Trauma and Coping Activation of Patients and Curers: Learning from Humanities Mythology (Odysseus and the Minotaur) and Fairy Tales (the Beauty and the Beast), Suicides and Recovery Practice

Author(s):  
Maria Giulia Marini
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-190
Author(s):  
Anna Z. Atlas ◽  

The paper focuses on culture stereotypes embodied in fairy tales and the ways of their representation in twice-told tales. The awareness of pressure of stereotypes in culturally central texts led to their persistent revision by the 20th century women writers. In “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories”, Angela Carter appropriates some of Charles Perrault’s classical plots calling it a “demythologizing business”. The paper studies “social fictions” regarding women scrutinized in Carter’s reinterpretations of Beauty and the Beast plot. As their overall structure analysis testifies, critical approach to conventional culture’s concepts of gender predetermines the mode of narration - “stories about fairy stories” and female character perspective. These allow for the use of metacommentary that centres on economic issues concerning young women. Alongside with their fears, these issues are thematised by foregrounding recurrent motifs and law words. As the research shows, the major female character’s motivations that their flat prototypes lack are exposed; the 1st person narration also absent in the pretext permits the author to articulate criticism of “social fictions” underlying classical fairy tales through the female character’s mouthpiece in feminist terms. The introduction of a foil triggers the female character’s self-discovery and the multiple reinterpretations of the same plot shattering its ruthless changelessness provide new life scenarios for her.


Author(s):  
LAURA DAVIS

  The story of Beauty and her beast is truly a tale as old as time: a beautiful girl falls in love with a beast and her love transforms him into a prince. This project is framed by Joosen’s (2011) argument regarding fairy tale retellings disrupting Jauss and Benzinger’s (1970) claim that fairy tales and retellings align with the horizon of expectations. Using Kemmerer’s A Curse so Dark and Lonely (2019), a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, this essay tests Joosen’s (2011) theory to determine if the retelling remains true to or diverges from the original parent material. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jane Beal

In this essay, I suggest that fairy tales have particular value for students studying at the university level. Assigning fairy tales allows students to read familiar stories from their childhood and reconsider them from critical perspectives. When teaching a college course on fairy tales, my students and I utilize three essential frameworks for understanding fairy tales, focusing on the psycho-social development and sexual maturation of the human person, feminist critique and the need for gender equality in a patriarchal world, and audience reception and reader responses leading to emotional progress and even spiritual enlightenment. Students primarily familiar with Disney film versions of fairy tales enlarge their understanding of multiple versions of tales, both early modern and contemporary. They become familiar with classic fairy tale writers and collectors, such as Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, Andrew Lang, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, and J.K. Rowling as well as fairy tale scholars like Bruno Bettelheim, Maria Tartar, and Jack Zipes. Their study not only results in a firm grasp of the key aspects of story in general, but in the ability to see connections between the real-world problems of the 21st century – such as poverty, starvation, disease, inequality, child abuse, human trafficking, and abuses of political power, among others – and lessons learned from fairy tales. This essay analyzes “Beauty and the Beast” as a key example of the genre and identifies pedagogical strategies for teaching it.


2021 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Priyanka Banerjee ◽  
◽  
Rajni Singh ◽  

While heteronormativity remained at the core of the classic fairy tale, a queer subtext existed in the form of subtle symbolic codes. By reflecting the changing socio- cultural discourses about sexuality and gender in time, the representation of queer sexuality in fairy tales has also developed. This paper attempts a queer reading of the revisioning of Madame Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and the 2017 Disney version. This paper demonstrates how Emma Donoghue’s adaptation deconstructs the heteronormativity of Beaumont’s tale by dismantling the binaries of Beauty/Beast and man/woman and represents queer sexuality and desire through multi-layered language. This paper also examines how in the Disney version the story takes a new dimension in close proximity to twenty-first century media culture and lends itself to queer interpretation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-434
Author(s):  
Natalia V Shchurik ◽  
Vera E Gorshkova

The present paper examines intersemiotic translation of magic folk tales. Research objective is to show the structural identity of the surface structure which can be described as a sequence of plot elements (“functions”) of fairy-tale characters; in semiotic terms it is explained by the existence of a universal matrix defining the law of genre. The authors go on to the cognitive-culturological aspect of fairy tales in terms of N. Chomsky. This research paper has clearly shown that “functions” of the surface structures correspond to plans, scenarios and frames of the deep structures, which differ in British and Russian magic fairy folk tales (wonder folk tales). Numbers and proper names are the main permanent elements of fairy tale narrative: on the level of the surface structures they connect the universal matrix of a fairy tale discourse organizing space and rhythm and at the level of the deep structures - they help to understand the main features of the national character. The study is based on 13 fairy-tale film corpus, under the common theme “Beauty and the Beast”, film adaptations of the fairy tales “La Belle et la Bête” by J.-M. Leprens de Beaumont (1757) and “The Scarlet Flower” by S.T. Aksakov (1858). Hence, the analysis of the latter based on the works of R. Jacobson and W. Eco and understood by the authors as a kind of intersemiotic translation / interpretation that, on the one hand, proves universality of the proposed algorithm for studying fairy discourse in synchrony and diachrony. On the other hand, it plays the most important role in intersemiotic translation of diachronic aspect because it deals with changing the “integral model of reality”, which is reflected, in particular, in changing the on-screen presentation / interpretation of certain aspects of the fairy-tale narrative. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the conclusions can be used to study plurality of film adaptation as a form of intersemiotic translation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanika Nevatia

