Preserving the Spell : Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition / Armando Maggi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maggi, Armando, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Basile, Giambattista, approximately 1575-1632--Criticism and interpretation.

Basile, Giambattista.

Fairy tales--Western countries--History and criticism.

Fairy tales.

Fairy tales--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (408 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelous-in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises. If we want to rediscover the power of fairy tales-as Armando Maggi thinks we should-we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In Preserving the Spell, Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales, then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothers' adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Dancing Backward: An Introduction

1. A Never Ending and Never Told Tale: Basile's Undoing of "Cupid and Psyche"

2. Orpheus, the King of the Birds, Moves to Sicily with Cupid and Psyche: Laura Gonzenbach's "King Cardiddu"

3. Melancholy Is the Best Storyteller: Oil, Water, and Blood from Gonzenbach back to Basile

4. What We Leave Behind: Fairies, Letters, Rose Petals, and Sprigs of Myrtle

5. The Fairy, the Myrtle, and the Myrtle-Maiden: From Basile to the Grimms and Brentano

6. How to Undo The Tale of Tales: Brentano and the End of Fairy Tales

7. Where Are the Ogresses of Yesteryear? The Neapolitan Cupids and Psyches in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm

8. Beauty, Zulima, and Aline: The Marvel Preceding and Following the World According to Novalis

9. "You Will Never Awaken Because the Story You Were In No Longer Exists": Coover, Postmodernism, and the End of an Era

10. "Disney World Has Become a Kind of Reverse Lourdes": From Stanley Elkin back to Basile

11. "A Benign Fairy Tale out of the Brothers Grimm": Memoirs and the Magic of Reality

12. "Everything Beautiful Is Gone": Beasts of the Southern Wild and a New Beginning

Appendix: The Grimm Brothers' Adaptation of Giambattista Basile's The Tale of Tales

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226243016

022624301X

OCLC:

912878422