ENG 351: Topics in Contemporary Literature: Fairy Tale Adaptations
Although fairy tales are often disregarded as merely for kids, the purview of unreality (as in “that’s just a fairy tale!”), fairy tales are about as real as it gets. They can be read as a map for life; they have warnings and suggestions for us in our journeys toward self-knowledge, in our relationships with strangers, friends, and family, and in our personal quests for fulfillment and joy. The current fairy tale boom (seen in TV shows like Grimm and Once Upon a Time; the musical Into the Woods; and countless novel adaptations and film reboots such as 2014's Maleficent and 2015’s Cinderella) is not only a product of Disney’s aggressive marketing, but also a product of our deeply-felt need for both meaning and ambiguity.
In this course (the syllabus for which can be found here), we discussed classic fairy tales such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk,” while also encountering Russian tales of Baba Yaga and the medieval incarnation of the dangerous fairy in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” We learned about: fairy and folk tale structure, specifically through the theories of such early morphologists as Propp, Aarne, and Thompson and the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell; common archetypes found in fairy and folk tales, such as “The Trickster” or “The Benefactor”; how fairy tales (both past and present) reflect cultural beliefs and anxieties about power, sex, family, and death; and how modern-day adaptations of fairy tales bend and reshape these tales for new genres, audiences, and rhetorical purposes.
Students created digital portfolios responding to one of four paper prompts (found here): a creative writing option; an analysis of a modern adaptation of a classic fairy tale; a comparison of cultural variants of classic fairy tales; or an analysis of a theme or element that connected different fairy tales.
In this course (the syllabus for which can be found here), we discussed classic fairy tales such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk,” while also encountering Russian tales of Baba Yaga and the medieval incarnation of the dangerous fairy in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” We learned about: fairy and folk tale structure, specifically through the theories of such early morphologists as Propp, Aarne, and Thompson and the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell; common archetypes found in fairy and folk tales, such as “The Trickster” or “The Benefactor”; how fairy tales (both past and present) reflect cultural beliefs and anxieties about power, sex, family, and death; and how modern-day adaptations of fairy tales bend and reshape these tales for new genres, audiences, and rhetorical purposes.
Students created digital portfolios responding to one of four paper prompts (found here): a creative writing option; an analysis of a modern adaptation of a classic fairy tale; a comparison of cultural variants of classic fairy tales; or an analysis of a theme or element that connected different fairy tales.