One vivid description of folktale research, still applicable although more than a half century old, reads, “Folktale study is like a desert journey, where the only landmarks are the bleached bones of earlier theories.” Because theories have proven to be so ephemeral in comparison with the tales themselves , it might seem prudent to place more stock in the tales and less in the theories or at least to take an eclectic approach toward theorizing so as to hedge bets; but (...) not all scholars of folktales exercise more circumspection now than their predecessors did fifty years ago. For example, in Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook Alan Dundes — one of the most prominent American folklorists of our day — adduces no material dated from before 1697 that is related to the tale “Little Red Riding Hood” but manages nonetheless to question sharply the very notion of valuing early written evidence. By scrutinizing a short Latin poem written in the first quarter of the eleventh century, I hope to refute Dundes's dismissal of literary evidence and to underscore the pertinence of studying medieval literature in coming to grips with that beautiful and elusive phenomenon to which English-speakers give the name “fairy tale.”. (shrink)

Abstract:When major waterfalls in Norway became possible to develop around 1900, a major step was achieved. The step was a major international technological leap paralleled with changes of established attitudes towards grand, and until then, useless nature. Taking the until-then-useless waterfall Rjukanfossen in Telemark into use was a convergence of grand nature, large technological installations, big business and strong emotions. Transforming this waterfall was a large undertaking and was considered to deserve artistic treatment. In 1907–1908 the Norwegian illustrator and painter (...) Theodor Kittelsen produced a series of five watercolors of the waterfall's transformation. They were hung up at the industrial company's representational villa in Notodden. Within traditional landscape painting, water, and especially cascading water, was a standard element. However, Kittelsen's paintings introduced new versions of nature and nature use. This waterfall was totally transformed by being put into service as part of a Norwegian fairy tale. Dragons, elves, and old men in the mountain appear in the waterfall as part of the transformation. The story the paintings tell did not fit well into the context of Norwegian national romanticism, where the Telemark region throughout the 1800s had been associated with “the nation's inner spirit.” The article will trace the production of these paintings, and the subjects depicted in them. It will analyse the nature versions the meeting between the company manager and the artist entailed. How did these paintings use Norwegian fairy tale images to depict a new version of controlled nature? The paintings did not simply thematize mastery over nature or grief over the loss of a waterfall, but a whole range of emotions like ambivalence, insecurity, envy and pride. They both confirmed and challenged the iconic status of major waterfalls in Norway. (shrink)

This paper suggests that Collingwood's fairy tales writings can be read as a historical study on the origins of European religion. His interest in fairy tales belongs to a clear tradition, whose members include John Ruskin, Benedetto Croce and most importantly Giambattista Vico, that realised the potential of fairy tales as evidence for historical knowledge. In this context fairy tales should be understood as myths that are not symbols but truthful, poetically expressed, narrations of the lives (...) and societies of past people. Furthermore the connection of certain of those myths with religion was also recognised as an important element. Collingwood in his fairy tales study extends and clarifies this line of inquiry. He interprets certain themes of fairy tales as myths, suggesting that the origins of European religion and society can be detected in the totemistic beliefs of the pre-Neolithic people. (shrink)

In a new reading of Tacitus's account of the quarrel between Helvidius Priscus and Eprius Marcellus at Hist. 4.6.3–4.10.1, I show that the historian stages a confrontation between panegyrical and Realpolitik rhetoric about the Principate. Helvidius uses the consensus-rhetoric of panegyric to propose that the senate claim the freedom they theoretically possess in the regime of a civilis princeps. Eprius describes the autocratic “reality” of the Principate in terms of contingency, necessity, and power. Helvidius's panegyrical fantasy runs up against practical (...) limits, but Eprius's hardheaded truisms prove equally problematic for senatorial oratory. The failures of both speeches comment on the necessity of a consciously fictive “public transcript” such as Pliny's Panegyric while pointing to historiography as the proper place for Realpolitik truths. The debate sheds new light on Tacitus's praise of Trajan and Nerva at the beginning of the Histories as a locus for collective senatorial self-fashioning. (shrink)

Where do a child’s morals come from? Interactions with other human beings provide arguably the primary contexts for moral development: family, friends, teachers and other people. It is the artistic products of human activity that this essay considers: literature, film, art, music. Specifically, I will consider some philosophical issues concerning the influence of folk and fairy tales on moral development. I will discuss issues of representation and reduction: in particular, how far should stories for children elide the complexities inherent (...) to many folk and fairy tales? Drawing on a distinction between a problematic reductionism and an appropriate pedagogical reduction, I suggest that pedagogical issues of representation require us to think about how to represent complexity in ways that are reductive without being reductionist, that can delight and engage without being horrifying or tedious. While there is a place for horror and for boredom, it is primarily a matter of timing... (shrink)

