Fairy tales past and present

Overview

What you will study

Fairy tales are fluid stories, reinvented by their different tellers in different eras. The Fairy tales past and present course offered by University of Cambridge will examine the history of the fairy tale, from its beginnings in oral traditions, through the collections of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, to modern incarnations. We will consider how we often use the term ‘fairy tale’ to suggest a simple, fanciful or romantic story and associate the famous tales of Cinderella or Red Riding Hood with charming children’s stories. However, many of the tales have a long history and their darker origins have been written over or forgotten.  

Our class text will be the Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales ed. by Maria Tatar, which groups together variations on some of the most famous tales. We will devote sessions to individual tales including Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard. Despite their seeming simplicity, fairy tales have invited and inspired rich analyses and critical interpretations and we will discuss various theories about fairy tale motifs, including psychoanalytic, structuralist and feminist approaches. The Norton Edition includes several modern rewritings of the tales so the course will also consider modern adaptations and rewritings of the Perrault and Grimm classics, supplemented by reference to the work of contemporary authors such as Helen Oyeyemi, whose work takes fairy tale themes and symbols out of the forest and relocates them in the modern world.