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Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion
by
The fairy tale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on children's lives. But until Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, little attention had been paid to the ways in which the writers and collectors of tales used traditional forms and genres in order to shape children's lives - their behavior, values, and relationship to society. As Jack Zipes
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Paperback, 266 pages
Published
May 1st 2006
by Routledge
(first published 1983)
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After reading Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment, it's fascinating to read Zipes who swings the pendulum as far as he can in the opposite direction. Where Bettelheim focuses entirely on the positive influence of fairy tales on the child's psychology, Zipes questions the socially conservative "civilizing" role of fairy tales, focusing almost entirely on the way they indoctrinate children into traditional (but often oppressive) values of the bourgeois middle class. We've gone from Freudian theory in
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I was surprised to find this book . . . a page-turner! Okay, since I love all things fairy tale, maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. Still, it's been awhile since I read anything remotely academic (I'm ashamed to say), and this was a nice, smooth way to re-enter the realm of real thinking.
Zipes did something to me that I always appreciate in an author: made me angry. He got me all riled up about the way literary writers of fairy tales tried to write women into submission. Ah! I just wante ...more
Zipes did something to me that I always appreciate in an author: made me angry. He got me all riled up about the way literary writers of fairy tales tried to write women into submission. Ah! I just wante ...more
Jun 08, 2015
Hannah
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
fairytale-retellings,
non-fiction,
one-of-books,
reviews-are-needed,
school,
2015,
reviewed
Summary and points learnt: Fairy tales and the art of subversion is an incredibly interesting book which talks about the origins of fairytales and the direct influence they have on our culture. What I really liked about this book is it explained he basic knowledge of the fairytales but also went further to make links and give reasoning to why this is important to stories an life now days. I found the analysis of different fairytales really detailed and when they are directly compared to those of
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Fascinating book. While I will always be a fan of The Uses of Enchantment I was never down with the Freudian rationale (I know, I know, the Freud shit practically is the book, but there are also some good summaries and apt observations, and it was the book that got me back into fairy tales after I thought I'd outgrown them). I especially appreciate the way Zipes contrasts various versions of the French fairy tales with their folk tale precursors, and how his analysis is based on the historical,
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A must for all fairy tale lovers!
Finally made it through this book, after setting it down and picking it up again throughout the semester. While I think the other Zipes book I've read--Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale--was a more accessible and quicker read, this is going to prove invaluable to my thesis research. Some of the chapters got a little bogged down--particularly the Hans Christian Andersen chapter about Zipes discourse of the dominated theory (which I felt could have been articulated with far fewer words)--but
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The early chapters of this book are particularly good, where Zipes shows how the fairy tales of Perrault, Grimm, and Andersen are not simply folklore, but were adapted to promote the upper-class values of the day. More examples of the tales before and after such transformation would have been nice, but perhaps "Red Riding Hood" was the only good example available. The next two chapters (on George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde, and L. Frank Baum, and on Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany) are interesting
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The introduction is a stultifying morass of subject-specific technical jargon; thankfully, Zipes eases up some in the following chapters.
The biographical aspects were the most interesting part of the book to me: Zipes describes the lives of many of the writers/transcribers of fairy tales, such as Hans Christian Andersen and the women of the French salons, though by the final chapter on Walt Disney the arguments re: the psychological motivations of the writers and creators gets borderline scurril ...more
The biographical aspects were the most interesting part of the book to me: Zipes describes the lives of many of the writers/transcribers of fairy tales, such as Hans Christian Andersen and the women of the French salons, though by the final chapter on Walt Disney the arguments re: the psychological motivations of the writers and creators gets borderline scurril ...more
I really admire the depth of knowledge Zipes has on fairy tales and their history, but sometimes I feel like he assumes I have an academic background I do not. Despite the fact that some of this book was VERY hard to get through (mostly the first chapter), I really did enjoy it, and feel like I know a lot more about the authors who's stories I grew up reading.
Sidenote: Does anyone else feel like Oscar Wilde has a lot in common with Lady Gaga? No, I'm serious. ...more
Sidenote: Does anyone else feel like Oscar Wilde has a lot in common with Lady Gaga? No, I'm serious. ...more
Relied heavily on this book for my thesis. It's a fascinating read, as are all his books.
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Sometimes Zipes is so damn good and then he misreads things in such a peculiar way that you just marvel in incredulity that he can be so dense - his take on Andersen is mean-spirited and makes me wonder hoiw much of a Marxist he really is and that he takes Hoffman's Struwwelpeter as a serious series of cautionary tales (and then later Fallada's imitations) is very odd indeed - but that said, when he is on - marvellous!
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I found this book really interesting. It speaks extensively about the socializing functions of fairytales in a way that I had never thought of before. It has prompted me to see the socializing fairytales, particularly by way of gender, in a lot of stories where I had not seen them before. That having been said, it is also very long and dry.
Sep 15, 2018
Cheryl is busier irl atm.
marked it as not-in-rolla-okc-wi-but-want
In part because it showed up when I did a search for the Italian, Gianni Rodari.
According to other reviewers, don't worry if the first chapter(s) is a heavy slog. And even then, don't ever completely give up, but give each section a good chance. ...more
According to other reviewers, don't worry if the first chapter(s) is a heavy slog. And even then, don't ever completely give up, but give each section a good chance. ...more
Another invaluable source for fairy tale analysis. I only read excerpts for a paper I wrote, but I've read other Zipes' works, and I think they are all essential reads if you have a deeper interest in fairy tale studies.
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an interesting read and lots of historical context. You can tell this author did his research, although you may not agree with a lot of his conclusions.
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Una bella lettura, anche solo per ricordarci come il mondo delle fiabe abbia origini politiche - il desiderio di presentare la società e spiegarla ai più piccoli - per poi diventare il pacchetto di stereotipi offerto da Walt Disney. Un viaggio che inquieta, forse, ma dal quale si potrebbe attingere per poter avere le basi da cui partire per costruire una letteratura per l'infanzia oggi.
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this book had a lot of good information but had so much analysis that my brain went hsjke32grs
Very academic and informative.
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Jack David Zipes is a retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. He has published and lectured extensively on the subject of fairy tales, their linguistic roots, and argued that they have a "socialization function". According to Zipes, fairy tales "serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales
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