The Fairy Tale Vanguard Conference Call for Papers

The Fairy Tale Vanguard

Conference Call for Papers

Ghent University, in collaboration with the University of Antwerp.

Saint Peter’s abbey, Ghent (Belgium), 20 – 22 August 2012.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Jack Zipes (University of Minnesota) – Ute Heidmann (University of Lausanne, European Institute of the University of Geneva) – Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai`i)

During the past decades, a lot has changed in the field of fairy tale studies: moving away from typological, structuralist and hermeneutically essentialist approaches, scholars today have again come to appreciate the specificity of individual fairy tale texts, the historical context in which they originated, and the many ways in which they have functioned. This general turn to history has brought about a variety of interesting new approaches, many of them focusing on questions of a social, political or ideological nature.

However, when it comes to the fairy tale’s functioning as a literary art form, i.e. as partaking in the dynamics of larger literary fields, research interests have been much more moderate. During the upcoming conference, we intend to re-examine the fairy tale in ways that will shed light on the genre’s position within the conservative and innovative forces that make up for the historical development of literatures. More specifically, we will take off from the idea that throughout its history, the fairy tale has provided authors with a space in which they could engage in literary experimentation and self-consciously reflect on contemporary trends in the literary field. As a result, it was often tied up with or even constituted literary vanguard impulses.

Examples of this are plenty, perhaps most obviously in postmodernist writings, but also in the Grimms’ careful construction of a national Natur/Volkspoesie, the exploration of mondain préciosité by the French salon writers, the Baroque textual games of Basile’s Pentamerone, etc. When we go back further into the genre’s prehistory, we encounter even more texts, both in “sacred” and vernacular languages, which display this same propensity for reflection and innovation.

We can at least partially explain this phenomenon by considering the general traits of the genre itself: as fantastic narrative par excellence, the fairy tale has tended to ostentatiously distance itself from more realistic modes of experience and representation. Though often engaged with very tangible historical realities, its general discourse is not so much characterized by faithful mimetic description as it is by creative fabulation – by the act of weaving language into unconventional textures.

The tale’s relatively short format only aids to heighten our awareness of its (sometimes intricate) architectural construction as a textual artifact – as Angela Carter once said: “The short story is not minimalist, it is rococo. I feel in absolute control. It is like writing chamber music rather than symphonies” (The Bloody Chamber, Vintage 2006, xix). It is exactly this kind of textual control which far exceeds the boundaries of more conventional mimesis that makes the fairy tale into a world of words, at least as much as of things. Not surprisingly then, authors have used this little world of words as a laboratory in which they could experiment with the art of literature, self-consciously explore its subjects, forms, aims and boundaries and comment on other literary forms and cultural debates (both in meaning and in form).

We welcome any proposals for papers regarding these ideas. Possible topics include:

• Theoretical and historical reflections on the literary discourse of the fairy tale genre
• The metaliterary use of fairy tales
• The programmatic paratextual framing of fairy tale collections
• Literary experimentation in fairy tales
• Fairy tales and the formation of national literatures
•The fairy tale’s response to and impact on developments within the larger literary field, e.g. its active participation in literary vanguards and movements, its shifting properties in globalized literature, its response to the introduction of new media

A three hundred word abstract and five line biography should be submitted to fairytale (a) ugent.be.

Abstract deadline: 1 March 2012

Notification of acceptance: April 2012

Organization:

Stijn Praet (°1986) is an FWO-funded doctoral researcher at Ghent University. He holds a BA in Latin and English, an MA in Comparative Modern Literature and a specialized MA in Literary Studies. He has recently published in Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment (Cambridge Scholars 2011) and is currently preparing his doctoral thesis on the Latin prehistory of the fairy tale genre. stijn.praet (a) ugent.be

Vanessa Joosen (°1977) is an FWO-funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. She is the author of Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales (Wayne State UP 2011) and has published in a.o. Marvels and Tales, The Greenwood Companion to Fairy Tales and Children’s Literature in Education. vanessa.joosen (a) ua.ac.be

More about Merrie Haskell's The Princess Curse

Yesterday's post for Merrie Haskell's The Princess Curse pushed live without the enhancing I had originally planned for it. I usually try to add some reviews or a little more commentary to the new book announcements. (Waving at Haskell who saw and commented on the post, too!)

