Utilizing new historicist, feminist, and cultural studies critiques, these essays by leading scholars provide new perspectives on early children's literary texts. The essays are divided into four parts: Part 1 critiques the rise of children's literature throughout the eighteenth-century, Part 2 focuses on the rise of the female educator and the 'rational dames', Part 3 contains three essays on the politics of pedagogy and the child, Part 4 is a detailed examination of the work of children's literature scholar Mitzi Myers (1939-2001). Scholars of children's literature, literary history, and gender studies will find this volume very illuminating.

Indian women scholars present and discuss tales about women, bringing new insights about gender and the moral universe of the folk narrative.

Indian women scholars present and discuss tales about women, bringing new insights about gender and the moral universe of the folk narrative.

This collection of exemplary essays by internationally recognized scholars examines the fairy tale from historical, folkloristic, literary, and psychoanalytical points of view. For generations of children and adults, fairy tales have encapsulated social values, often through the use of fixed characters and situations, to a far greater extent than any other oral or literary form. In many societies, fairy tales function as a paradigm both for understanding society and for developing individual behavior and personality. A few of the topics covered in this volume: oral narration in contemporary society; madness and cure in the 1001 Nights; the female voice in folklore and fairy tale; change in narrative form; tests, tasks, and trials in the Grimms' fairy tales; and folklorists as agents of nationalism. The subject of methodology is discussed by Torborg Lundell, Stven Swann Jones, Hans-Jorg Uther, and Anna Tavis.

Fairy Godfather Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition Ruth B. Bottigheimer ""Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition" makes the case that the fairy tale, far from rising from the ground as a rural folk tradition, was invented by a city-bound sixteenth-century Italian literary hack, Zoan Francesco Straparola."--Adam Gopnik, "New Yorker" "A vivid and compelling picture of life in Venice and the Veneto in the sixteenth century."--Guido Ruggiero, Pennsylvania State University "Thanks to the initiative and wide-ranging scholarly industry of Ruth Bottigheimer, teachers and students . . . now have available to them a highly readable, at times quite engrossing account of the little that is known, and whatever can be surmised, about the author who launched the genre that was to become the literary folk fairy tale."--"The Lion and the Unicorn" "A masterly demonstration. . . . A substantial achievement."--"Times Literary Supplement" "Well researched, gracefully written, and beautifully printed. Highly recommended."--"Choice" In the classic rags-to-riches fairy tale a penniless heroine (or hero), with some magic help, marries a royal prince (or princess) and rises to wealth. Received opinion has long been that stories like these originated among peasants, who passed them along by word of mouth from one place to another over the course of centuries. In a bold departure from conventional fairy tale scholarship, Ruth B. Bottigheimer asserts that city life and a single individual played a central role in the creation and transmission of many of these familiar tales. According to her, a provincial boy, Zoan Francesco Straparola, went to Venice to seek his fortune and found it by inventing the modern fairy tale, including the long beloved Puss in Boots, and by selling its many versions to the hopeful inhabitants of that colorful and commercially bustling city. With innovative literary sleuthing, Bottigheimer has reconstructed the actual composition of Straparola's collection of tales. Grounding her work in social history of the Renaissance Venice, Bottigheimer has created a possible biography for Straparola, a man about whom hardly anything is known. This is the first book-length study of Straparola in any language. Ruth B. Bottigheimer teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is the author also of "Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm." 2002 176 pages 6 x 9 6 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3680-4 Cloth $55.00s 36.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0139-0 Ebook $55.00s 36.00 World Rights Literature, Cultural Studies Short copy: ""Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition" makes the case that the fairy tale, far from rising from the ground as a rural folk tradition, was invented by a city-bound sixteenth-century Italian literary hack, Zoan Francesco Straparola."--Adam Gopnik, "New Yorker"

For more than five centuries, parents, teachers, and preachers in Europe and America have written and illustrated Bibles especially for children. These children's Bibles vary widely, featuring different stories, various interpretations, and markedly divergent illustrations, despite their common source. How children's Bibles differ, and why, is the subject of this groundbreaking book, the first to recognize children's Bibles as a distinct genre with its own literary, historical, and cultural significance. Comparing European and American children's Bibles, Ruth B. Bottigheimer reveals how the cultural standards and social attitudes of adults who tell Bible stories to children affect the selection and interpretation of Old and New Testament stories. She also analyzes many familiar Bible tales-for example, the parting of the Red Sea, the Garden of Eden, and the Crucifixion-to see what they tell us about the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish societies that presented them to children. Bottigheimer finds that even disparate religious groups transformed Bible stories for their young according to a common pattern: stories initially stayed close to scriptural text, then troubling passages underwent revisions, and finally a thoroughgoing amendment of the story emerged. Numerous engaging illustrations throughout this book underscore the fascinating variety among children's Bibles of different eras and cultures.

The fairy tale collection of the brothers Grimm has been a central document in German social and literary history for generations, mined for various purposes by scholars of many persuasions. This book, the first in more than fifty years to examine the entire body of tales, provides a thorough content analysis, focusing in particular on the use of gender in the stories. Ruth B. Bottigheimer's close analysis of several major editions of Grimms' Tales reveals coherent patterns of motif, plot, and image and also affords insight into the moral and social vision of the collection. Bottigheimer discusses, for example, the relationship between transgression and punishment, noting that gender distinctions rather than the severity of the sin determined the consequences of transgressing prohibitions. She finds that in the course of the Tales' editorial history, speech was systematically taken away from women and given to men. She shows how common elements unite images and themes as disparate as abandonment in the forest, subliminal eroticism, violence, and Christianity in the Tales. And she treats their social and ethical bases, analyzing such aspects of the plots as the workings of the judicial process and the relation of anti-Semitism to the economics of work and money. According to Bottigheimer, Freudians praise fairy tales as contributing to children's moral education; although Jungians recognize the gender distinctions inherent in the tales, they treat the collection ahistorically, ignoring its nineteenth-century German origins. By combining a sociohistorical analysis of these stories with close scrutiny of the language in which they are told, Bottigheimer radically alters the uses to which Grimms' Tales can be put in the future by historians, psychologists, feminists, and educators.