Fairy Tales: A New History (Excelsior Editions) [Paperback]

Ruth B. Bottigheimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2009 | Series: Excelsior Editions

Overturns traditional views of the origins of fairy tales and documents their actual origins and transmission.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Where did Cinderella come from? Puss in Boots? Rapunzel? The origins of fairy tales are looked at in a new way in these highly engaging pages. Conventional wisdom holds that fairy tales originated in the oral traditions of peasants and were recorded for posterity by the Brothers Grimm during the nineteenth century. Ruth B. Bottigheimer overturns this view in a lively account of the origins of these well-loved stories. Charles Perrault created Cinderella and her fairy godmother, but no countrywoman whispered this tale into Perrault's ear. Instead, his Cinderella appeared only after he had edited it from the book of often amoral tales published by Giambattista Basile in Naples. Distinguishing fairy tales from folktales and showing the influence of the medieval romance on them, Bottigheimer documents how fairy tales originated as urban writing for urban readers and listeners. Working backward from the Grimms to the earliest known sixteenth-century fairy tales of the Italian Renaissance, Bottigheimer argues for a book-based history of fairy tales. The first new approach to fairy tale history in decades, this book answers questions about where fairy tales came from and how they spread, illuminating a narrative process long veiled by surmise and assumption.

"This book will forever change the way that scholars and readers view a genre--the literary fairy tale--that remains vital today." -- Suzanne Magnanini, author of Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Tales of Straparola and Basile --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Ruth B. Bottigheimer teaches European fairy tales and British children's literature at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. She is the coeditor (with Leela Prasad and Lalita Handoo) of Gender and Story in South India, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of several books, including Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 162 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (March 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1438425244
• ISBN-13: 978-1438425245
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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