From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers - Hardcover

Warner, Marina

4.12

1,426 ratings by Goodreads

9780701135300: From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701135301 ISBN 13: 9780701135300

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 1994

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This study looks beyond the Freudian interpretation of fairy tales, to the tellers of the tales, and to the social and cultural contexts in which the tales are told and re-told through the centuries, from the ancient sibyls to the 18th-century "salonieres", and from Disney to Angela Carter. The value and enduring popularity of folk and fairy tales derives not only from their mythic significance but, crucially, from the fact that their concerns are rooted in the material world. Warner looks at favourite tales, from "Beauty and the Beast" to "Bluebeard", and a rich vein of other tales, in a historical perspective, showing how often the tellers were women - nurses, grandmothers, midwives, the 18th-century women who had no alternative literary voice - who produced tales to deal with actual, urgent dilemmas in the lives of their listeners: men, matrimony, sex and morality.

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Review:

"Can itself evoke the sense of startled wonder that these tales first gave us" (Laurel Graeber New York Times)

"She is a terrific writer and an original scholar. This is a landmark book" (Victoria Glendinning Daily Telegraph)

"Just like the tale-tellers she celebrates...she's a weaver of enchantments, each sentence is like a silken knot charming you further into her web of meanings" (Michelle Roberts Independent on Sunday)

"Consistently enlightening...this is a brilliant work: wise, witty and as magisterially omniscient as any Sibylline oracle" (Nicholas Tucker New Statesman and Society)

"Open the book at almost any page and you will find something to fascinate you" (Noel Malcolm Guardian)

Book Description:

At once thoroughly enjoyable and academically rigorous, this lively and fascinating study of fairy tales and their social relevance throughout the ages is a modern classic

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