So for your reading evaluation, the first few paragraphs are available for reading at Harper Teen. And Haskell's site has a page of review excerpts to read, too.

I do enjoy seeing how so many different authors interpret this once lesser known tale. I don't know if we can call it lesser known these days between Barbie and all of the recent books. Perhaps what fascinates me most is that this one wasn't used to inspire a classic ballet. Doesn't it seem just perfect for it, really?

   

Sharing a Review for Entwined by Heather Dixon

Entwined by Heather Dixon just got a stellar review from Bookshelves of Doom. Here's an excerpt:

Just when I thought I'd rather pull an Oedipus (the eyes, not the mom) than read yet another re-telling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", along came Heather Dixon's Entwined, which somehow managed to feel fresh and original and charming AS WELL AS adding humor and suspense to a story that we all know every in and out of WHILE STILL staying true to the original.

Seriously, I'm still not sure how she managed it. This book was pure enjoyment.

***

Awesome relationships and dynamics between just EVERYONE.

Have I used the word awesome yet?

If you dig the fairy tale books, be sure not to miss this one.

The review itself is much longer so click over to read it. So has anyone else read and loved this one yet?

The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell

The Princess Curseby Merrie Haskell is officially released today. I've lost count of how many Twelve Dancing Princesses themed novels we've seen in the past decade. This is one of the only ones aimed primarily at middle readers however. I really like the cover art on this one.

Book description from the publisher:

Twelve princesses suffer from a puzzling (if silly) curse, and anyone who ends it will win a reward. Reveka, a sharp-witted and irreverent apprentice herbalist, wants that reward. But her investigations lead to deeper mysteries and a daunting choice—will she break the curse at the peril of her own soul? Ages 10 and up.

StarCrossed and Liar's Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce

 

A special edition of StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce has been put up in the Kindle store with a bargain priced $2.99 preorder with a same day release as the sequel, Liar's Moon, on November 1st. So if you haven't read it yet, you can now wait and get it around the time of the sequel's release and read both since just about everyone who has read it has become a fan. But I encourage preordering since the price may fluctuate.

That said, the book is great enough to not wait for the bargain edition. It's really great and the early reviews for Liar's Moon are glowing, too. Just today this appeared on Kirkus: Hooked on the Thief Errant series
by Leila Roy:

Fans of Megan Whalen Turner, Robin McKinley, Kristin Cashore, Tamora Pierce, Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel books and/or Ellen Kushner’s Privilege of the Sword: Take note. Everyone else—especially those predisposed toward fantasy novels featuring political intrigue, strong world-building and rough-and-tumble female protagonists—take note as well.

Elizabeth C. Bunce’s Thief Errant series—which debuted last year with StarCrossed and which will continue this November with Liar’s Moon—is one that you should seek out. At first glance, the series is nothing like her first novel, the William C. Morris Award-winning A Curse as Dark as Gold, but upon further reflection (and a reread or two), similarities emerge.

The books aren’t at all similar in terms of plot or character, and Bunce certainly doesn’t write according to a recognizable formula*. Even within the Thief Errant series, there’s not a formula: StarCrossed and Liar’s Moon are different in plot, setting and pacing. In StarCrossed, we meet our intrepid heroine as she escapes from a robbery gone so horribly wrong that she’ll be executed if she’s caught. She spends the entire book as a fish-out-of-water, both in an unfamiliar place and pretending to be someone and something she very much is not. In Liar’s Moon, Digger is back on her own turf and among her own people...until she gets plucked off the street and chucked into a jail cell with the last person she’d have ever expected to see there.

