By focusing on the fairy tale’s complex history, multiple social uses, and transformations into literary fiction and film for adults, this course calls for a critical reconsideration of what we may think we know from childhood memories about this genre. Fairy tales today permeate contemporary culture in various media, and one of our ongoing projects as a class will be to explore why they “stick” and how they’ve changed.
When oral tales of magic were first adapted into printed literature in 16th-century Europe they were not literature for children or strictly of European provenance; and the process by which, from the 18th through the 20th century, fairy tales became a popular genre across national boundaries in the modern world is hardly linear or ideologically monolithic. Rather, while maintaining a strong grip on ordinary social life, fairy tales have over the centuries and in different cultural contexts offered imaginative outlets for desire and social change. Approaching fairy tales as socializing narratives that are continuously adapted, we will focus on how they encourage and discourage specific gendered and other cultural behaviors or prejudices as well as how they enable new possibilities.
Organized around popular fairy-tale plots and themes, the course has historical and cross-cultural breadth: we will be reading English-language translations of early modern Italian and French fairy tales, the popular XIX-century German tales of the Brothers Grimm, and the much older tales of The Arabian Nights; and we will discuss how and why contemporary filmic productions, graphic novels, and literary adaptations for adults reproduce, revitalize, and question the genre.
REQUIREMENTS: Assignments include a group presentation, focused in-class activities, quizzes, a short paper, a midterm, and a final examination. Attendance is mandatory. We will also discuss two or three fairy-tale films, and students are responsible for watching them outside of class.
NOTE: This is a large-enrollment course that is open to non-majors. Required reading not listed below will be available to download and print via Laulima.
Required Texts
Christine A. Jones & Jennifer Schacker eds, Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives
Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch
Bill Willingham, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall
Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and the Spindle