In a western genre system, folktales and fairy tales are identified as wonder tales; we will consider them as one among many wondrous genres that hold different names and functions across cultures. Within a framework that is interdisciplinary and attentive to our location in the Pacific, this course focuses on three connected cultural practices—translation, adaptation, and scholarship—and the different ways in which they shape and can change different understandings of “magic,” “enchantment,” and “wonder” as they inform traditional, literary, and popular-culture narratives as well people’s sense of what is desirable and possible.
The transcoding of “magic,” “enchantment,” and “wonder” in relation to systems of knowledge and matters of (dis)belief will be in focus as we study how socio-economic demands and cultural movements impact the popularization of different forms of the fantastic. In considering the work of translation and adaptation alongside scholarly discussions of tales of wonder from different locations and times, we will pay attention to when and how “magic” is constructed as counter-knowledge, or fantasy; how “enchantment” has been eroticized in Orientalist fashion, deployed to support consumer fantasies, and explored recently in readings that queer the generally heteronormative genre of the fairy tale; and how, while “fairy tale” applied to narratives of the non-western world is a colonial concept, “wonder” may be an activist force across genre and cultural systems. If ideology is what engages us in the discursive production of belief, it is crucial to focus on its workings in make-believe—the telling, collecting, translating, studying, retelling, and adapting of tales predicated on the suspension of disbelief or on the beliefs of others—and to become aware of how the economy of magic, enchantment, and wonder can serve heteronormative and queer as well as colonial and decolonial projects.
Methodologically, the course offers students the tools of a folklore & literature approach that foregrounds the power of expressive cultures, but these tools will be presented in a self-reflective mode where disciplinary assumptions and methodological tools are both deployed and put into question, especially in light of the difference between “emic” (relevant within a group or community) and “etic” (applied from those outside a group or community) genre categories and of the imbricated history of folkloristics with colonialism as well as coloniality more broadly. Traditional narratives considered in this course rest on oral tradition but are not limited to oral cultures; while many traditional narratives are authored, this is largely ignored as they are translated to represent an older or other culture and they are adapted into ‘modern’ literary texts. Why are they translated and adapted? By whom and for whom? How do translation and adaptation overlap? What are the methods and effects of colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial translations and adaptations of traditional narratives? What is gained and what is lost, by differentiating between literary and traditional narratives? We will ask how these dynamics have played out in the English-language translation of “folktales” from colonized India; fairy tales from the European literary tradition and from The Thousand and One Nights; translated mo‘olelo from the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and occupied Hawai‘i; stories exchanged among Cherokee elders in the late 20th century and presented in print; and genre remixes in contemporary literature and popular culture.
Within this framework, my practice in the classroom is to encourage students to put individual and collective located knowledges (linguistic, cultural, and critical) to good use. I look forward to our active engagement with critical questions, texts, methodologies, and each other’s ideas.
General Student Outcomes
- Foundational knowledge of the theories and methods of folklore, literary, and cultural studies in relation to translation and adaptation of traditional narrative genres across cultures.
- Written and oral ability to place one’s own scholarly work within broader critical conversations and intervene in it by conducting independent research.
- Experience with delivering concise, informed, focused, and thought-provoking presentations to other professionals in the field.
Assignments: informal activities, which include leading discussion [formally once], contributing resources to a communal online library, and translating/adapting exercises: 25%; a collaborative oral presentation: 15%; a short paper with research component focused on a genre or critical concept: 20%; a final argumentative research paper 40%.
Note: I meet with students individually to discuss short papers and final essays in draft form.
Texts: In addition to essays on translation, adaptation, folklore, and indigenous studies, critical texts will include Andrew Teverson’s Fairy Tale and Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time; Sadhana Naithani’s The Story-time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Globalectics; ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui’s Voices of Fire: Reweaving the Literary Lei of Pele and Hi‘iaka; Christopher B. Teuton’s Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club; selections from Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History (edited by Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush); and two special issues of Marvels & Tales “Queer(ing) Fairy Tales” edited by Lewis Seifert (2015) and “Rooted in Wonder” edited by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada and Aiko Yamashiro (2016).
Primary texts include: Arabian Nights (selections in English-language translation of tales many of which come from a 15th-century Arabic ms. translated into French in the early 1700s); German Popular Stories by the Brothers Grimm and adapted by Edgar Taylor (1823 and 1826); 19th-century English-language translations of Indian and Australian tales in collections such as Old Deccan Days (1868) and Australian Legendary Tales (1895); translations of mo‘olelo in The Legends and Myths of Hawai‘i by His Majesty Kalākaua (1888); Emma Nakuina’s Hawaii: Its People, Their Legends (1904); and 20th- & 21st-century fairy-tale adaptations by Angela Carter, Emma Donoghue, Aimee Bender, Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell, Nalo Hopkinson, Vandana Singh, Sofia Samatar, Nisi Shawl; as well as a few filmic adaptations and three novels: Written in the Sky by Matthew Kaopio, The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, and Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.
Note: this selection of texts is somewhat subject to change as the course takes a more definite shape over the summer. Books will be available at Revolution Books; other readings will be posted on laulima.