This is an extract2 from “Une défaite,” an unfinished novel which, according to Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre wrote in 1927. Apparently, Sartre was inspired by Charles Andler 's biography of Nietzsche and the triangular relationship of Nietzsche, Wagner and Cosima Wagner. The latter, Franz Liszt's daughter, was initially married to Hans von Bülow with whom she had two daughters, and then she married Wagner with whom she had two more daughters. Nietzsche admired her greatly. Sartre became fascinated by this ambiguous, (...) complex and conflictual triangle. Sartre also identified with Nietzsche and “the destiny of the solitary man.” The portagonist, Frédéric, who is one year older than Sartre, is also an ironic self-portrait of Sartre, while Cosima is a prototype for Anny in Nausea; both are modelled on Simone Jollivet. Cosima plays both mother and sister to Frédéric. The triangular relationship is often repeated in Sartre's affective existence. The fairy tale is the best written chapter in the novel. (shrink)

У статті здійснено міждисциплінарне дослідження феномену казки та охарактеризовано особливості проведення казкотерапії. Проаналізовано основні класифікації казок, які зустрічаються у арт-терапії. Зокрема, види казок за світоглядним типом: міфологічна, релігійна, наукова, філософська та види казок, за якими здійснюється недирективна взаємодія із дитиною: художні, дидактичні, психотерапевтичні, психокорекційні, медитативні. Проаналізовано широку джерельну базу щодо підходів до виникнення та значення казки у житті людини, починаючи від поглядів давньогрецьких філософів. Досліджено досвід сучасних українських та закордонних теоретиків і практиків арт-терапії, що зосередили свою діяльність навколо актуальних проблем (...) казкотерапевтичних методів роботи. Під терміном казкотерапії розуміються засоби передачі психологічних знань про соціальне становлення особистості за допомогою метафоричних засобів (за Т. Д. Зінкевич-Євстигнєєвою). Визначено, що казкотерапія є одним із найдавніших психологічних та педагогічних методів роботи. Проаналізовано теоретико-методологічні основи казкотерапії, систематизовано найпоширеніші методи роботи з казкою, сформульовано вимоги та основні компоненти казкотерапевтичних занять. Визначено, що казкотерапія є універсальним методом роботи, який найбільш актуальний на заняттях із дітьми дошкільного віку та школярами, однак він може бути дієвим навіть у роботі з дорослими. Обґрунтовано, що казкотерапевтичні заняття найбільш вдало можна організувати під час навчально-виховного процесу у закладах позашкільної освіти, однак, потрібно чітко розуміти мету таких уроків та аудиторію, на яку вони розраховані. Визначено етапи арт-терапевтичних занять у закладах позашкільної освіти, проаналізовано найпоширеніші принципи підбору казок. Доведено, що ефективність організації навчального-виховного процесу на основі казкотерапії безпосередньо пов’язана із дотриманням певного алгоритму роботи, однак вимагає постійного моніторингу та гнучкості. Охарактеризовано правила створення та функціонування середовища для проведення арт-терапевтичних занять. (shrink)

Virtual elements can be found not only in information and computer technologies but in such cultural phenomenon as fairy tale. "Virtual" as a philosophical concept has no any categorical and generally shared definition nowadays. The main properties of a virtual reality are geniture, actuality, autonomy and interactivity. In the fairy tale context we treat virtual as a transformed form, a feature of being artificial and created with the help of imagination, built-on a day-to-day existence, having self-entirety (...) and determinancy and crossing the reality. As a therapeutic implement the fairy tale allows a person to enter a virtual space and to perform a personal conversion which is transmitted from a fairy tale’s virtual world to a real world of a man consciousness. (shrink)

The article discusses the self-portrayal of the ‘Royal Dictatorship’ of Carol II of Romania and analyses four theories of monarchy produced or published under his regime. It shows that the Romanian ‘Royal Dictatorship’ relied on leitmotifs targeting the multiparty system, territorial revisionism, and the Iron Guard, but that it lacked a coherent official doctrine. The article argues that this void allowed for Romanian theorists of monarchy to draw divergent, Western or (pseudo-)autochthonous genealogies for the regime. To this effect, it examines (...) theories of monarchy by Mihail Fărcășanu, Paul Negulescu, Cezar Petrescu, and Theodor Vlădescu. (shrink)

