:
Vintage, 1995.
--: Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Fairy Tale. Oxford UP, 2014.
Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy tales. Lexington:
UP of Kentucky, 1979.
---. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process
of Civilization. 1985. (2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2006)
---: Fairy Tale As Myth Myth As Fairy Tale. Lexington: Up of Kentucky, 1994
---: Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children and the Culture Industry. London: Routledge,
1997.
---: The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. London: Routledge,
1988.
---. Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. London: Routledge,
2006.
---: Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. London: Routledge, 2011
---: The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre, 2012.
---: When Dreams Come True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. London:
Routledge, 2007 (2nd ed.)
Academic journal: Marvels and Tales