Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale (The Donald Haase Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)
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- Synopsis
- A transformative lens revealing the historical racial context that profoundly influenced European fairy tales. In stories retold for generations, wondrous worlds and magnificent characters have defined the genre of European fairy tales with little recognition of yet another defining aspect—racism and racialized thinking. Engaging four classic fairy-tale collections, author Kimberly J. Lau connects close readings of the tales to the cultural discourses, scholarly debates, and imperial geopolitics that established and perpetuated ideas about racial difference and white superiority. Within the tales of Giambattista Basile, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, the Grimms, and Andrew and Nora Lang, Lau teases apart and historicizes the racialized themes and ideologies embedded within fairy tales spanning the early seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. She contends that the European fairy tale is definitively marked, whether implicitly or explicitly, by whiteness, and given the genre's documented colonization of diverse narrative traditions over time, this specter of race is all the more haunting. This trailblazing work demonstrates the continuous evolution of racialized thinking that has informed the publication and dissemination of fairy tales. Here, Lau provides a new framework for understanding European fairy tales in the milieux in which they were created, bringing distant and ethereal worlds back to earth.
- Copyright:
- 2025
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9780814341353
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780814341346
- Publisher:
- Wayne State University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 12/10/24
- Copyrighted By:
- Wayne State University Press
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction, Language Arts
- Grade Levels:
- College Freshman, College Sophomore, College Junior, College Senior, Graduate Student, Undergraduate Student
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.