Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale Hardcover – December 15, 2014

A fine addition to the corpus of fairy tale scholarship, and I recommend it, especially to those who are just embarking on this academic and intellectual adventure--and to those who just like fairy tales. I am reading as someone who belongs to both groups, and a third, one of those who is exploring the fairy tale through retellings.The chapter titles almost do the job of discussing the book's value and purpose and intended audiences: The Worlds of Faery: Far Away and Down Below; With a Touch of Her Wand: Magic & Metamorphosis; Voices on the Page: Tales, Tellers, & Translators; Potato Soup: True Stories/Real LIife ...you get the idea.A few sample passages from this book written by an award-winning scholar of fairy tales and mythology (including the superb From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers, 1994) would also do the job:".... the Ocean of Story ... encircles the earth since recorded time... We swim, float, or navigate this fluid and marvelous body of water as a matter of course; mass media television, game shows, video games, and every kind of popular entertainment trawl it daily to bring up plots and characters, animals and motifs" (xx)."... the historical reality that can be excavated from fairy tales does not carry the memory of extreme horrors, specific tragedies, or individuals, but rather dramatizes ordinary circumstances, daily sufferings, needs, desires-and dangers especially of dying young" (91)."This is the way fairy tales should be: like the splinter from the spindle, they can enter you and remain for a hundred years of dreams" (112)."Fairy tales are stories that try to find the truth adn give us glimpes of greater things--this is the principle that underlies their growing presence in writing, art, cinema, dance, song" (178).I could go on.Recommended. Excellent list of titles for further reading.

Compact and concise, ONCE UPON A TIME is a literate and knowledgeable overview of the fairy tale, broadly construed. Author Marina Warner is a renowned scholar of mythology and fairy tales with numerous other books in the field. Here, she synthesizes and condenses her scholarship in a lively book of less than two hundred pages.Much of the first part of the book is devoted to matters of definition. What are the defining characteristics of a fairy tale? In exploring this, Warner discusses the brotherhood with folk tales and the kinship with fantasy. She suggests that the German term "Wundermärchen" ("wonder tale") better captures the quality of the genre than does "fairy tale" or "folk tale", as it "recognizes the ubiquity of magic in the stories." Later in the book, she also discusses more recent variations such as the literature of magical realism. She notes that for many fairy tales there are multiple variations, and goes on to address briefly why that is so: is it because they all are products of a collective unconscious or, instead, because they are local, individualized renditions of tales that have, over time, travelled from place to place and generation to generation? (Warner tends towards the latter view.)In her overview of the history of the fairy tale, Warner goes back to the "Arabian Nights" and "faerie" elements in Shakespeare's plays, such as Queen Mab and Puck. Due attention is given to the major figures primarily responsible for outlining the traditional fairy tale in the western world, people like Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, Charles Perrault ("Mother Goose"), and the Brothers Grimm. Towards the end of the book, Warner discusses how in recent years fairy tales have matured, going from "children's literature" to more adult fare and expanding in content, settings, and themes. Two writers who receive a fair amount of attention -- "the two greatest contemporary masters of the rational mode of fairy tale" -- are Italo Calvino and Angela Carter. The penultimate chapter deals with fairy tales "on the stage and screen."The way I have outlined the book might give the impression that it is more academic or pedantic than it actually is. Warner imparts her erudition lightly and gracefully. The book is quite well-written, with flowing prose. That ONCE UPON A TIME is aimed at a lay audience is indicated by the fact that there are no footnotes, although sources are identified in a twelve-page "Further Reading" section at the end of the book. I doubt that there is a more comprehensive, informative, and readable book on fairy tales that is less than two hundred pages (even, probably, three or four hundred).

I absolutely loved this book, and I'm sure I will revisit it time and again. Warner takes you on a delightfully insightful walk through all things fairy tale. Her voice is warm and engaging, educating yet never boring. Read this enchanting book now, it will lead you to a more happily-ever-after, at least when it comes to understanding fairy tales :)Seriously, if you're on the fence, don't be - this book is a winner!

Good overview of relevance of traditional storytelling, but a bit more specificity in references would have enriched this work.

I saw this title on a list of best books of the year. I love fairytales and have long been curious about how they came to be. Ms Warner has a very thoroughly researched book and, once you get past the first, very dense chapter, it is a delightful read.

An engaging, fun introduction to fairy tales, with a heavy (deserved) nod toward Angela Carter; I am considering adopting it for a seminar.

This reads quickly and gives a good grounding in the difference between fairy tales and other story forms, the development (for Russian/Western European sources, generally) of the oral tales into literature and in parallel forms, and suggestions for further reading. I enjoyed the lack of jargon and the clear prose.