Pedagogical models and methodologies for engaging with fairy tales in the classroom.
Teaching Fairy Tales edited by Nancy L. Canepa brings together scholars who have contributed to the field of fairy-tale studies since its origins. This collection offers information on materials, critical approaches and ideas, and pedagogical resources for the teaching of fairy tales in one comprehensive source that will further help bring fairy-tale studies into the academic mainstream.
The volume begins by posing some of the big questions that stand at the forefront of fairy-tale studies: How should we define the fairy tale? What is the "classic" fairy tale? Does it make sense to talk about a fairy-tale canon? The first chapter includes close readings of tales and their variants, in order to show how fairy tales aren't simple, moralizing, and/or static narratives. The second chapter focuses on essential moments and documents in fairy-tale history, investigating how we gain unique perspectives on cultural history through reading fairy tales. Contributors to chapter 3 argue that encouraging students to approach fairy tales critically, either through well-established lenses or newer ways of thinking, enables them to engage actively with material that can otherwise seem over-familiar. Chapter 4 makes a case for using fairy tales to help students learn a foreign language. Teaching Fairy Tales also includes authors' experiences of successful hands-on classroom activities with fairy tales, syllabi samples from a range of courses, and testimonies from storytellers that inspire students to reflect on the construction and transmission of narrative by becoming tale-tellers themselves.
Teaching Fairy Tales crosses disciplinary, historical, and national boundaries to consider the fairy-tale corpus integrally and from a variety of perspectives. Scholars from many different academic areas will use this volume to explore and implement new aspects of the field of fairy-tale studies in their teaching and research.
Nancy Canepa is associate professor of Italian at Dartmouth College. Her publications include From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale (Wayne State University Press, 1999), Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France (Wayne State University Press, 1997), and the translation of Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales (Wayne State University Press, 2007).
What People are Saying About This
Dan Ben-Amos of Folktales of the Jews
Not the first, but certainly one of the best volumes to usher the fairytale from in front of the hearth to the classroom, offering detailed, erudite, and highly informative studies of this transitional process. Its valuable essays would function well in courses of folklore, comparative and specific literatures departments as well as in schools of education.
Professor of English Literature, Kingston University, London - Andrew Teverson
As the popularity of folk and fairy tale studies blossoms around the globe, this collection of essays will prove invaluable to educators and students alike. Canepa and her contributors have provided a comprehensive account of the field, rich in ideas, informed by cutting edge scholarship, and bursting with inspiring illustrations of pedagogical practice. They have also provided a timely case for the importance of socially and historically rigorous approaches to traditional narratives in the contemporary classroom, and, by extension, in the contemporary world. Without doubt, this collection will inform my own future practice as a teacher. It will also help my students better understand the value to themselves and to society of a critical appreciation of the stories of the past and our modern mediations of them.
Co-Editor with Jill Terry Rudy of Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television (Wayne State University Press, 2014) - Pauline Greenhill
Combining theoretical and analytical depth with practical application, this book presents scholarship on teaching fairy tales mainly from American-based and American-trained academics, including established and emerging scholars. Many of the contributions are grounded in familiar material (Disney, the Grimms, Perrault), so the work is accessible for students and faculty not trained in fairy-tale studies, but there are enough unexpected stories and examples to keep specialists interested.