Animated fantasy films, also called fairy tales have ruled the hearts of children from the very beginning. Be it Cinderella, Snow White, Belle or Rapunzel every little girl, irrespective of her country of origin is familiar with all these characters among many more. When we talk about these characters or stories the first name to appear in our minds is Walt Disney. Walt Disney has from its inception presented children, especially girls with fairy tales attached with many dreams and aspiration. This research paper was an attempt at looking into the meanings that can be derived from the content of Walt Disney movies, with the analysis of one Disney Princess story, Beauty and the Beast.


Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Jeana Jorgensen

While classical fairy tales do not portray much depth of suffering, many contemporary fairy-tale retellings explore trauma and its aftermath in great detail. This article analyzes depictions of trauma in fairy tales, utilizing as a primary case study the “Beauty and the Beast” retelling A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, arguing that this text provides a scientifically accurate representation of trauma and its aftermath, thereby articulating the real in fairy tales. Further, this article classifies that work as not simply a “dark” fairy tale (a contentious term that invites rethinking) but rather as fairy-tale torture porn, in a nod to the horror genre that foregrounds torture, surveillance, and the disruption of bodily boundaries and safety. However, the text’s optimistic account of healing is uniquely relevant in a time of widespread trauma due to a global pandemic, thereby demonstrating that fairy tales remain germane in contemporary contexts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Anna Pasolini

This paper endeavours to carry out a corpus stylistic analysis of the discursive construction of female identity in some fairy tales collected in The bloody chamber and other stories by Angela Carter (1979) with a twofold purpose. More generally, it aims at providing a further example of the application of corpus linguistics methods to the analysis of a literary text. It also purports to emphasise that corpus stylistics can assist the examination of the poetics as well as the politics of a literary text. In particular, corpus linguistics methods will be shown to enable an analysis of the way in which the linguistic configuration of the text can be seen to map power relationships. This investigation addresses two main research questions stemming from corpus-based comparative enquiries, which analyse some keywords as triggers of ideological meanings: • if the fairy tale ‘The bloody chamber’ is computationally compared to what is deemed to be its main source, Pearrult’s ‘Blue beard’, is it possible to show that Carter succeeds in challenging and amending the gender politics underlying Perrault’s text through the use of language? • can the intuitive insight that Carter manages to criticise women’s compliance with patriarchy in their subordination, and to offer empowering alternatives through intertextual and intratextual references be proved with corpus linguistics methods? The first question will be tackled through the computational comparison between the tales ‘The bloody chamber and an English translation of ‘La barbe bleue’ by Charles Perrault; the second through the comparative analysis of the two versions of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ re-written by Carter and included in the same collection – ‘The courtship of Mr Lyon’ and ‘The tiger’s bride’. As regards methodology, three main techniques will be deployed: the study and comparison of the wordlists of the tales through some purposely-generated concordance lines, the analysis of collocations, and – to a lesser extent – that of keywords. The software used for the analyses is WordSmith Tools, which generates statistical data on a text or corpus through three main functions: wordlist, concord, and keywords. Even though it will not be possible to draw general conclusions about Carter’s style or about the ways in which the fairy tale as a genre changes thanks to her revolutionary manipulations (which will hopefully be the focus of future research), sample-examples will be offered of the ways in which a computer-assisted analysis could support, validate, and even enrich an intuitive one performed through the methodological and critical tools offered by cultural and literary studies. In both cases, indeed, intuitive insight will be proved through computer-generated textual evidence and new knowledge will hopefully be gained as well.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Barbara Kaczyńska

The article discusses the motivations of the monstrous metamorphosis in some Beauty and the Beast retellings, chiefly those by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (1740), Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1756), Alex Flinn (2007), and Małgorzata Musierowicz (1996). Other versions are mentioned as a broader context. The aim of the article is to observe a correlation between transmotivation and a retelling’s structure and message. While folk versions usually omit the motivation altogether, literary and film retellings often provide in-depth explanations of the transformation. In the 18th-century fairy tales, the metamorphosis is a villainy inflicted on an innocent victim, and Beauty has to see through the monstrous appearance in order to realize the true, internal beauty of the Beast. Retellings from the 20th and 21st centuries, on the other hand, often present the metamorphosis as a comeuppance for some emotional and moral fault. Physical deformity reflects spiritual monstrosity, and the Beast’s struggle with the latter helps him become free of the former. As a consequence, transmotivation implies a shift in the narrative from Beauty’s experience to the Beast’s internal change. This may be due to the didactic tradition of the fairy tale for children, in which the hero is tested and disciplined, as well as the influence of the modern novel, focused on individual characters’ psychology


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