Professor
Carolyn Sigler
Office: H413
Office Hours: TR 2:00-4:00 and by appointment
Telephone and voicemail: 726-8640
E-mail: csigler@d.umn.edu
Required Texts
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Penguin)
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Penguin)
Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban (Dell)
Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted (Harper)
Robin McKinley, Beauty (Harper)
Anne Sexton, Transformations (Houghton
Mifflin)
Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton)
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose (Tor)
Jack Zipes, The Trials and Tribulations of
Little Red Riding Hood (Routledge)
Supplemental readings, picturebooks and films are on reserve at UMD Library
Course Purposes
* To examine the development and evolving nature of folk and fairytales
* To evaluate recent retellings of fairytales in a variety of formats
* To offer broad theoretical frameworks for the analysis of fairy tales.
This course examines how traditional folk and fairy tales such as "Cinderella," Sleeping Beauty " and "Beauty and the Beast" have become part of everyday culture, definers of who we are, shapers of our identities and our character. We will discuss the evolution of popular folk and fairy tales; the ways they are incorporated into mass culture; current retellings of these tales in a variety of formats, such as picture books, film and contemporary fairytales; their role in the socialization of the young, and their potential as a means to raise important questions about social and political issues such as race, class and gender.
REQUIREMENTS
When I figure final grades, I will consider all of your class work: attendance, contributions to class discussions, in-class writing assignments, longer writing assignments, midterm, and final exams. In determining final grades, each course requirement carries the following weight:
*Essay (20% of grade)
*Midterm Examination (15%)
*Final Examination (20%)
*Quizzes (15%)
*Group Presentation (10%)
*Attendance and Informed Class Participation (20%)
READING SYLLABUS
Tuesday |
Thursday |
| Cinderella:
Charles Perrault, "Cinderella";
Jacob and William Grimm, "Ashputtle" |
Jack Zipes,
"Setting Standards for Civilization
through Fairy Tales"; Bruno Bettelheim, "Cinderella"; Vladimir Propp, from Morphologyof the Folktale |
| Anne Thackeray
Ritchie, "Cinderella";
Ruth Bottigheimer, "Cinderella" |
trad. Native
American, "Turkey Girl";
trad. Native American, "Rough Face Girl"; trad. Chinese, "Yeh-Shen" |
| Louise Bernikow,
"Cinderella: Saturday Afternoon at the Movies"; Sara Maitland, "The Wicked
Stepmother's Tale";
Jane Yolen, "Knives" |
Disney, Cinderella
(1950);
Kay Stone, "Things Walt Disney Never Told Us" |
| Levine, Ella Enchanted | Little Red Riding Hood: Perrault, "The Little Red Riding Hood"; Grimm, "Little Red Cap" |
| James Thurber,
"The Little Girl and the Wolf"; Angela Carter,
"The Company of Wolves"; Wendy Wheeler, "Little Red" Zipes, "Framing Little Red Riding Hood"; |
Patricia McKissack,
"Flossie and the Fox"
(African American); M. Abrousset, "A South African Red Ridng-Hood" |
| Zipes, "Reviewing and Re-Framing Little Red Ridng Hood"; Anne Sharp, "Not So Little Red Riding Hood"; Sexton, "Red Riding Hood" | Zohar Shavit,
"The Concept of Childhood and
Children's Folktales: 'Little Red Riding Hood'"; Chiang Mi, "Goldflower and the Bear"; Gwen Straus, "The Waiting Wollf" |
| Sleeping Beauty:
Perrault, "The Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood"; Grimm, "Briar Rose"; Bettelheim, "The Sleeping Beauty" |
Ritchie, "The
Sleeping Beauty in the Wood";
Madonna Kolbenschlag, from Kiss SleepingBeauty Good-Bye |
| Jane Yolen, Briar Rose | Yolen, Briar Rose |
| Snow White: Grimm, "Snow White"; Sexton, "Snow White" | Disney, Snow White (1937) |
| Gwen Straus, "Confessions of a Witch," "The Seventh Dwarf" | Beauty and
the Beast: Marie de Beaumont,
"Beauty and the Beast"; trad. American, "Bearskin"; trad. Mexican "Bruja Milagra"; trad. Japanese, "Tsukino Waguma" |
| Clarissa Estès,
from Women Who RunWith the Wolves; trad. Native American,"The Girl
Who Loved Wild Horses";
trad. African, "The Snake Chief" |
Jean Cocteau, Beauty and the Beast (1946) |
| Robin McKinley, Beauty | McKinley, Beauty; Betsy Hearne, "The Survival of a Story" |
| Jane Yolen, "Sleeping Ugly"; Tanith Lee, "Beauty" | Carter, "The Tiger's Bride," "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" |
| Brontë, Jane Eyre | Brontë, Jane Eyre |
| Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban | Conclusions; Zipes, "Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale" |
