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Fairy tales: Evil? Yay or Nonny No?

I'm surprised nobody in this thread has mentioned Angela Carter's "Company of Wolves" yet. Now, there's a good examination of subtexts in fairy stories.

Or Pratchett's "Hogfather", come to that...
 
There was an interesting discussion on Thinking Allowed on radio 4 today touching on how fairytales were initially an adult form of story, etc.:

FAIRYTALES
Is there still a place for children's fairy stories in contemporary life?

Laurie Taylor goes in search of Cinderella with Sally Feldman, Head of Media, Arts and Design at University of Westminster and author of an article You shall go to the ball and Dr Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Director of The Centre for International Research in Childhood at University of Reading and editor of Children's Literature: New Approaches

.........

Sally Feldman
Head of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster

You shall go to the ball
The New Humanist
January 6th 2005

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
Director of Centre for International Research in Childhood (CIRCL), University of Reading and Coordinator of the MA in Children's Literature

Children's Literature: New Approaches
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (Editor)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 1403917388

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed.shtml

You can listen again to the show via links on that page (for now - the listen again feature should make it available for a while I assume).
 
One of my favorite books that examines and explores the lessons to be learned from fairy tales and old stories is Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This book is a great read and has some really eye-opening meanings for many common story (and dream, for that matter) elements.

I find it facinating (and horrific, in this case) that old stories sometimes pop up in real life parrallels. For example the similarities between the story of La Llorona and the real life Susan Smith that drowned her sons hoping that once her kids were out of the way her boyfriend would marry her. I was stunned when this story broke, it was so similar to the old tale.
 
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