Preserving the Spell
Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-tale Tradition
Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelous – in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises.
If we want to rediscover the power of fairy tales – as Armando Maggi thinks we should – we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In "Preserving the Spell", Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile's "The Tale of Tales", then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothers' adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.
Contents:
Dancing Backward: An Introduction
Part One: "Cupid and Psyche", The Tale of Tales, and the Birth of Western Fairy Tale
1. A Never Ending and Never Told Tale: Basile's Undoing of "Cupid and Psyche"
2. Orpheus, the King of the Birds, Moves to Sicily with Cupid and Psyche: Laura Gonzenbach's "King Cardiddu"
3. Melancholy Is the Best Storyteller: Oil, Water, and Blood from Gonzenbach back to Basile
Part Two: The Italian Tales and German Romanticism: The Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, Novalis
4. What We Leave Behind: Fairies, Letters, Rose Petals, and Sprigs of Myrtle
5. The Fairy, the Myrtle, and the Myrtle-Maiden: From Basile to the Grimms and Brentano
6. How to Undo The Tale of Tales: Brentano and the End of Fairy Tales
7. Where Are the Ogresses of Yesteryear? The Neapolitan Cupids and Psyches in the Hands of the Brothers Grimm
8. Beauty, Zulima, and Aline: The Marvel Preceding and Following the World According to Novalis
Part Three: American Postmodernism, Memoirs, and a New Beginning
9".You Will Never Awaken Because the Story You Were In No Longer Exists": Coover, Postmodernism, and the End of an Era
10".Disney World Has Become a Kind of Reverse Lourdes": From Stanley Elkin back to Basile
11".A Benign Fairy Tale out of the Brothers Grimm": Memoirs and the Magic of Reality
12".Everything Beautiful Is Gone": Beasts of the Southern Wild and a New Beginning
Appendix: The Grimms' Adaptations of Basile
Notes
Index
About the Author
Armando Maggi is professor of romance languages and literatures and a member of the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, including "Satan's Rhetoric" and "The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Sade to Saint Paul", both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"A wonderfully original work. Maggi's analysis is erudite but adventurous, and he is an exacting, inquisitive, and often brilliant, reader. He combines and links the macroscopic – the consideration of major questions in literary and cultural history – and the microscopic – extended close readings – in exemplary fashion. This is a book about fairy tales, but it is also an extended reflection on the fundamental human activity of narration itself – why and how we tell tales, and how these tales transform over time" – Nancy L. Canepa, Dartmouth College
"Maggi's 'Preserving the Spell' is a highly erudite and enthusiastic study of the influence of the fairy tale in western culture. Beginning with the fabulous Giambattista Basile's 'dirty' carnavalesque collection, 'The Tale of Tales', Maggi moves backward to the myths and stories of the Greco-Roman period and forward to tales, memoirs, and films of our contemporary world to demonstrate how fairy tales have tenaciously informed and formed our lives. He is a brilliant and perceptive critic who has grasped the ebb and flow of oral and literary traditions infused by Basile's spirit. In short, Maggi's incisive study should be compulsory reading for all students and scholars seriously interested in the magic and history of fairy tales" – Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota
"Giambattista Basile's 'The Tale of Tales' deserves more critical attention, and refreshingly Maggi treats it as key to fairy-tale intertextuality from Apuleius to the Grimms, Robert Coover, and contemporary memoirs. Focused on how irreverence, real-life traumas, and inventive transformations have animated fairy-tale magic across history, 'Preserving the Spell's' erudite readings are sure to provoke scholarly discussion" – Cristina Bacchilega, author of "Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations' and the 'Politics of Wonder'"
"Folklore can tick and whirr just as smoothly in modern times as in times past, and Maggi shows us how and why. Resisting the tendency to fetishize ideal types and create rigid canons, he embraces the transformative energy of magic and malleability in fairy tales. 'Preserving the Spell' moves us out of our intellectual comfort zones and reminds us that the best stories have a high quotient of weirdness" – Maria Tatar, editor of "The Annotated Brothers Grimm"
