“Careful the Spell You Cast”

Author(s):  
Ben Francis

WithInto the Woodswe enter an enchanted landscape that is beset, however, by lengthening shadows. The show, which starts as an ingenious retelling of some familiar children’s stories, darkens in tone as the characters face up to difficult decisions and sudden death. In this show Sondheim and Lapine do not just retell fairy tales; instead they examine why we tell stories and how they can be used to bring the listener to moral maturity, which means—and this is a recurring theme in Sondheim’s work—accepting the necessity of choice and learning not to rely on the world to provide you with a happy ending.

2021 ◽  
pp. 472-491
Author(s):  
Erik Camayd-Freixas

Point of view is a primary category of narrative, given that other elements such as characterization, description, language, worldview, structure, and genre, if they are to be convincing, need to be consistent with the adopted vantage point. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, where there is little direct dialogue, a polyvalent and multilayered diegesis, where an uncertain narrator recounts what different characters see, feel, and say, becomes a signature technique. According to Boris Uspensky, the “ideological point of view,” defined as the way of looking at the world conceptually, is not explicitly expressed, but found rather at the phraseological level of the narrative—marking a return to rhetorical criticism. “Many years later, before the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that remote afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” From the outset, the viewpoint is marked by extreme shifts in person, character, time, tenses, and space, mapping its polyphony. This polyvalent narrator shifts from character to character, while the phraseology evokes different genres of the marvelous (myth, legend, folk tales, children’s stories, fairy tales, chronicles, travelogues, and ethnographic accounts). This overlay supports the verisimilitude of magical realist narrative. Ultimately the authorial mask is revealed to be Melquiades, himself a protean figure, a gypsy, merchant, explorer, ethnographer, inspired in Don Quixote’s Cide Hamete Benengeli. The narrator’s worldview coincides with the characters, such that no one shows surprise before the supernatural. The ideology appears naive, provincial, rural, primitive, and akin to outsider art, while maintaining a sophisticated technique.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (192) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
Svitlana Fedotova ◽  

A fairy tale is the genre which is well represented in preschool education programmes as well as in the curriculum of general primary education. A fairy tale is an important means for developing children's verbal creativity and their logical thinking. A fairy tale stimulates children's imagination, prepares them for the future life in the real world, broadens their horizons, fosters not only moral and ethical values but also the right attitude to the world. Folk tales were not initially created for children. Adults displayed their own mythological ideas about the world, nature and a man by means of these encoded texts. Over time a fairy tale lost its meaning in the life of adults and was transferred to children becoming part of their everyday reading. A child admires a fairy tale, its fantasy, but does not understand everything. «The Cubes of V. Y. Propp» represent the means and the techniques that help the child to understand the structure of a tale, its content, morality and allegory. Y.Propp proved that a fairy tale is illustrative of the fact that there was a system of various taboos in the life of our ancestors. All these prohibitions gradually formed moral and ethical principles, legal rules and laws of human behavior in society. In the structure of a fairy tale, V. Y. Propp names several main elements, the so-called «The Cubes of V. Y. Propp», namely «absentation», «interdiction», «violation of the interdiction», «departure», «first function of the donor», «hero’s reaction», «receipt of a magical agent», «victory», «return», «happy ending». This structure of a fairy tale serves its magical or ritual function, which makes a fairy tale resemble such an archaic genre as an incantation. In a fairy tale like in an incantation, a magical ritual action and a magical verbal formula are intrinsically linked, and therefore in a fairy tale a taboo as well as a potential punishment are often depicted. Y.Propp's schemes clearly show the typical structure, «models of fairy tales», according to which their «building material» can be defined: fairy tales have sets of «cubes», i.e. typical plot elements, situations, taboos and symbolic actions. And this is also the basis for the differentiation of the works of this folklore genre: some fairy texts have the whole set of «cubes», but there is also such a type of fairy tales in which some of the «cubes» are missing with a particular purpose. The article offers an analysis of fairy tales based on the structure of «V. Y. Propp's cubes». Such an analysis of fairy tales will help preschool and primary school students to understand the content of fairy tales, their morality and allegory. Creative tasks with «V. Y. Propp's cubes» will provide children with the clues to independent creativity, which may result in composing their own fairy tales.


Author(s):  
Jack Zipes

This book explores the legacy of the Brothers Grimm in Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. The book reveals how the Grimms came to play a pivotal and unusual role in the evolution of Western folklore and in the history of the most significant cultural genre in the world—the fairy tale. Folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm sought to discover and preserve a rich abundance of stories emanating from an oral tradition, and encouraged friends, colleagues, and strangers to gather and share these tales. As a result, hundreds of thousands of wonderful folk and fairy tales poured into books throughout Europe and have kept coming. The book looks at the transformation of the Grimms' tales into children's literature, the Americanization of the tales, the “Grimm” aspects of contemporary tales, and the tales' utopian impulses. It shows that the Grimms were not the first scholars to turn their attention to folk tales, but were vital in expanding readership and setting the high standards for folk-tale collecting that continue through the current era. The book concludes with a look at contemporary adaptations of the tales and raises questions about authenticity, target audience, and consumerism. The book examines the lasting universal influence of two brothers and their collected tales on today's storytelling world.