This article discusses the English translations of twelve of Grimms’ fairy tales included in the hitherto forgotten edition published by Darton and Co. in 1851. The titles and tales are identified with their German originals, and the defects of the translation are examined. The German base text was one of the Grimm editions published between 1837 and 1850. Other items not by the Grimms in the edition are commented on. Identification of the tale entitled ‘Sycorine and Argilas’ is (...) unknown. The anonymous translator was inexperienced, without access to a reliable dictionary, and was, probably, female. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Resented Relations Back to Fichte Schopenhauer Hears and Reads Fichte A Fairy Tale A Fairy Tale in a Leaden Age From the Freedom of the Will to the Freedom of Non‐Willing Notes References.

Breaking new ground in Sarraute studies, John Phillips reads the novels and plays of Nathalie Sarraute in a hitherto largely neglected critical perspective. Through a detailed analysis of textual metaphors, he demonstrates that Sarraute's writing is informed and inspired by an intensely personal set of desires. Unlike previous criticism, which has stressed the formal aspects of the writing to the exclusion of the psychological, this study exploits contemporary psychoanalytic and feminist theory to expose an unconscious feminine dimension which the author (...) herself has never recognized. (shrink)

The scope of the book is to offer guidelines to doing philosophy with children and young people using some familiar fairy tales.

This paper sets in context the melodramatic conclusion to R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art (1938) and his exceptional praise of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). I suggest that the background to this conclusion, with its emphasis on the role of emotion in human agency, must embrace an extraordinary series of essays composed in the mid nineteen-thirties, and which until their publication in 2005 were known as the “folktale manuscripts.” Collingwood’s critique of anthropological method in these essays, (...) with his discussions of ritual, magic and the alleged madness of the so-called “savage mind,” feed into the anxieties about civilization’s condition felt through his reception of Eliot’s poetical diagnosis, and they are developed in Collingwood’s own compelling essay of 1936, “Mad Goes Mad.” The essay is Collingwood’s account of a disease of mind which Art, in the event, proved powerless to cure. (shrink)

Starting from the basic premises of Schank's notion of indexing in story telling and the representational approach of language, this paper investigates whether fairy tales create initial indexes for children, that may be re-indexed later in adult life, by reshaping their pre-existing experiences. More specifically, it focuses on the way fairy tales present several concepts already familiar to children, and whether this representation matches children’s pre-existing experiences. The data collected comes from several of Grimm Brothers' fairy tales (...) and consists of a corpus of 62839 word tokens. The fairy tales included were thematically related to general areas of everyday experience: femininity, blackness, whiteness, day, night, being young, ageing. The following semantically contradictory lexical pairs were examined in the expanded concordance, in relation to their collocations and semantic associations: old - young, woman - maiden, day - night, white - black. These were then compared with an adults’ and a children’s dictionary to check whether the collocations, semantic associations of the selected words as portrayed in the data, matched the societally accepted meanings found in dictionaries. The comparison indicated that, although the connotative meanings were included in the majority of denotative meanings that make up words' definitions in the adult dictionary examined, only five of them matched the connotative meanings of the words examined in the data. On the other hand, the way the above concepts/words were presented in the children’s dictionary, was very simple, probably reflecting children’s experiences. It seems, thus, that the concepts - at least some of them - presented in the fairy tales examined, do not “officially” relate to children's but to adults' experiences, functioning as an index that re-shapes children’s pre-existing concepts. (shrink)

Summary Fairy tales are widely used by teachers and parents in helping children to read. The Ladybird Well?Loved Tales series is particularly popular and widely available in schools and supermarkets. The paper argues that the stereotypical images of women put forward in these tales is one element in contributing to females? negative and stereotypical views of themselves and limited definitions of their identities and roles. It also argues that the consolation implicit in such tales need not necessarily be ?bought? (...) at such a price: the second part of the paper outlines images and motifs in alternative fairy tales. (shrink)

