Fairy tales

The enchanting realms of fairy tales feature extraordinary figures gifted with magical abilities as well as monstrous creatures cursed by disability, deformity or disease. The colourful cast of unusual characters, all challenging the confines of human being, could be celebrated for their diversity. However, as Cristina Bacchilega pointed out, the happily-ever-after of classic fairy tales is all too often shaped by a normative hegemonic ideology that eradicates differences, so that supposedly universally satisfying finales hold sexist, classist, racist, and ableist implications. Disability is mostly portrayed in classic fairy tales as a sign of weakness, vulnerability, villainy or victimhood and in the end is eliminated from the story that identifies happiness with healing, leaving no room for atypical, anomalous, or dysfunctional embodiments. 

Our workshop aims to take a new look at representations of disability in fairy tales, asking if/how these inherently subversive narratives may still perhaps allow us to see disability as exceptional instead of pathological, while urging readers to dare to become enchanted by monstrosity. A “cripistemological analysis” rejects ableist assumptions, “centers disabled ways of knowing and being in the world” (Johnson & McRuer 2014) and considers disability not as a metaphor but as lived, embodied reality enriched with complex joys and knowledges not despite but because of its incurable condition. Embracing the crip/queer art of failure and experiences of vulnerability, merging methodologies of queer theory and critical disability studies, we shall explore through the analysis of fairy tales how social pressures and norms around ability and gender/sexuality intersect with one another. We shall also play with the revisionary powers of alternative reading/writing against the grain and engage in resisting dominant narratives. With Amanda Leduc we will ask: What if the Beast does not turn into a handsome prince in the end, but complements his bestiality with virtues of kindness and compassion? What if the Little Mermaid does not kill herself as at the end of Andersen’s tale but learns sign language and begins to communicate with her prince after all? What happens if the dwarves in the Grimm’s Snow White story gain agency and empowerment? We shall analyse the latent disability political potential of classic fairy tales and focus on postmodern rewritings’ more explicit deconstructive transgressive intents to decode „dismodernist” (Davis) messages which reveal disability as an integral part of the human existence.

Required Reading 

​Hans Christian Andersen. „The Little Mermaid” 

​Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. „The Girl Without Hands/ The Armless Maiden”​

​Madame de Villeneuve. „Beauty and the Beast”​

​Angela Carter. „The Tiger’s Bride”​

​Poems: Margaret Atwood. “Girl Without Hands”, Nan Fry “Pear”, Viki Feaver. “The handless maiden” Ellen Lipkin. “Conversation with my Father”, Rigoberto Gonzalez. “The Girl with no Hands”, Ann Sexton. “The Maiden without Hands” 

Preparatory tasks for all students

1. Read the “Introduction” to Ann Schmiesing’s Disability, Deformity and Disease in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales (pp. 1-21) and think about your own literary and lived experiences of disability, ableism, and empowerment by alternative metamorphic re-embodiments.

2. Read the following short poems: Margaret Atwood. “Girl Without Hands”, Nan Fry “Pear”, Viki Feaver. “The handless maiden” Ellen Lipkin. “Conversation with my Father”, Rigoberto Gonzalez. “The Girl with no Hands”, Ann Sexton. “The maiden without Hands” How do these contemporary poetic rewrites challenge the Grimms’ “The Armless Maiden” fairy tale?

Additional tasks for students taking credits

Write an essay of 500-700 words about the representation of disability in a classic or contemporary fairy tale of your choice. Submit your assignment as a Word document to akerchy@gmail.com no later than 20 July 2024. Please use the subject heading “CL Summer School: Fairy Tales Disability.”

List of recommended readings

Bacchilega, Cristina. Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder. Wayne State UP, 2013.

Beaumont, Jeanne Marie and eds. The Poets' Grimm : 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales. Ashland, 2003, https://archive.org/details/poetsgrimm20thce0000unse

Davis, Lennard J. The Disability Studies Reader. Routledge, 2013.

Johnson, Merri Lisa and Robert McRuer. “Cripistemologies: Introduction.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8. 2 (2014): 127-147. 

Leduc, Amanda. Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space. Coach House Books, 2020. 

Schmiesing, Ann. Disability, Deformity and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Wayne State UP, 2014. 

Surlalunefairytales Website. www.surlalunefairytales.com

As fairytales are retold and then retold again like the broken telephone game, they change to reflect the “values, ideology, narrative modes that are culturally dominant” in the context in which they arise (Stephens 92-95). Fairytales also draw attention to themselves as constructs, objects outside of time, and bridges between fiction and reality, encouraging the child reader to consider questions about the relationship between the story and the world in which it is told (McCallum 397).

