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f0719dd
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And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.
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love
perceptions
fairy-tales-for-adults
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Emma Donoghue |
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12e4017
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"the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the "nursery," as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused."
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fairy-tales-for-adults
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J.R.R. Tolkien |
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d9ca733
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Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.
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fairy-tales-for-adults
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A.S. Byatt |
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d43d3e3
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Fairy tales for adult readers remained popular throughout Europe well into the 19th century -- particularly in Germany, where the Brothers Grimm published their massive collection of German fairy tales (revised and edited to reflect the Brothers' patriotic and patriarchal ideals), providing inpiration for novelists, poets, and playrights among the German Romantics. Recently, fairy tale scholars have re-discovered the enormous body of work produced by women writers associated with the German Romantics: Grisela von Arnim, Sophie Tieck Bernhardi, Karoline von Gunderrode, Julie Berger, and Sophie Albrecht, to name just a few.
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feminism
germany
fairy-tales-for-adults
magical-stories
stories
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Terri Windling |
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10aac19
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"To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide-eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon -- a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well-known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled "Snow-drop" and published in Kinder-und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' "Snow White" is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (...) Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634."
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fairy-tales-for-adults
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Terri Windling |
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20e07eb
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In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story material, English publishers laid hands on the subtle, sensual adult fairy tales of the Continental tradition and revised them into simpler stories instilled with Victorian values. Although these simplified versions retained much of the violence of the older stories, elements of sexuality and moral complexity were carefully scrubbed away -- along with the fiesty heroines who appeared everywhere in the older tales, tamed now into models of Victorian propiety and passivity. In the 20th century, the Walt Disney Studios watered down the tales further still in popular animated films like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, continuing the trend of turning active heroines into powerless damsels in distress. Walt Disney considered even the Victorian versions of the tales too dark for 20th century audiences. Disney commented.
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feminism
fairy-tales-for-adults
magical-stories
stories
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Terri Windling |
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0f51de3
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Arian's ebony hair was spread in a shimmering fan around her shoulders, reminding Tristan absurdly of Snow White in her glass coffin. Even in death, hadn't the deceptive blush of life stained Snow White's pallid cheeks? Hadn't her rosebud lips parted as if to welcome a kiss from a prince who might never come? Hadn't the creamy swell of her breasts tantalized every hopelessly naive kid in the theater into daring to believe her chest would rise just one more time?
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fairy-tales-retold
fairy-tales-for-adults
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Teresa Medeiros |