Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales

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a b Nate Jones. "Disappointed With the Sexless Into the Woods? Watch The Company of Wolves Instead". Vulture . Retrieved 30 May 2020. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed most of the stories – they were interesting, funny and weird, so far so good. The Icelandic stories tended to involve the women making themselves appear as men with penises made out of bits of seal, and there were quite a few stories involving jealous step mothers and step fathers, and cannibalism… These are proper folk fairy stories that have been handed down from generation to generation. Bien, ocurre como siempre en los libros de relatos: unos gustan mucho, otros un poco menos y alguno nada de nada. Por eso no es un género que se encuentre entre mis predilectos, porque cada relato es una caja de sorpresas con una balanza en su interior. Y esa es la sensación que me queda. Son historias cortas, de entre una y quince páginas, y es verdad que algunas no me han dicho gran cosa, pero en general me ha parecido un libro entretenido e interesante para conocer los cuentos populares de otras culturas. No obstante, me gustó más otro libro que leí de la autora el año pasado, La cámara sangrienta, que sí tenía relatos originales escritos por ella, retellings siniestros. En este volumen del que os hablo hoy ella recopila, pero no modifica prácticamente nada.

Bad-good girls, beasts, rogues and other creatures: Angela

quoted in J.J. Adams and D.B. Kirtley, " Reclaiming Sci-Fi's Lost History", Wired, Sept. 28, 2019. Retrieved 1 Oct. 2019. A maiden wanders into the woods and is seduced by the sinister Erl-King, a seeming personification of the forest itself. However, she eventually realises that he plans to imprison her by turning her into a bird, which he has done with other girls. Realising the Erl-King's plan, she kills him by strangling him with his own hair, thus keeping her freedom. One other thing I noted is that, unlike the Native American folk stories book I read last year, practically none of the stories contain what I would think of as fragments of useful foraging information. Instead, their information seems geared toward teaching social norms. Some of these are extremely obvious, like the cautionary tale about incest, but because so many of the lessons applied to the villain and not the hero, it took me a little bit to notice how resoundingly this body of culture condemns the abuse of stepchildren. It suggests that a theory of storytelling focused on protagonists solving problems might be missing the possibility that villains are often the central figure of interest in the stories. After all, one of the most common tropes in this collection is the protagonists solving a problem by asking someone for help, whether that's a family member or a random stranger, and receiving an absurd set of magical instructions to follow. I think it's a stretch to imagine that trope is about teaching children to ask for help when the lesson that you shouldn't abuse your children, even if you are not their biological parent, is so much more obvious. Could be both, though. Do I like the book? I have a mixed feeling. Some of the stories are pointless in their cruelties. Some are the typical fairy tales with moral messages. Even the happy ending ones give me chill. There is little clue, in the stories, about the country where the tale originates from.The stories are selected with care. There are lengthy introductions, afterwords, and notes explaining why the stories are selected and where they are obtained from. To be honest, these parts are too English 101 for me so I didn't really pay attention. First of all, I am not sure what's the genre of this book. Fiction? The tales may be true to some people. Horror? I certainly think so given that some of the fairy tales are horrifying. Fantasy? Perhaps.

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Angela se apodera de la voz masculina de los cuentos y los arranca de la misoginia misma para retrotraerlos a sus orígenes, a aquellas épocas en las que los contaban «Mamá ganso» o la abuela de nuestra bisabuela mientras hilaba por la noche al lado del fuego. Historias útiles para nosotras en las que somos las protagonistas, a veces virtuosas, a veces malvadas, a veces picaronas, a veces brujas, a veces mujeres-leona, a veces mujeres-mortero. Todo un imaginario que Angela rescata desde los inuit hasta Japón pasando por Inglaterra, Birmania o Sudán. Una de las lástimas de este libro es que son tantas y tantas historias (no las he contado, pero habrá 300 o más), que no se pueden asimilar todas y la mayoría acaban siendo olvidadas. Es cierto, ya he olvidado algunas o cómo acababan. In general, as entertainment, the stories have that same issue that fairytales always have. A lot of them are a bit nursery rhyme-ish (especially true of the humorous ones, which often seem to get left out of other such collections), in so far as they tend to reach fairly neat endings that are often pretty close to "happily ever after," and their general logic is pretty . . . convenient? Not to mention that so many of them are so familiar. The most interesting ones are those that make some bold, baffling, and just weird aesthetic turn, like having Cinderella conceal her beauty under a head of mangy skins, or when a cursed wife gives birth to a hideous baby riding a goat and waving a wooden spoon. It is definitely a "that's so random" quality that I like about them, the sense that the palette of things that can happen is so much wider relative to the familiar tropes of the form than in other genres. The trade-off for that of course is that few of the stories can amount to more than that weirdness, but given their length that's probably fine. Así que hay historias de África, de Asia, de América... Y son absurdos, como suelen ser los cuentos, en el sentido de que a un personaje le dicen X y, por extraño que suene, el personaje se lo cree a pies juntillas. No sé, le dicen que su casa está hechizada y que tiene que desollar a su gato y comerse la piel para desencantarla, y se lo cree. Y lo hace. Y sí, hay sangre en varios de los cuentos, y también sexo a veces. La apología de la violencia y del maltrato aquí es bestial, pero está tan normalizada y queda tan WTF que hasta te ríes.It's hard to know how to review collections like this because in my mind they are as much data as they are entertainment. Every time I read one I get wistful for the day when we will have proper phylogenetic trees to give these stories context. You would expect a collection like this to have a certain amount of filtering or bias, and they definitely do. The premise of this one is that all these random folk stories are in some way about girls. But that still leaves a pretty huge selection, and you would think, for instance, that a curator might include a few examples of the Cinderella story and leave out the rest. Apparently not; there must be a dozen versions of Cinderella, and a fair number of the other tales are also variants of each other. Que yo y otras muchas mujeres vayamos buscando heroínas de cuentos de hadas en los libros es otra versión del mismo proceso: deseo validar mi reivindicación a poseer una parte equitativa del futuro, y expreso para ello la exigencia de que me concedan la parte del pasado que me corresponde». a b c Pyrhonen, Heta (2010). Bluebeard Gothic: Jane Eyre and Its Progeny. Canada: University of Toronto Press. p.216. ISBN 978-1-4426-4124-2.

