In Fairy Tale news…

Police have broken a child canniblism ring headed by the mysterious B.B. Wolf and a Ms Rapanzel formerly of Tower View  road has been indicted on several charges of smuggling low cost hair extensions.

Meanwhile Fablecroft Publications are on the cusp of releasing To Spin A Darker Stair.  They are running a giveaway on Goodreads:

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

To Spin a Darker Stair
by Tehani Wessely

Giveaway ends March 31, 2012.
See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

To Spin A Darker Stair features stories by Catherynne M. Valente and Faith Mudge, and is illustrated by Kathleen Jennings.

 

The ABC’s Re-enchantment project – Fairy Tales for grown-ups

 

The ABC has also been running snippets of their Re-enchantment project which takes a rather mature look at various fairy tales, examines their origins and themes – great for fans of fairy tales, or  Lanagan-esque reinterpretation.

 

Here’s a snippet from the data on Hansel and Gretel:

 

The children are e sacrificed in part out of murderous resentment and in part to ensure their parents survival … Even when a tale half-heartedly exonerates one or both parents of malice by implying that abandoning the children is the lesser of two evils, the children are left to fend for themselves because parents have been too incapacitated to provide. One way or another, the parents are to blame and begin to emerge at the least as monsters of negligence.
Maria Tatar

The stepmother will not be the self sacrificing, all giving mother of romanticised poverty; she has been reduced to her darkest instinctuality and she will abandon her children as a matter of survival; it is her life or theirs.
Jacqueline Schectman

Children were abandoned throughout Europe from Hellenistic antiquity to the end of the middle ages in great numbers … Parents abandoned their offspring in desperation when they were unable to support them, due to poverty or disaster; in shame, when they were unwilling to keep them because of their physical condition or ancestry (e.g. illegitimate or incestuous); in self interest or the interest of another child, when inheritance or domestic resources would be compromised by another mouth; in hope, when they believed that someone of greater means or higher standing might find them and bring them up in better circumstances; in resignation, when a child was of unwelcome gender or ominous auspices; or in callousness, if they simply could not be bothered with parenthood.
John Boswell

In the 1690s, at the height of the worst demographic crisis in the seventeenth century – at a time when plague and famine decimated the population of Northern France … corpses were found with grass stuffed in their mouths and mothers “exposed” the infants they could not feed so they got sick and died.
Robert Darnton

The site is flash heavy and contains videos and interviews with experts.  It’s well worth dipping into.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/re-enchantment/

---

Did you enjoy this post? Would you like to read more? You can subscribe to the blog through a reader,by Email or Follow me on twitter.