Donald Haase Series in Fairy-Tale Studies – Serie

This comprehensive collection of Italian tales in English encourages a revisitation of the fairy-tale canon in light of some of the most fascinating material that has often been excluded from it. In the United States, we tend to associate fairy tales with children and are most familiar with the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Disney. But the first literary fairy tales appeared in Renaissance Italy, and long before the Grimms there was already a rich and sophisticated tradition that included hundreds of tales, including many of those today considered "classic." The authors featured in this volume have, over the centuries, explored and interrogated the intersections between elite and popular cultures and oral and literary narratives, just as they have investigated the ways in which fairy tales have been and continue to be rewritten as expressions of both collective identities and individual sensibilities. The fairy tale in its Italian incarnations provides a striking example of how this genre is a potent vehicle for expressing cultural aspirations and anxieties as well as for imagining different ways of narrating shared futures.

A transformative lens revealing the historical racial context that profoundly influenced European fairy tales.In stories retold for generations, wondrous worlds and magnificent characters have defined the genre of European fairy tales with little recognition of yet another defining aspect-racism and racialized thinking. Engaging four classic fairy-tale collections, author Kimberly J. Lau connects close readings of the tales to the cultural discourses, scholarly debates, and imperial geopolitics that established and perpetuated ideas about racial difference and white superiority. Within the tales of Giambattista Basile, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, the Grimms, and Andrew and Nora Lang, Lau teases apart and historicizes the racialized themes and ideologies embedded within fairy tales spanning the early seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. She contends that the European fairy tale is definitively marked, whether implicitly or explicitly, by whiteness, and given the genre's documented colonization of diverse narrative traditions over time, this specter of race is all the more haunting. This trailblazing work demonstrates the continuous evolution of racialized thinking that has informed the publication and dissemination of fairy tales. Here, Lau provides a new framework for understanding European fairy tales in the milieux in which they were created, bringing distant and ethereal worlds back to earth.

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Author Cathy Yue Wang examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world. Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters offers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts.

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Author Cathy Yue Wang examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world. Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughtersoffers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts.

This comprehensive collection of Italian tales in English encourages a revisitation of the fairy-tale canon in light of some of the most fascinating material that has often been excluded from it. In the United States, we tend to associate fairy tales with children and are most familiar with the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Disney. But the first literary fairy tales appeared in Renaissance Italy, and long before the Grimms there was already a rich and sophisticated tradition that included hundreds of tales, including many of those today considered "classic." The authors featured in this volume have, over the centuries, explored and interrogated the intersections between elite and popular cultures and oral and literary narratives, just as they have investigated the ways in which fairy tales have been and continue to be rewritten as expressions of both collective identities and individual sensibilities. The fairy tale in its Italian incarnations provides a striking example of how this genre is a potent vehicle for expressing cultural aspirations and anxieties as well as for imagining different ways of narrating shared futures.

A groundbreaking exploration of how classic fairy tales have been transformed to illuminate and celebrate queer identities. This scholarly account provides a trailblazing examination of how contemporary authors, artists, and creators have reclaimed the fairy tale for queer audiences. Alba Morollón Díaz-Faes examines the queer threads in classic fairy tales—like those in the works of Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy—while tracing how queer communities have reshaped these stories to reflect changing social and political realities from the 1990s to the present. This comprehensive study historicizes three periods of queer transformation of the fairy tale: the first wave of fairy-tale publications for a predominantly gay male readership in the 1990s, a second wave in the 2000s that navigated queer politics through nuanced tales of monstrosity and heroism; and a third wave in the 2010s of online queer communities circulating creative contestations to Disney's fairy tales. With case studies from film to text to social media, Díaz-Faes demonstrates how the inherent fluidity in fairy tales allows for the amplification of queer voices and experiences. Ultimately, Tales for Fairies not only reveals the long-standing compatibility between queerness and the fairy tale but also charts an evolving landscape where imagination, activism, and retelling intersect to create a vibrant tradition of queer enchantment.

A groundbreaking exploration of how classic fairy tales have been transformed to illuminate and celebrate queer identities.This scholarly account provides a trailblazing examination of how contemporary authors, artists, and creators have reclaimed the fairy tale for queer audiences. Alba Morollón Díaz-Faes examines the queer threads in classic fairy tales—like those in the works of Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy—while tracing how queer communities have reshaped these stories to reflect changing social and political realities from the 1990s to the present. This comprehensive study historicizes three periods of queer transformation of the fairy tale: the first wave of fairy-tale publications for a predominantly gay male readership in the 1990s, a second wave in the 2000s that navigated queer politics through nuanced tales of monstrosity and heroism; and a third wave in the 2010s of online queer communities circulating creative contestations to Disney's fairy tales. With case studies from film to text to social media, Díaz-Faes demonstrates how the inherent fluidity in fairy tales allows for the amplification of queer voices and experiences. Ultimately, Tales for Fairies not only reveals the long-standing compatibility between queerness and the fairy tale but also charts an evolving landscape where imagination, activism, and retelling intersect to create a vibrant tradition of queer enchantment.

An excavation of how Disney films shape culture—and misrepresent it.In Appropriated Tales, scholar Michelle Anya Anjirbag examines Disney's method of fairy-tale storytelling to determine how the corporation has shaped public understanding of what fairy tales are and who belongs within them. Covering a span of years "from mermaid to mermaid"—from the 1989 animated The Little Mermaid to the 2023 live-action remake starring Halle Bailey—she deconstructs and interrogates Disney's corporate commodification of multiculturalism and diversity, centering its impact on misrepresented people and cultures over the stated intentions of the producers. Further, Anjirbag demonstrates that Disney shapes childhood experiences and imagination in a way that strategically promotes American cultural imperialism. Through close film analysis, applied critical theory, and social analysis of the Disney corporation, Anjirbag unearths a new framework for studies of Disney fairy tales and how they shape popular culture.

Western tales of the marvelous and the strange have dominated much of the narrative literatures of the premodern Muslim world. The quintessential collection, The Thousand and One Days, was first published in the early eighteenth century by French Orientalist scholar François Pétis de la Croix. Research has found that The Thousand and One Days actually had an earlier start, as it is an adapted translation of a fifteenth-century, anonymous, Ottoman Turkish collection titled Relief after Hardship, which is, in turn, the enlarged translation of an equally anonymous Persian collection of tales that likely dates back to as early as the thirteenth century.Ulrich Marzolph now provides a detailed assessment of the Ottoman Turkish compilation and its Persian precursor. Based upon Andreas Tietze’s unpublished German translation of the Ottoman Turkish Ferec ba'd es-sidde, it traces the origins of the collection’s various tales in premodern Persian and Arabic literatures and its impact on Middle Eastern and world tradition and folklore. As the concept of "relief after hardship" has the same basic structure as the European fairy tale, Marzolph contends that the early reception of these tales from Muslim narrative tradition might well have had an inspiring impact on the nascent genre of the European fairy tale as we know it today.