The Bloody Chamber - Wikipedia

Anonymous, "LS 819: Transformations: Freedom and Magic in Nineteenth Century "Fairy Stories"", (n.d.). The collection has been taught and studied in University literature courses. [20] It has been used as part of the AQA English Literature, the OCR English Literature and Edexcel English Language & Literature syllabus for A-Levels in schools and colleges across the United Kingdom. Punk band Daisy Chainsaw adapted the story of "The Lady of the House of Love" for their 1992 music video for "Hope Your Dreams Come True" (from the EP of the same name and also later the album Eleventeen). [23] Theatre [ edit ] La edición es preciosa, con esas ilustraciones tan originales que tiene, además de los extras (apéndices donde se cuenta el origen de cada cuento, un prólogo maravilloso que nos habla de los cuentos de hadas en general y el papel de la mujer en ellos...). Pero tengo que decir algo negativo, muy negativo: he encontrado faltas de ortografía en casi todas las páginas. Y estamos hablando de un libro de casi 30 euros. Hay para todos los gustos: tildes que faltan, cambio de género de personajes de un párrafo a otro, palabras omitidas (ejemplo: "cogió la y se la dio a su hermano"). En fin, que no esperaba algo así por parte de esta editorial, que suele cuidar tanto sus ediciones, y me encuentro sorprendida para mal y algo decepcionada en este sentido. Tenía que decirlo. Este libro es tan raro y sorprendente que me encantó. Es una recopilación de cuentos populares de diversas partes del mundo, principalmente de fuera de Europa, porque los de aquí ya nos los conocemos de sobra.The chapters are made of headings in which similar stories are grouped. For example, chapter one titled Brave, Bold and Wilful talks about people who are like that. Chapter 11, titled Mothers and Daughters, explores their relationships. The Enchanter and Enchantress" - a story that makes an interesting comment about marriage. Really a rather nice tale.

Story-wise, it is not the typical fairy tales. They are gruesome, dark, and sometimes disturbing. Children are roasted in oven and fed into their own unsuspecting fathers by, normally, their stepmothers. Mothers get jealous of their own daughters and send the girls to their doom. There are even a few incestuous stories. The stories, collected from all over the world, happen in times where monsters, ghouls, and fairies rule the world; animals talk; and every beautiful girl marries a prince. The time periods of the stories are early 20th century. For example, in "The Bloody Chamber" the existence of a transatlantic telephone implies a date of 1930 or later. On the other hand, the mention of painters such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, and of fashion designer Paul Poiret (who designs one of the heroine's gowns) all suggest a date before 1945. "The Lady of the House of Love" is clearly set on the eve of the First World War, and the young man's bicycle on which he arrives at the tradition-bound vampire's house is a symbol of the encroaching modernity which fundamentally altered European society after 1914. Based on an obscure variant of "Little Red Riding Hood" [3] :xviii and with reference to Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, this tale explores the journey towards subjectivity and self-awareness from the perspective of a feral child.) The Lady of the House of Love" originally appeared in print in The Iowa Review. [5] However, it was originally written as a radio play entitled Vampirella which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1976. [7] The story was revised from the previous printed version for this collection. [6]The Snow Child" was originally broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme Not Now, I'm Listening. [5] It was revised for this collection. [6] This book is a collection of two shorter volumes, and the first one is strongly biased in favor of European and Western Asian cultures. The only exception is the set of short Inuit stories scattered throughout, which have such a distinct and unique voice that their independent heritage is quite obvious. They are universally quite fixated on anatomy and sexuality, and integrate them with a very cool ecological magic vocabulary. The second half makes a much better effort at global inclusiveness, though it still leaves a lot to be desired as a survey. Many of the best stories in the collection appear here, stories I enjoyed for their kind of unexpected combination of several story ideas that might otherwise be treated separately (the Dinka stories stand out). Has roots in various folktales, most apparently The Snow-child; The Snow, the Crow, and the Blood; and also tales such as Snegurochka and an obscure variant of Snow White. [3] :xvi) Staff, Wales, UK: Trinity CM, archived from the original on 28 September 2007 , retrieved 29 June 2007 . The stories deal with themes of women's roles in relationships and marriage, their sexuality, coming of age and corruption. Stories such as "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Company of Wolves" explicitly deal with the horrific or corrupting aspects of marriage and/or sex and the balance of power within such relationships. Themes of female identity are explored in the "Beauty and the Beast" stories such as "The Tiger's Bride". In one instance, Beauty, the story's heroine, is described as removing the petals from a white rose as her father gambles her away; this is a seeming representation of the stripping away of the false layers of her personality to find her true identity, an image that finds a mirror in the story's fantastical conclusion.