From wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and goblins
to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and mirrors, the
characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and
audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These fantastic
stories have travelled across cultural borders and been passed on from
generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling.
Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle
our imagination than a fairy tale.
But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean?
What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and
society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and
time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth and their
inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural,
imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism.
Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over a long writing life and in
Once Upon a Time, she explores a multitude of tales through the ages,
their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen.
From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to
contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of
examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The
Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans
Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including
Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's
Labyrinth.
In 10 succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich hoard of fairy
tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations in order to define a
genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and
history. Her book makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial
repository of human understanding and culture.