1985 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
Wilson I. B. Onuigbo ◽  
A. Vijayalakshmi Suseelan

ABSTRACT A case is described in which a 55-year-old Nigerian woman of the Igbo ethnic group died suddenly of a rupture of an atherosclerotic infrarenal aortic aneurysm. Necropsy revealed several features usually associated with this condition, but which occur very rarely in the African Negro. The report of its occurrence in this part of the world may facilitate further research in forensic epidemiology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-100
Author(s):  
Akmal Akhmatovich Jumayev ◽  

Background. The article focuses on specific similarities of the peoples of the world in their views on the crow. Also in myths, in German and Uzbek fairy tales, the portrayal of the crow in positive and negative images was analysed comparatively. All folk tales lead to good. The same lesson is also reflected in the article on the educational significance of the two folk tales. Methods. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the peoples of the world have certain similarities in their views on the crow. The image of the Crow also moved to fairy tales based on Legends. Results. In the fairy tale, it is not explained why the hero became a crow. It is known that in fairy tales the evolution of children to different birds (often owl or crow) is described either because of some side work of their father, or because of his own senselessness. Discussions. In German fairy tales Interesting is that in “Die sieben Raben“ “The seven ravens”, “Die Rabe“ ‘The raven” fairy tales, a crow is not just an ordinary bird, but a symbol of children. In Uzbek fairy tales, the image of birds is focused on fostering such positive personal qualities as industriousness, honesty and friendliness.


Author(s):  
James Gracey

This chapter looks into the heart of Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves as a story of sexual awakening, literal and figurative formation, and the empowerment of women. It discusses how The Company of Wolves carries a strong feminist message that is more than a singular concept, like the short stories from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. It also explains Carter's brand of feminism that represents one strand that was often at odds with those of other feminists at the time and even considered highly controversial. The chapter analyses how Carter sought to expose how women's sexuality is perceived as a myth instigated and perpetuated by moral and social conditioning. It discloses Carter's frequent visit to the world of fairy tales to critique culturally constructed notions relating to women, gender roles and femininity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Li Xiaoyi

This article first discusses the history and ideology of fairy tales. As Walter Benjamin said in his essay “The Storyteller”, rumors and information were spread verbally, from person to person. So were fairy tales. Through storytelling, the history and experience is spread from generation to generation. So that audience, especially children, gather to listen to the folks and stories about things “long long ago”, sharing the memories and experience of the storytellers. Based on this idea, the article further analyses the utopian function of fairy tales, which depict the feasibility of utopian alternatives by means of fantastic images. Because in the name of fairy tales, anything is possible. Apart from hope and wish, there was dissatisfaction in fairy tales. Ernst Bloch placed special emphasis on dissatisfaction as a condition which ignites the utopian drive, so that it remains a powerful cultural force among the audience, urges them to resist, to change the unreasonable things in the world. At last, it comes to the ethical use of fairy tales with children. Many scholars, like Bruno Bettelheim and Julius E. Heuscher, have done some psychiatric and psychological research on the meaning and usefulness of fairy tales. Different from those, this article mainly talks about the literary education in fairy tales, how the words, characters and plots play a role in education.


Literator ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dineke Van der Walt

This article presents a comparative reading of two folktales that are also characterised as children’s stories (one from Venda folklore and the other a popular European narrative) in order to explore a number of similarities between these stories. These similarities include the grotesque activity of eating human flesh, the way that overly trusting people are tricked by means of a masquerade and other ‘unethical’ and ‘immoral’ activities that occur in both narratives. In The Greedy Hippo (Hippopotamus throws his weight around), the monster for instance mimics the voice of a little boy in order to trick his sister and gain access to the children’s hut, whilst in Little Red Riding Hood the wolf tricks the grandmother in the same way to gain access to her house, in order to later trick Red Riding Hood. Furthermore, in both stories, the little girls (as well as the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood) are swallowed by vicious wild animals (either a hippopotamus or a wolf). As is often the case in fairy tales; however, the victims are saved or escape and live happily ever after. In this article, I argue that, although it seems absurd for children’s stories to deal with the grotesque, the presence of the grotesque actually serves an elevating purpose. I conclude that, because of the shock value of the grotesque, these stories not only intrigue children emotionally, but that the shocking quality of the grotesque also serves as a source of fascination for them. Therefore, the warning messages contained in the stories are more persuasively communicated and better remembered by the child audience.


Philosophy ◽  
1929 ◽  
Vol 4 (16) ◽  
pp. 442-452
Author(s):  
Morris Ginsberg

The sudden death of Professor Hobhouse on June 21, at the age of sixty-four years, at Alençon, Normandy, is a heavy loss to science and philosophy. He combined in a rare degree great powers of metaphysical speculation and synthesis with capacity for painstaking and detailed research in many fields of empirical science. He was one of the pioneers of comparative psychology; he developed a technique of the greatest value in the handling of the vast and chaotic data of anthropology; he laid the foundations of a scientific sociology; and he has attempted a synthesis of the results of his scientific and philosophical studies on a scale which must win for him a high place among the systematic thinkers of the world. As a teacher and a social leader he inspired love and reverence by the nobility of his thought and utterance, his passion for justice, his wise and tender humanity. Members of the Philosophical Institute have special cause to mourn his loss. When the Institute was founded in 1925, it was the unanimous wish of all connected with its foundation that Professor Hobhouse should be its chairman; and it has been a great piece of good fortune for the Institute to have had the benefit of his ripe wisdom and extensive experience during the first five years of its life.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document