When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (Literary Studies) [Paperback]

Jack Zipes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415921511 | ISBN-13: 978-0415921510 | Publication Date: October 19, 1999

For centuries fairy tales have been a powerful mode of passing cultural values onto our children, and for many these stories delight and haunt us from cradle to grave. But how have these stories become so powerful and why? This text is a social history of the fairy tale which seeks to frame our understanding of the role it plays in our lives. With the publication of this text, Jack Zipes shifts his focus to the social and historical roots of the classical tales. With coverage of the most significant writers and their works in Europe and North America from the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century, this book is a significant contribution to the study of fairy tales. From the French Charles Perrault to the American L. Frank Baum and the German Hermann Hesse, Zipes explores the way in which particular authors used the genre of the fairy tale to articulate their personal desires, political views and aesthetic preferences in their particular social context.; At the core of this tour through the history of the fairy tale is Zipes desire to elucidate the role that the fairy tale has assumed in the civilizing process - the way it imparts values, norms and aesthetic taste to chil

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Since publishing Don't Bet on the Prince a decade ago, Zipes has established himself as the preeminent popularizer of the social and psychological uses of fairy tales for a contemporary audience. The 11 essays collected here are revised and updated introductions and afterwords written by Zipes for his books dealing with fairy and folk literature. His aim in updating and reissuing this material is to highlight the historical role that fairy tales, both oral and written, play in socializing and civilizing their audience. Backed by scholarly research and cross-cultural references, the essays describe how a privileged, educated minority has used fairy tales to defend and maintain its status while incorporating and perpetuating the belief that the poor could triumph over the ruling class through cunning and moral integrity. Zipes's main thesis is that fairy tales are a dynamic mixture of upper- and lower-class values that at once reinforce a society's class structure and, with subtlety and humor, show the emperor's nakedness without upsetting the status quo. The chapters on fairy tale creators Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Herman Hesse and Americans Frank Stockton and L. Frank Baum connect these writers' outsider status with their use of the fairy tale to explore nonconformism and to voice their opposition to hypocrisy, commercialism and war. Of primary interest to students of children's literature, the book may also appeal to readers concerned with social history, although the links between these disparate pieces are not as solidly forged as they might have been had Zipes written a single cohesive study of the subject.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Zipes has forged a career out of brilliant and subversive analyses of fairy tales. Here he gathers in somewhat recast form previously published introductions and afterwords and turns them into a scholarly but lucid text, with enchanting illustrations from compilations through the centuries. The rise of the literary fairy tale came about in seventeenth-century France in the salons of aristocratic women, who told stories based on the folktales of their childhood, but the truly ancient Arabian Nights tales deeply colored everything that followed their introduction in Europe in the eighteenth century. Zipes relates the lives of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen as metaphors of class struggle and knowing one's place as played out in the tales they constructed and related. Chapters on Oscar Wilde, Frank Baum, Collodi (Pinocchio), the now-forgotten Frank Stockton, and Herman Hesse follow a nimble analysis of the delayed development of the literary fairy tale in Victorian England. Intelligent and thoughtful fun, without deconstructing the land of Faerie into dust and ashes. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (October 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415921511
• ISBN-13: 978-0415921510
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,711,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, shame about the proof-reading, January 15, 2001

By 

L. Guilar - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (Literary Studies) (Paperback)

Zipes is always interesting, thought provoking and he knows a lot, though his essays always seem to promise more than they deliver. These essays range widely across the field of his interests. Having said that, i wish someone had done a better job of proof-reading the book. The essay on the French fairy tale, in itself a fascinating and informative piece of work, is spoilt by the bizzarre dating. If Louis 14 died in 1715, how could he be waging war in 1788? On one page you read that Madame D'Aulnoy published four volumes of fairy tales between 1697 and 1698, on the next page you read that she wrote her first fairy tales in 1790. If you're trying to use the information for study purposes it's frustrating and makes you wonder how reliable the other facts in the book are. End of grumble. If you're looking for a good, readable introduction to the study of folk and fairy tales, this is a good place to start.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful compilation of Zipes' works, March 31, 2000

By 

Heidi Anne Heiner (SurLaLune Fairy Tales.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (Literary Studies) (Paperback)

This book is a collection of introductions and essays from previous books Zipes has published, usually his collections of fairytales. The texts have been somewhat reworked and it is great to have them all gathered into one place for reading. Since this is a smaller volume, it is easier to carry around than his Grimms, Beauty and the Beast, Aesop's Fables, etc. when you just need to read the scholarly works and not the primary texts of the tales. Zipes has made great contributions to this field and this volume serves as a reminder of the breadth of his work.