It’s not just the traditional ones, but variations thereof and whole new stories that are more foreign to a Western audience in their preoccupations (I was a bit puzzled by the mothers turning into lionnesses and dogs forming from their saliva, for example).

Other than acting as a concluding statement, can ‘It served the little b***h right, too’ – from the North American story ‘The Good Girl and the Ornery Girl’ – really be thought to be serving the same purpose as ‘Mulberry, mulberry/So ends my story. Y son absurdos, como suelen ser los cuentos, en el sentido de que a un personaje le dicen X y, por extraño que suene, el personaje se lo cree a pies juntillas. I think it's a stretch to imagine that trope is about teaching children to ask for help when the lesson that you shouldn't abuse your children, even if you are not their biological parent, is so much more obvious. A collection of folklore from around the world, tales of wise women, crafty witches and resourceful maidens… the woman-centric theme doesn��t intrude, just makes it a more cohesive collection than most fable anthologies. I not finished reading it yet but its a lovely book to dip into when you want to escape the world for a while before bed.A lot of them are a bit nursery rhyme-ish (especially true of the humorous ones, which often seem to get left out of other such collections), in so far as they tend to reach fairly neat endings that are often pretty close to "happily ever after," and their general logic is pretty . On the one hand it's a great book to read alongside other books as it is full of short stories so you can just pick it up and read a quick story and it won't disturb whatever else your reading. La apología de la violencia y del maltrato aquí es bestial, pero está tan normalizada y queda tan WTF que hasta te ríes. Una de las lástimas de este libro es que son tantas y tantas historias (no las he contado, pero habrá 300 o más), que no se pueden asimilar todas y la mayoría acaban siendo olvidadas.

But that still leaves a pretty huge selection, and you would think, for instance, that a curator might include a few examples of the Cinderella story and leave out the rest.

She plays no different role in the preservation of these stories than our great and great-great grandmothers played, who told these tales over bubbling pots or spinning yarns because they wanted others to be shocked or perturbed or tickled in the same way that they were. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003).

I could see the roots of Grimm’s Fairytales and Mother Goose in these stories, and there were several stories based around the Cinderella theme, Rumpelstiltskin and elements of Snow White.Thus while a story in Russian or Hungarian might be translated into English in a relatively plain contemporary style, any entry from an English-speaking ethnic group is presented in their dialect. This is probably a great read if you like this kind of thing but for me I won't be rushing to get anymore short stories I'm afraid. The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter. Every time I read one I get wistful for the day when we will have proper phylogenetic trees to give these stories context. No sé, le dicen que su casa está hechizada y que tiene que desollar a su gato y comerse la piel para desencantarla, y se lo cree.