In this workshop, participants will explore contemporary Arabic picturebooks that retell fairytales, and consider some of their ideological underpinnings, as well as the ways in which these retellings attempt to resist or confirm neoliberal values, negotiate the traditional and the modern, and engage in utopian imagining. 

Cited

Mccallum, Robyn. “Metafictions and experimental work.” International companion encyclopaedia of children’s literature Ed. Peter Hunt. NY: Routledge, 1996: 397–409. 

Stephens, John. "Retelling Stories Across Time and Cultures." The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature. Ed. M. O. Grenby and Andrea Immel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010: 91-107. 

Required reading

Joosen, Vanessa. “An Intertextual Approach to Fairy- Tale Criticism and Fairy- Tale Retellings.” in Critical And Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairytale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings. Detroit, MI, Wayne State UP, 2011. Pages 9 to 48.

Preparatory task for all participants

Bring a physical copy of a retold fairytale picturebook from your country to share at the workshop.

Assignment for students taking credits

Select a retold fairytale or folktale of your choice, preferably from your own country and in your own language. You may use the picturebook that you brought to the workshop. Write a 500 word essay that (1) contextualizes the books in terms of author, audience, date, and publisher, (2) reflects on the choices made in retelling the tale. Consider drawing from Joosen’s text and the workshop discussion in your analysis.

Email your 500 word essay by the 14th of July 2023 as a pdf, making sure to include bibliographic information on the picturebook that you have selected to: ymotawy@aucegypt.edu.

This workshop treats Fairy Tale Forms and the Fear of the Other with a focus on witches and trolls in northern traditions. First we examine fairy tale forms from a structural perspective, using Propp's Morphology of the Folktale, and consider functions of dramatis personae, like donor and villain. We then consider the Russian witch Baba Yaga by examining the classic fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful” from this perspective and within scholarly perspectives from a brief selection from Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. We then consider the Scandinavian troll as framed by selections from Trolls: An Unnatural History and the article “Trolls!!! Folklore, Literature and ‘Othering’ in the Nordic Countries,” which inform a critical reading of Lagerlöf’s The Changeling. Finally, we consider how witch and troll appear in two chapters of Anna All Alone to see how fairy tale forms and the fear of the other appear in later literary works that draw from past traditions. Although witch and troll appear different, their structural functions here and in discourses around the other prove similar. To conclude it will raise questions about the othering of ethnic minorities of the north, such as the Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Europe whose home territory stretches across Scandinavian and Slavic regions.

Required reading list

Primary Sources

“Vasilisa the Beautiful.” Russian Folk Tales. Trans. Robert Chandler. Illus. Ivan Bilibin. New York: Random House, 1980, pp. 57-68.

Selma Lagerlöf. The Changeling. Trans. Susanna Stevens. Illus. Jeanette Winter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. 33 pp.

Martha Sandwall-Bergström. Anna All Alone. Trans. Joan Tate. London: Blackie, 1978. (focusing on Chapters 10-11, pp. 79-100)

Secondary Sources

Vladimir Propp. The Morphology of the Folktale. Trans. Laurence Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005, pp. 19-65, 79-83, 96-99. (optional)

Andreas Johns. “Introduction.” Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 1-7.

John Lindow. Trolls: An Unnatural History. London: Reaktion Books, 2014, pp. 14-21, 51-53, 95-103, 125-131. (optional)

Ann-Sofie Lönngren. “Trolls!! – Folklore, Literature and ‘Othering’ in the Nordic Countries” Rethinking National Literatures and the Literary Canon in Scandinavia. Eds. A. Lönngren, D. Heede, A. Heith and H. Grönstrand. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 205-210, 219-226.

Preparatory task for all participants

All required readings will be provided. Read the assigned primary sources: a classic Russian fairy tale with a witch, a Swedish literary fairy tale with trolls, and at least Chapters 10 and 11 from the Swedish children’s novel Anna All Alone by Martha Sandwall-Bergström. Then read selections from Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale to grasp the main ideas, review background on witches and trolls by Andreas Johns and John Lindow (optional), and read selections from Ann-Sofie Lönngren’s article on trolls and othering. Think about how witches and trolls or similar types from your own traditions figure in literature and consider the role they play.

Assignment for students taking ECTS credits

In an essay of 400-600 words, consider the use of traditional folk and fairy tale elements or structures or deviations from these in one of these featured texts or another literary work for children from another tradition. Alternatively, you might examine comparisons to witch and/or troll and manifestations of the fear of the other in one of these or another literary work for children from another tradition. Submit the essay to saraweld@ucsb.edu by July 15, 2024.

