Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale

by Marina Warner

Hardcover, 2014

Status

Available

Call number

398.209

Series

A Very Short Introduction (550)

Genres

Publication

Oxford University Press (2014), Edition: 1, 226 pages

Description

Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over her long writing career, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich collection of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. She makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member comixminx

Short, readable overview of the history of fairy tales and some of the cultural impacts they've had over time. Nothing greatly revelatory if you already read about fairy tales a fair bit, but plenty in it despite its short nature.

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LibraryThing member annmwilson09

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way changes my views or opinions of this book.

I love fairy tales, hence why I chose to read this book. The cover is absolutely beautiful and captured my attention immediately. However, the book was

unsuccessful in doing so. I was expecting a story, some sort of whimsical fairy tale, even a twisted tale would have been okay. Instead, this book breaks down every angle and reason behind what happens in fairy tales, and dissects them. I wasn’t looking for an informative book, instead, I was hoping for something to get lost in. Instead, I just felt lost.

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LibraryThing member JBarringer

This little book provides a pretty decent glimpse at the history of fairy tales, along with enough information to allow readers to delve further into this subject. The writing style is very academic, and might be a bit slow-going for readers unused to reading college level academia oriented stuff,

but it's still definitely enjoyable. I found the organization of the text within each chapter a bit muddled, which made the book a bit harder to follow at times. I also wished that the author had provided a brief summary of the basic fairy tales she references within the text or in boxes alongside the text where each story is first mentioned. I have read a lot of fairy tales, and the 1001 Arabian Nights collection, but there are still a few stories the author mentions in her text as if the reader ought to know them by name, that I don't recall just from their names.
Overall, though, this was a fun book, and anyone who like to read history and/or fairy tales would probably enjoy this book.

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LibraryThing member bragan

This may perhaps be more accurately described not as a history of fairy tale, but as a history of the ways in which people have thought about and related to fairy tales: as facets of a national identity, for instance, or as universal guides to human experience, or through the lens of psychoanalysis

or feminism. It definitely is short, though, at 180 pages. But it packs a lot into those 180 pages, giving the interestingly paradoxical sense of an author thinking very, very deeply about the subject even while barely having time to scratch the surface of it. It may, perhaps, be a little bit dense, but it's never dry, and it's full of sharp observations, interesting insights, and compelling food for thought about a genre of storytelling so familiar that it's easy to take it for granted, but that seems to contain infinite possibilities for adaptation, interpretation, and engagement.

Fascinating stuff, and the sort of book it seems like one could come back to repeatedly and find new substance in.

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LibraryThing member Ranjr

It was a good overview of the Fairy Tale and the genre/type up to the current day. It was an easy and short read, a very promising start to the A Very Short Introduction series.

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