Buried Treasures
The Power of Political Fairy Tales
-
- $24.99
-
- $24.99
Publisher Description
Fascinating profiles of modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy tales
Jack Zipes has spent decades as a “scholarly scavenger,” discovering forgotten fairy tales in libraries, flea markets, used bookstores, and internet searches, and he has introduced countless readers to these remarkable works and their authors. In Buried Treasures, Zipes describes his special passion for uncovering political fairy tales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offers fascinating profiles of more than a dozen of their writers and illustrators, and shows why they deserve greater attention and appreciation.
These writers and artists used their remarkable talents to confront political oppression and economic exploitation by creating alternative, imaginative worlds that test the ethics and morals of the real world and expose hidden truths. Among the figures we meet here are Édouard Laboulaye, a jurist who wrote acute fairy tales about justice; Charles Godfrey Leland, a folklorist who found other worlds in tales of Native Americans, witches, and Roma; Kurt Schwitters, an artist who wrote satirical, antiauthoritarian stories; Mariette Lydis, a painter who depicted lost-and-found souls; Lisa Tetzner, who dramatized exploitation by elites; Felix Salten, who unveiled the real meaning of Bambi’s dangerous life in the forest; and Gianni Rodari, whose work showed just how political and insightful fantasy stories can be.
Demonstrating the uncanny power of political fairy tales, Buried Treasures also shows how their fictional realities not only enrich our understanding of the world but even give us tools to help us survive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This revealing study by Zipes (The Irresistible Fairy Tale), a professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, examines the subversive side of fairy tales. He details how 19th- and 20th-century writers and artists used the fairy tale form to critique prevailing norms and suggest better futures. Unpacking French jurist Édouard Laboulaye's 1868 "fairy-tale novel" The Poodle Prince, Zipes suggests that its narrative—which follows a prince who learns of the treachery of his advisers while under a curse that turns him into a dog—voices Laboulaye's discontent with the government of Napoleon III. Class critiques are a common through line, as in Hermynia Zur Mühlen's What Little Peter's Friends Tell Him (1921), where common household items come to life and speak of working-class hardship. In the most stimulating essay, Zipes describes how Disney's adaptation of Bambi scrubs clean the political subtext of Jewish journalist Felix Salten's original 1923 novel, which condemned how "powerless people are hunted and persecuted for sport." Zipes's careful attention to how fairy tales reflect the concerns of their time recovers their subversive potential, and biographical sketches of the authors show how they strived through their works to imagine brighter outcomes. This is a potent testament to the power of stories.