It is obvious that an analysis of "Little Red Riding Hood" arrives at different results depending on whether a gender-, spatial-theoretical or discourse-analytical approach is chosen. In this workshop, we will explore the question of how methodological approaches can be combined to encourage a re-evaluation of supposedly familiar fairy tale motifs. Apart from a transdisciplinary approach, a further objective of this workshop is that we will focus on disciplines and methods that have so far rarely been used for the analysis of fairy tales, such as those of material and disability studies as well as fashion philosophy. After discussing some aspects of these innovative approaches, we will work in small groups in order to analyze various fairy tale motifs, for example the mirror, evil, the depiction of disabled characters as well as the narrated and visualized clothing. We will then collate the results and discuss a sensible combination of these approaches in order to ensure new perspectives on supposedly familiar fairy tale motifs as well as fairy tale analysis.

Multimodal narratives featuring references to fairy tales and folk tales are usually associated with the youngest - that is, presumably inexperienced and innocent - readers. On the other hand, the number of picturebooks and graphic novels about wars and genocides published in various languages continues to increase. After all, as Kenneth Kidd notes, “the picturebook offers the most dramatic testimony to trauma, precisely because the genre is usually presumed innocent” (196). This workshop aims to study selected examples of picturebooks and graphic novels devoted to genocide, in which textual and/or visual fairy tale elements are used not only to “spare the child” (Bosmajian) but also to demonstrate the transcultural and intergenerational links between the texts and the implied readers. The participants will be asked to read Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and Michael Martchenko’s picturebook Enough (2000), an article by Anastasia Ulanowicz (2017) offering its analysis, and Five Stalks of Grain (2022), a recent graphic novel by Adrian Lysenko and Ivanka Theodosia Galadza. During the workshop, the participants will be encouraged to discuss other possible uses of the fairy tale in texts for young people, using examples from their cultures.

Required reading list

Primary sources:   

Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk and Michael Martchenko. Enough. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2000. (picturebook)
Lysenko, Adrian and Ivanka Theodosia Galadza. Five Stalks of Grain. University of Calgary Press, 2022. (graphic novel)

Secondary sources:
Ulanowicz, Anastasia. “‘We are the People’: The Holodomor and North American-Ukrainian Diasporic Memory in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s Enough.” Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia 7, 2017, pp. 49-71 DOI: https://doi.org/10.19195/2353-8546.2(7).4

Works cited:
Kidd, Kenneth B. Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature, Kenneth B. Kidd, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Preparatory task for all participants

Read the assigned article, picturebook, and graphic novel. Find one fairy tale (or a fairy tale element) which has been featured in a children’s/YA book you know. Think about its role.

Assignment for students taking credits

Write a short response paper explaining how a fairy tale from your own culture may add additional meaning/change the meaning of a children’s/YA book of your choice. Submit the paper to mateusz.swietlicki@uwr.edu.pl by July 15. 

In their work on retellings in children’s literature, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum argue that ‘Under the guise of offering children access to strange and exciting worlds removed from everyday experiences, [retold stories] serve to initiate children into aspects of social heritage, transmitting many of a culture’s central values and assumptions and a body of shared allusions and experiences’ (p.3). What role, then, do these retellings play in reinforcing or problematising ‘values’ surrounding genders and sexualities? Who has the power to retell these tales – and how and why? And how might issues of language, race, and colonialism impact on these processes of retelling?

Through an examination of selected Hawaiian tales, this workshop will explore the complexities of representing gender and sexualities in retellings for children, past and present. Participants are asked to read Padraic Colum’s ‘The Princess of Pali-uli’ (1925), Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu et al.’s Kapaemahu (2022), as well as an extract from Stephens and McCallum’s Retelling Stories, Framing Culture (1998). Participants are also encouraged to bring examples from their own reading.

Required reading list

Primary sources

Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson; illus by Daniel Sousa, Kapaemahu (New York: Penguin Random House, 2022)

Padraic Colum, ‘The Princess of Pali-uli’ in The Bright Islands: Tales and Legends of Hawaii (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925) 

Secondary sources 

John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, Chapter 1 in Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature (London and New York: Garland Publishing, 1998)

Preparatory task for all participants

Read ‘The Princess of Pali-uli’, Kapaemahu, and Chapter 1 from Retelling Stories, Framing Culture. Drawing on your own knowledge and reading experience, identify one contemporary retelling (myth, legend, folktale, or fairytale) that you think deals with gender and sexualities in an interesting way. Come prepared to share your thoughts on this retelling during the workshop.

Assignment for students taking credits

Write a short essay (approx. 500 words) on the representation of gender and sexualities in a retelling of your choice. Submit the essay to whytepa@tcd.ie no later than noon on 15^th July 2024.