Barbara Karasek

I’m well past the time when I wanted to do anything remotely academic with folk and fairy tales, but somehow I can’t seem to give up collecting anthologies, editions, and the occasional academically-inclined volume. This book is definitely of the latter variety, and spends a decent amount of time discussing critical theory, but I still enjoyed temporarily delving back into this area of study. The majority of the volume is separated into chapters discussing a specific traditional tale or a prevalent trope within the genre, so it was easy to get caught up reading the groupings of stories as long as I took breaks between different iterations – though a certain amount of critical analysis couldn’t help but sneak in, since we would often be reading similarly-veined tales back to back. Concluding the volume there’s a decent selection of essays from academics in the field (some notably outdated, and others more recent to the time of publication), but after trying to read the first one I was reminded why I quit the world of academia a long time ago: the way these essays are written is enough to suck the joy out of any subject, no matter how passionate the author and reader are. Cut to me closing the pages on this volume pre-emptively, since we’re here for the tales, not for the academy!… (altro)