And, for full disclosure, I've had this entry in draft form for a few weeks since I saw the preorder special and debated the post since this is one time I think waiting for the bargain is not worth the wait, but if it encourages you to order both and thus support Bunce's career--she's really lovely and used to hang around SurLaLune during her Curse Dark As Gold Days--that's a wonderful thing.

And really who doesn't love these books? I myself have Sherwood Smith's newest on preorder--Blood Spirits--to be delivered to my Kindle after midnight tonight. I expect my elliptical time to increase as I read it tomorrow.

   

YA Reading Thoughts and A Book: Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman

Sirenz by Charlotte Bennardo and Natalie Zaman (ebook link) was released this past June and caught my eye with its title, of course, after all my recent work with mermaids, sirens, etc. I could probably post about a different YA fantasy novel with mythology, folklore and fairy tale elements every day of the month. Well, the fairy tale ones get fast tracked onto this blog, but the other ones not so much unless they spark my interest. Should that change? I don't want this blog to be just about books--although they are my favorite thing--my primary purpose is to show how fairy tales and folklore appear in the world around us. But it seems that the books are most readers' favorite entries, so perhaps I will broaden the parameters. And, after all, Young People Are Reading More Than You. And I am all about that, too, so I enjoy being part of the push.

I'm not one to miss my earlier youth and I enjoy the age I have achieved, thank you very much, but sometimes I am wistful over the literature I missed reading as a teenager by being born earlier. I mean what I missed reading as a teen because it wasn't published yet. I can't complain because that meant some of the greats weren't overshadowed and they fed my soul during those years--I wouldn't give up reading Madeleine L'Engle or Robin McKinley over and over during those years again for anything. I also discovered the classics and devoured them more than I see the current avid teen readers doing these days because they have so many choices to distract them.

Oh well, enough rumblings. Back to the book. Sirenz is surely not soul-stirring but it sounds like fun that provokes a little thinking, too. The mythology usage sound intriguing so I thought I would share it here.

Book description from the publisher:

Bickering frenemies Meg and Shar are doing some serious damage at a midnight sample sale when the fashionistas find themselves arguing over a pair of shoes-with fatal consequences. One innocent bystander later, the girls are suddenly at the mercy of Hades, Lord of the Underworld himself. To make them atone for what they've done, Hades forces the teens to become special-assignment Sirens, luring to the Underworld an individual whose unholy contract is up.

Finding that delicate balance between their fashion addiction and their new part-time job in the eternal hellfire biz turns out to be harder than Meg and Shar expected, especially when an entire pantheon of Greek deities decides to get involved. Then there's the matter of the fine print in their own contracts...

Yes, there is the fashion hook to get the book started--I am rather weary of the high fashion schtick that chick lit's boom left us--but it seems to move away from that and use mythology in a quirky way, so more fun and perhaps inspiration to learn more about some various Greek gods.

Little Red Riding Hood Goes to BurgerBoy

I originally saw this months ago through What? Salma Hayek sold burgers on TV as 'Little Red Riding Hood'? Yep, it's true by Rafael Abreu and finally decided to share:

Could you imagine that the wife of French businessman François-Henri Pinault once dressed up as 'Little Red Riding Hood' in a television commercial for BurgerBoy hamburgers in the '80s?

And yes, we've got the video to prove it.

The Mexican girl from Veracruz, who today mixes with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood and is herself a big box office draw, was the star of her own show even long ago in an outfit that looked less like Little Red Riding Hood and more like Snow White, all while she and her grandmother rode to the burger joint while she sang: "I'm Little Red Riding Hood and I'm going to visit my grandmother; I'm going to invite her for a burger at BurgerBoy."

I'm not into the "Oh, look at how the celebrities embarrassed themselves when they were poor and hungry and desperate for work" stories, but this commercial was so random that I had to share. Little Red, Grandma and the Big Bad Wolf all headed to BurgerBoy?

And here it is: