Review by Choice Review
Scholars, teachers, and students of fairy tales have been waiting for this terrific book--a veritable Baedeker to fairyland. A widely recognized expert on fairy tales, Warner (Birkbeck College, Univ. of London, UK) now presents a compact history delivered in fluid, bewitching prose. Readers will grasp fairy tales in all their sensuous depth and profound pleasure, due to both the form and the content of Warner's narrative. She opens with a prologue defining six characteristics of fairy tales. The nine chapters that follow introduce key themes (such as metamorphosis, doubles, cannibalism, magic, the woods, talking animals, powerful/evil women) and provide a history of the main tellers of tales (Perrault, the Italians Straparola and Basile, the Grimms, Lang, et al.). Warner also touches on fairy tale films, psychoanalytic and feminist approaches, intertextuality, illustrators, and real-life precursors to characters such as Bluebeard. Each overarching comment on the tropes of fairy tales is followed by multiple examples, demonstrating Warner's encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. Woven into her prose are quotations from Walter Benjamin, J. R. R. Tolkien, Angela Carter, Jorge Luis Borges, C. S. Lewis, and many others. All of this in 180 pages! The 16 illustrations, which are reproduced in (often muddy) black and white, are the only disappointment with the volume. Summing Up: Essential. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Elizabeth R. Baer, Gustavus Adolphus College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
IN HER NEW and vigorous book on fairy tales, "Once Upon a Time," the scholar Marina Warner explains a crucial stage of story pollination. Discussing early versions of "Puss in Boots" and "Rapunzel," written by the Italians Straparola and Basile, she notes, "It's no accident that these two authors created their story cycles in great seaports, where cultures, languages and ideas - and above all travelers - met one another." This is the challenge and excitement of writing anything comprehensive about such stories: More than any other genre, fairy tales travel and transform - they are rewritten, remade, recollected and retold. Warner has been studying them for decades, across continents and millenniums, and she tracks their evolution with relish. The chapters are well organized, covering historical documentation, feminism, psychoanalysis, the impact of illustration, film, and more, though at times the subheadings feel arbitrary or narrow, unable to contain the roaming feel of Warner's prose. A writer who describes how stories "migrate on soft feet, for borders are invisible to them, no matter how ferociously they are policed by cultural purists" has some of that same quality herself, and besides the wealth of information here, the strongest readerly pleasures are her associations with and riffs on the many, many things fairy tales touch. Readers who love magic realism will delight in Warner's fruitful discussion of Freud's concept of the uncanny - "the way reality is transfigured into weirdness" - and how it relates to Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." She celebrates Angela Carter, nods warmly at Italo Calvino and Anne Sexton, gestures to Auden and Tolkien, Borges, Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, who was supposed to have been a remarkable performer of his stories, using paper cutouts he made himself. She reminds us of the enduring popularity of fairy tales - the Grimm brothers' collection is the most translated book after the Bible and the Quran, clocking in at 160 languages - and keeps her book relevant by tracing the influence of various tales on David Hockney's etchings from the '60s, Tori Amos's musical based on a George MacDonald story, the megahit movie "Frozen," and even "Fifty Shades of Grey," our Bluebeard tale du jour. "Once Upon a Time" is clearly an academic book, but it soars beyond its practical purpose and into the realm of pure delight, where it will find a grateful readership in the general public. Warner is as fine a teacher as could be on the subject, one who has written a lavishly learned book so elfin in size it can slip into a pocket. Fairy tales deserve such a champion. In 2010, the writers Maria Tatar and Kate Bernheimer wrote letters to the National Book Award board protesting the rule that collections and retellings of fairy tales were not eligible for the prize. Happily, they won that battle, and their advocacy and Warner's book are important additions to our growing understanding of the value of these stories. Fairy tales 'migrate on soft feet, for borders are invisible to them.' AIMEE BENDER'S most recent book is a collection of stories, "The Color Master."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 25, 2015]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
