Jack David Zipes

Jack Zipes begins this lively and provocative work by exploring the historical rise of the literary fairy tale as genre in the late seventeenth century. In his examinations of key classic fairy tales, Zipes traces their unique metamorphoses in history with stunning discoveries that reveal their ideological relationship to domination and oppression in Western society. The fairy tale received its most "mythic" formation and articulation in America. Consequently, Zipes shows how Walt Disney appropriated Snow White to express notions of American male individualism and how L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz has been interpreted in film and literature as a critique of American myths. Zipes also takes on Robert Bly's Iron John, a myth for the American men's movement created out of Bly's misunderstanding of folklore and traditional fairy tales.

A collection of fairy tales by Victorian writers, including Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Rudyard Kipling, with illustrations from the same period.

When is a wolf a wolf, and when is he a rapist? In the new, expanded edition of his controversial and groundbreaking work, Jack Zipes presents the many faces of Little Red Riding Hood. In tracing the evolution of the story, the author takes on those questions which other authors have shied away from; violation, rape, male fantasies and manipulation. This book collects 35 of the best versions of the story, from the first tellings as a folktale, to its written renderings by such authors as the Brothers Grimm, Walter De La Mare, James Thurber, Alphonse Daudet, Anne Sexton, Olga Broumas and Angela Carter, providing a detailed social history of the literary Red Riding Hood. Zipes uses these tales to explore questions of Western culture, sexism, and politics and in a new epilogue examines the illustrations used in past versions for their "take on the tale". A new preface and an expanded bibliography have also been included for the second edition. As with Jack Zipes' other works, The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood will cause the reader to question just how harmless our fairy tales are. Jack Zipes is Professor of German at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. He is the author of Breaking the Magic Spell, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion and Don't Bet on the Prince, all available from Routledge. He is the translator of the complete Grimm fairy tales.

"The fairy tale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on children's lives. But until Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion little attention had been paid to the ways in which the writers and collectors of tales used traditional forms and genres in order to shape children's lives -- their behavior, values, and relationship to society. As Jack Zipes convincingly shows, fairy tales have always been a powerful discourse, capable of being used to shape or destabilize attitudes and behavior within culture. For this new edition, the author has revised the work throughout and added a new introduction bringing this classic title up to date." Information from publisher.

"In seven provocative essays, Zipes discusses the importance of investigating oral folk tales in their socio-political context and traces their evolution into literary fairy tales, a metamorphosis that often diminished the ideology of the original narrative. Zipes also looks at how folk tales influence our popular beliefs and the ways they have been exploited by a corporate media network intent on regulating the mystical elements of the stories. He examines a range of authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Ernst Bloch, Tolkien, Bettelheim, and J.K. Rowling to demonstrate the continuing symbolic relationship between folklore and literature." -- book cover

A retelling for younger readers of tales told by Scheherazade to amuse the cruel sultan and stop him from executing her as he had his other daily wives.

"Whether it takes the form of physical violence or verbal or online harassment, bullying can have serious and lasting effects. In this book, teens write about these effects from the perspective of victim, bully and, in some cases, both. In their stories, victims of bullying show just how damaging this often-overlooked form of violence can be, and the steps they took to get help and feel better. And writers who have been the bullies reveal themselves in a way that will give readers a better understanding of this pattern of violence"--Page 4 of cover.

In his latest book, fairy tales expert Jack Zipes takes on the question of why some fairy tales "work" and others don't, why the fairy tale is uniquely capable of getting under the skin of culture and staying there. Why, in other words, fairy tales "stick." Long an advocate of the fairy tale as a serious genre with wide social and cultural ramifications, Jack Zipes here makes his strongest case for the idea of the fairy tale not just as a collection of stories for children but a profoundly important genre.Why Fairy Tales Stick introduces new critical approaches to the study of classical fairy tales such as "Cinderella," "Snow White, "Beauty and the Beast," and "Hansel and Gretel" in an effort to understand how and why fairy tales have evolved over the last three hundred years and remained so relevant in our lives. Why culture has favored certain fairy tales may not be simply a question of ideology-tales reinforcing a societal status quo-but also deeply related to issues of genetics,memetics, linguistics, and evolution. Just as we as a species have evolved, Zipes argues, so has the oral folk tale been transformed as literary fairy tale to assist us in surviving and adapting to our environment.