![]() | Twice upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale Subjects: Fairy tales -- History and criticism; Fairy tales -- France -- History and criticism; Fairy tales -- England -- History and criticism; French fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Fairy tales, often said to be ''timeless'' and fundamentally ''oral,'' have a long written history. However, argues Elizabeth Wanning Harries in this provocative book, a vital part of this history has fallen by the wayside. The short, subtly didactic fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the Grimms have determined our notions about what fairy tales should be like. Harries argues that alongside these ''compact'' tales there exists another, ''complex'' tradition: tales written in France by the conteuses (storytelling women) in the 1690s and the late-twentieth-century tales by women writers that derive in part from this centuries-old tradition. Elizabeth Wanning Harries is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Smith College. She is the author of The Unfinished Manner: Essays on the Fragment in the Later Eighteenth Century . |
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