Marvels & Tales is a peer-reviewed journal that is international and multidisciplinary in orientation. The journal publishes scholarly work dealing with the fairy tale in any of its diverse manifestations and contexts. Marvels & Tales provides a central forum for fairy-tale studies by scholars of psychology, gender studies, children's literature, social and cultural history, anthropology, film studies, ethnic studies, art and music history, and others.
A tale of tales 2 21
Perhaps one of the best things about reading fairy tales today is that there are so many multicultural versions for children and adults to enjoy. Gone are the days when all the main characters looked virtually the same. Now children from all over the world can glimpse different cultures through these stories and see themselves reflected as well.
Reading fairy tales with a multicultural twist also allows parents and teachers to have richer conversations with children. You can talk about the similarities and differences between the stories as well as the different cultural references, main characters, settings, and plot. Below are 21 fairy tale retellings to explore with little readers in addition to the classics.
There is an ice skating competition coming up and Little Red Gliding Hood knows she can win, but she doesn't have a partner. Oh, slippery slush! Author Tara Lazar makes reference to several popular fairy tales in this book and mixes them all into this hilarious story on ice! A fun book to read aloud with the little ones.(Ages 2 - 5)
This is a "Cinderella"-inspired tale set amongst the Algonquin Indian tribes of North America. Instead of a fairy godmother to help, the Rough-Face Girl relies upon herself. A powerful retelling with a great message for young readers: beauty lies within.(Ages 4 - 8)
Follow the story of a little orphan girl from Greece. Young readers will enjoy the luminous and stunning watercolors and beautiful rhymes sprinkled throughout. The story is familiar to many children, so they should have no problem catching on to the differences between this version and the traditional tale.(Ages 4 - 8)
This beautifully illustrated and wonderfully written Creole folktale is full of expressive language that brings each scene to life. Little readers will venture to Louisiana in the American South and meet two sisters, cruel Rose and kind-hearted Blanche. Blanche's aunty gives her a chicken house full of talking eggs with treasures for good, obedient girls: silver and jewels, dresses, shoes, and even a splendid carriage.(Ages 4 - 8)
This is a cute, sassy, and modern Latinx-inspired retelling of the classic fairy tale in which a little girl (chica) saves her grandmother (abuelita) from a wolf. There are Spanish words peppered throughout along with a handy glossary of Spanish words included in the back. A fun rhyming book to read aloud with children!(Ages 5 - 8)
When Karolina, a living doll, is swept away from the Land of the Dolls by strange wind spirits, she ends up in Kraków, Poland with the Dollmaker. After getting over the initial shock of a doll talking to him, the Dollmaker learns to find happiness with the help of Karolina's compassion and courage. But that happiness is short lived. Combining fairy tales, folklore, and World War II history, this imaginative novel will keep tweens on their toes.(Ages 8 - 12)
This spin on "Snow White" reimagines the legend of The Evil Queen and sets it in East Asia. The stars say beautiful 18-year-old Xifeng is destined to be Empress of Feng Lu, but only if she taps into her dark side. This magical fairy tale retelling sees the young someday-Empress grapple with the promise she made to her cruel aunt, the witch Guma, and the price of deserting the young man who loves her in order to fulfill her destiny.(Young Adult)
A case of mistaken identity ensues when the lives of Elena, a young girl living in the impoverished Russian countryside, and Ekaterina, a girl from a noble family on her way to see the Tsar in Saint Petersburg, collide. An adventure including a prince in disguise and Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, make this story an imaginative fairy tale for teens.(Young Adult)
The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury)[2] is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.[3] It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Even the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Tales are not Chaucer's originals. The very oldest is probably MS Peniarth 392 D (called "Hengwrt"), written by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death. Another famous example is the Ellesmere Manuscript, a manuscript handwritten by one person with illustrations by several illustrators; the tales are put in an order that many later editors have followed for centuries.[7][8] The first version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton's 1476 edition. Only 10 copies of this edition are known to exist, including one held by the British Library and one held by the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Textual and manuscript clues have been adduced to support the two most popular modern methods of ordering the tales. Some scholarly editions divide the Tales into ten "Fragments". The tales that make up a Fragment are closely related and contain internal indications of their order of presentation, usually with one character speaking to and then stepping aside for another character. However, between Fragments, the connection is less obvious. Consequently, there are several possible orders; the one most frequently seen in modern editions follows the numbering of the Fragments (ultimately based on the Ellesmere order).[12] Victorians frequently used the nine "Groups", which was the order used by Walter William Skeat whose edition Chaucer: Complete Works was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, but this order is currently seldom followed.[12]
No other work prior to Chaucer's is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed portions, sometimes very large portions, of his stories from earlier stories, and that his work was influenced by the general state of the literary world in which he lived. Storytelling was the main entertainment in England at the time, and storytelling contests had been around for hundreds of years. In 14th-century England, the English Pui was a group with an appointed leader who would judge the songs of the group. The winner received a crown and, as with the winner of The Canterbury Tales, a free dinner. It was common for pilgrims on a pilgrimage to have a chosen "master of ceremonies" to guide them and organise the journey.[18] Harold Bloom suggests that the structure is mostly original, but inspired by the "pilgrim" figures of Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy.[19] New research suggests that the General Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants.[20]
The Canterbury Tales contains more parallels to the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, than any other work. Like the Tales, the Decameron features a frame tale in which several different narrators tell a series of stories. In the Decameron, the characters have fled to the countryside to escape the Black Death. It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the Tales. A quarter of the tales in The Canterbury Tales parallel a tale in the Decameron, although most of them have closer parallels in other stories. Some scholars thus find it unlikely that Chaucer had a copy of the work on hand, surmising instead that he may have merely read the Decameron at some point.[21] Chaucer may have read the Decameron during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.[citation needed] Chaucer used a wide variety of sources, but some, in particular, were used frequently over several tales, among them the Bible, Classical poetry by Ovid, and the works of contemporary Italian writers Petrarch and Dante. Chaucer was the first author to use the work of these last two.[citation needed] Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy appears in several tales, as do the works of John Gower, a friend of Chaucer's. Chaucer also seems to have borrowed from numerous religious encyclopaedias and liturgical writings, such as John Bromyard's Summa praedicantium, a preacher's handbook, and Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum.[22] Many scholars say there is a good possibility Chaucer met Petrarch or Boccaccio.[23][24][25][26][27]
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories built around a frame tale, a common and already long established genre in this period. Chaucer's Tales differs from most other story "collections" in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. Even in the Decameron, storytellers are encouraged to stick to the theme decided on for the day. The idea of a pilgrimage to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes was also unprecedented, though "the association of pilgrims and storytelling was a familiar one".[28] Introducing a competition among the tales encourages the reader to compare the tales in all their variety, and allows Chaucer to showcase the breadth of his skill in different genres and literary forms.[29] 2ff7e9595c
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