The presence of dual and ambivalent characters (good/ bad) has always constituted the aesthetic and educational content in children’s fairy tales. Since the Nineteenth century, fairy tales and children’s books have had as an essential reference increasingly complex images and illustrations with vivid colors. This, together with the narration, has allowed the flourishing of a genre of fairy tale noir, whose explicitly pedagogical content is grafted into the plots not always “to happy ending” of fairy (...) tales. The book by Heinrich Hoffmann, _Struwwelpeter_, and that by Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, _Der Sandmann_, which are at the heart of this essay, constituted a first, important example of this new kind of narrative. They have revealed, from a pedagogical-psychoanalytic perspective, the value of what Freud in a 1919 paper, _Das Unheimliche_, analyzed as a necessary manifestation of presence/absence (conscious and unconscious) in the phases of human growth. (shrink)

Although Disney films are sometimes denigrated as popular or “low” art forms, this article argues that they often engage deeply with, and thereby communicate, significant moral truths. The capitalistic enterprise of contemporary modern cinema demands that cinematic moral pedagogy be sublimated into non-partisan forms, often by substituting secular proxies for otherwise divine or spiritual components. By adapting Søren Kierkegaard’s tripartite existential anthropology of the self, I analyze the subjective experiences of the protagonists in three recent animated fairy tales—Disney’s Frozen, (...) Moana, and Tangled—to demonstrate how these princess movies bridge the imaginative gap between the mundane and the divine. (shrink)

In Denmark, teaching the famous fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen poses a challenge in primary education because cultural heritage status and oversimplified readings make it difficult to engage students in authentic readings. A strategy could be to use philosophical dialogues from the tradition of philosophy with children because this is a student-centred approach to teaching where students explore questions and ideas together, and where the teacher assumes the role not as authority, but as facilitator of the dialogue. This (...) kind of dialogic teaching has been encouraged as especially suitable for literary education where teachers aim to engage students in reading the literature with an open mind. However, this article presents a case study that gives reason for caution. It analyses materials for philosophical dialogues on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and concludes that despite the dialogic ideals, the teaching design caves in to the weight of the cultural and historical impact of Hans Christian Andersen and his work. (shrink)

If we approach the analysis of fairy tales from the point of view of revealing in them a metaphysical dimension of human intentions, then in their subjects one can identify several paradigms. The most important of these should include, in particular, the following: the combination of man with the deity ; the loss of God's person as a result of her violation of some conditions for coexistence with God; the search for the lost man of God and the rejoining (...) of him. These through-world ideological paradigms, embodied in specific themes, may be adjoined in the same tale, and may exist separately, encompassing all of its plot. All the above applies to Ukrainian fairy tales. (shrink)

The primary objective of this study was to propose a functional discrete mathematical model for analyzing folklore fairy tales. Within this model, characters are denoted as vertices, and explicit instances of communication – both verbal and non-verbal – within the text are depicted as edges. Upon examining a corpus of Eastern Slavic fairy tales in comparison to Chukchi fairy tales, unforeseen outcomes emerged. Notably, the constructed models seem to evade establishing certain connections between characters. Consequently, instances where (...) the interactions among fairy tale characters would result in a non-planar graph structure are notably absent. To put it differently, the models refrain from incorporating sub-graphs delineated by the Kuratowski theorem governing planar graphs, specifically the minimal non-planar graphs Κ5 and Κ3,3. Remarkably, even in more extensive texts featuring a larger cast of characters, connections that would yield a non-planar graph pattern are consistently avoided. This leads to the formulation of a hypothesis positing that traditional folk tales adhere to a “planar narrative” design – an identifiable narrative variant characterized by inherent limitations in complexity. This design, in turn, appears deeply entrenched within the societal framework of the cultures that produced these folk narratives. (shrink)

These forty-five short tales about workers’ lives, originally published in British socialist periodicals between 1884 and 1914, differ strikingly from the narrative that most contemporary labor and...

Paradox is a complex notion that has assumed a diverse range of forms within philosophy, and Søren Kierkegaard contributes one of the more interesting variations by employing a fairy tale to introduce what he identifies as the absolute paradox of the Incarnation. Despite this, more recent discussion on paradox has given little attention to Kierkegaard and has largely bracketed out any interaction with paradox that does not fit within the general analytic framework. In this paper, I evaluate the (...) different characterizations of paradox offered by Kierkegaard and representative thinkers in the analytic tradition. I argue that the non-bracketing of Kierkegaard’s fairy tale as a valid form of paradox discourse not only provides a fuller account of paradox but also offers a critique of the attempt to exclude any form of paradox from philosophical discussion that does not already conform to the restrictions of the analytic approach. (shrink)

Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a consolation for the sorrow of this world, but an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’ J. R. Tolkien.