Off with their heads! : fairy tales and the culture of childhood
Exploring how adults mistreat children, this book focuses on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.
Print Book, English, 1993, ©1992
1st Princeton pbk. print View all formats and editions
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1993, ©1992
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xxviii, 295 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780691000886, 0691000883
35290776
I. Rewritten by adults : the inscription of children's literature
II. "Teaching them a lesson" : the pedagogy of fear in fairy tales
III. Just desserts : reward-and-punishment tales
IV. Wilhelm Grimm / Maurice Sendak : Dear Mili and the art of dying happily ever after
V. Daughters of Eve : fairy-tale heroines and their seven sins
VI. Tyranny at home : "Catskin" and "Cinderella"
VII. Beauties and beasts : from blind obedience to love at first sight
VIII. "As sweet as love" : violence and the fulfillment of wishes
IX. Table matters : cannibalism and oral greed
X. Telling differences : parents vs. children in "The juniper tree"
Epilogue : reinvention through intervention