If you're looking for a brief yet thorough overview of the history of fairy tales, you've come to the right place. Rather than sticking to a strictly chronological history, Warner (Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights) offers a series of chapters focused on different themes associated with fairy tales. For example, "Voices on the Page: Tales, Tellers & Translators" examines the oral tradition, narrative speakers like Mother Goose, and the (sometimes radical) revisions of translators. "Childish Things: Pictures & Conversations" maps the evolution of fairy tale illustrations, while "On Stage & Screen: States of Illusion" highlights new methods of retelling fairy tales, from early-19th-century ballets to 20th- and 21st-century feature films. Warner argues that fairy tales "try to find the truth and give us glimpses of the greater things," not only conveying cultural values and providing clues to possible real-life events, but also allowing us to probe the psyches of previous generations. The thematic organization of chapters gives structure to Warner's arguments, but they feel out of order nevertheless, particularly because the first two chapters are the densest. As a result, the average reader may put the book down before getting to the good stuff. But anyone interested in reading about the history of tales they first encountered in childhood will be edified and entertained. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This enchanting history of fairy tales begins with their origins as stories used to transport readers or listeners to imaginative worlds without intellectual or spiritual authority. These early tales were inspired by ethnographic curiosity and religious confusion, leading to common motifs such as curses and prophecies and characters including ragamuffin orphans and penniless children, which Warner (fellow, All Souls Coll., Oxford Univ.; Stranger Magic) maintains were a reflection of societal anxiety. The author's extensive knowledge of the subject is evident as she analyzes the male-dominated world of early fairy-tale writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, and how female characters were often portrayed negatively (e.g., the wicked queen, the evil stepmother). Most interesting is her exploration of how the popularity of Charlotte Bronte and romanticism led to the rise of "novels of virtue" and a decline in esteem for fairy tales and the fantasy genre. Dark-hearted morality tales for adults evolved into lighthearted, illustrated tales (e.g., Alice in Wonderland) for children as the faculty of make-believe, Warner contends, became seen as a child's privilege. Later chapters evaluate the Disneyfication of tales including the "awkward heroine," as exemplified in Tangled and Frozen; and satisfactory endings, uncommon in original stories. VERDICT A thought-provoking work for fans of history, sociology, literature, and film. Warner's writing is free of theoretical jargon and will appeal to readers of all types. Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This literary and cultural history of our engagement with, mostly, European fairy tales may be short, but it is far from slight. Perhaps best known for her seminal From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), a feminist reading of several European fairy tales, Warner (Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, 2012, etc.) presents a thoughtful, discursive and often personal survey of how "fairy tale" has expressed itself over the centuries. She treats her subject as something of a literary force in itself rather than a collection of discrete stories, continuously emphasizing how deeply embedded it is in Western culture. Her exploration ranges far and wide in discerning its origins and influences, from the obviousthe Grimms, Charles Perrault, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, Hans Christian Andersen, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Disneyto the less so: the Celtic Mabinogion, Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Robert Bly and Hayao Miyazaki. Warner touches on commentators as well, discussing the ways such theoreticians as Vladimir Propp, Bruno Bettelheim and Jack Zipes have influenced how we understand fairy tale. This makes for an undeniably dense read, and it is not for beginners, as it presumes some familiarity and requires readers to navigate across centuries, forms and even media. (The maddening design asks readers to physically jump around the book to see illustrations referenced in the text. Readers must decide either to leave Warner's elegant prose and travel to the front of the book for a page number before finding the illustration itself or to do without.) Although the author's erudition is on display on every page, this is no starchy academic text; she frequently inserts her own trenchant opinions, as when she declares that Bettelheim "enrages me as he has done many other lovers of fairy tales," even though she "learned a huge amount from [him]." Both a beguiling appreciation of and a fascinating tour through faery, this offers riches aplenty for lovers of fantasy fiction, children's literature and the tales themselves. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
