The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales [Hardcover]

 

 

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Although much of this work is, as one has a right to expect, excellent, too often it seems the Bremen Town Musicians have commandered it, concerned solely with their own raucous theme tune. Six-sevenths of editors/contributors are "academics" - hence the distancing fashion victim jargon of "genre markers", and "inter-cultural communication"; two-thirds are U.S.-domiciled. Not surprisingly there is an unbalanced treatment without the necessary basis of appreciation of fairy tales in themselves as Andersen's "victory of the heart over cold intellect". Rather the contributors are interested in fairy stories only as Trojan vehicles for their own preoccupations. Although the North American section notes that even there "revisionist" fairy tales arouse "only marginal" public interest, in this book "feminism" is allowed to mould the subjective vision of many contributors. Not only a four thousand word section on "Feminism and Fairy Tales", but a recurrent undertheme. This not only misuses room needed for omitted relevant material - there is no heading for either Magic or Fairies; none for Religion - but causes misrepresentation. To describe "Peau d'Asne" as "male domination" and "female submissiveness" is not even to have read the story; the moralite of Perrault's "Little Red Riding-hood" cannot imply she "deserves what she gets". Bettelheim is too unfashionable ("exposed" by "feminist literary critics", "blatantly moralistic", "repressive and sexist") to have a heading, but the intellectual dishonesty in this is clear when he is still too important not to be repeatedly quoted. Illustrators are only analysed artistically if they "enter into vigorous dialogue" with the text. Iona Opie on the dustwrapper describes this book as "authoritative", but for all its academics, it is not. For Perrault alone the errors include the editor's telling us that French fairy tales are "from 10 to 60 pages" (none of Perrault's prose contes is) and have "omnipotent women" - in fact even the power of the fairies is limited Two articles claim (as another does for all fairy tales) that Perrault always provides happy endings (tell that to his Little Red Riding-hood and her grandmother, or the couple who wasted their wishes). Another must have used a bowdlerised text as we are informed Perrault's Wolf did not make Little Riding-hood "strip and join him in bed". The author of the section on "Puss in Boots" may be a professor of French literature, but she still gets the name wrong (it is not "Le Chat botte ou le Maire chat" but the reverse). Andersen, despite all the fuss he himself made on the subject, we are told "primarily addressed his fairy tales to children". Disney, creator of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, "Brave Little Tailor", "Four Musicians of Bremen", etc. is stated to have "consistently avoided the Grimms' texts". The section on ballet and fairy tales is ignorant of the English productions of The Sleeping Princess/Beauty which probably saved that ballet from being lost. In the midst of all the "feminism", the female sources for and influence on the Grimms are given little attention. Most appalling, for it shows his total lack of balanced judgment of priorities, is the editor's statement regarding the authorship of Perrault, that "recent evidence has shown clearly" that pierre could have had no part in the Histoires: BUT HE DOES NOT GIVE THE EVIDENCE - a question of basic importance, the identity of the author of the most popular stories, which has been debated for three centuries, and he does not think it worth the space. This work has been called, in a borrowing from Andrew Lang, "The Pink Fairy Book". It certainly should not be offered without warning as a general "companion" when it is a transatlantic, academic, "revisionist" and "feminist" textbook, with fairy tales very far down on its "agenda".

- le timide de Blanche-neige: for Her This version of the review is savagely abridged to fit into 1,000 words. A copy of the full text is available from the author: Francis Hertzberg, Quarry Bank, 48 Shalmarsh Road, Prospect Hill, Higher Bebington, Wirral, Cheshire, CH63 2JZ.

I agree with the reviewer who said this book has serious flaws. I bought this book as someone who gets a great deal of pleasure out of reading fairy tales and wishes to broaden my understanding and appreciation of them. Many of the entries seem to reduce the subject to cold and academic material without any sense of life. Surely there must be a better approach.

If you want a concise expnation of hundreds of fairy tales - many you have never even heard of this is your book

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