Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
By (Author) Maria Tatar
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
3rd January 1994
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Folklore studies / Study of myth (mythology)
Cultural studies
Child, developmental and lifespan psychology
Childrens and teenage literature studies: general
398.45
Physical Properties
Paperback
332
Width 197mm, Height 254mm
482g
Description
When fairy tales moved from workrooms, taverns, and the fireside into the nursery, they not only lost much of their irreverent, earthy humor but were also deprived of their contestatory stance to official culture. Children's literature, Maria Tatar maintains, has always been more intent on producing docile minds than playful bodies. From its inception, it has openly endorsed a productive discipline that condemns idleness and disobedience along with most forms of social resistance.
Reviews
Winner of the 1992 Book Prize in Literature, German Studies Association "As provocative and stimulating as her The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, this book should give a salutary shock to everyone who brings children and tales together, convincing them that "every interpretation is a rewriting' and encouraging them "to identify what is transmitted in the stories we tell children.'"--Library Journal
Author Bio
Maria Tatar is Professor of German Literature at Harvard University.
