Description
Professor Harries is very conversant with most of the pertinent literature for her topic, and she is an original thinker who is not afraid to question conventional assumptions about the development of the fairy tale. Her book will be useful to readers inside and outside the main field of scholarship. -- Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota A significant contribution to cultural studies in its splendid elaboration of the French fairy-tale tradition and in its effort to connect that tradition with works ranging from Christa Wolf's Patterns of Childhood to Anne Sexton's Transformations. Harries's work fills the gaps in our knowledge about the conteuses and seeks to understand why the stories that emerged from French literary salons failed to remain in the canon even as they established the generic conventions of literary fairy tales. -- Maria Tatar, Harvard University
About the Author
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".
Reviews
"In this elegant study the scholar Elizabeth Wanning Harries gives their due to the counteuses--the 17th century French ladies ... who entertained their salons with witty, sophisticated fantasies about imaginary princes and princesses... Harries suggests, with culture today fragmented into myriad products and market niches, fairy tales may be our only universal point of reference, the only cultural language we speak in common."--Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe "To read Harries's study is to have that all too rare experience of recognizing that this book needed to be written and is full of truths."--Choice "This is a highly readable work which engages with important questions in feminist literary criticism and fairy-tale research and offers a valuable and well-argued rereading of the history of the fairy tale."--Karen Seago, Marvels and Tales
Book Information
ISBN 9780691115672
Author Elizabeth Wanning Harries
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 340g