Academic geekery

[sacredchao23]

I'm currently putting together a syllabus for an Intro to Lit class as part of my Practice in Teaching Literature class. Instead of putting together a simple straightforward "three genres" kind of Intro to literature class, I'm focuing on retellings and adaptation. Its a topic I find really fascinating and I think used properly it can function well

Comments

[fluxxie]

We used a book called Snow White / Rose Red in Sci Fi - most of it was trashy erotica crap, but I got into the retelling of "Little Red Cap" (or "..Riding Hood"). The original story was always told as a warning (of course it's not about a wolf - he's totally a child predator), so it was neat to see how, with modern changes, a child would be susceptible to a cp (obviously not tricked by one whilst on the way to sick granny's house).

Wrote a paper on it - used lots of naughty words ;)

[sacredchao23]

Do you mean Snow White, Blood Red? Its one of those fairly important recent fantasy/horror collections Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling did. Its one of a larger series of them. I've red a few stories from it in different places and they've been very good.

You should really check out The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, it is a truly amazing series of stories.

[fluxxie]

Err - yeah. It's packed, so I couldn't reference the cover *^^*

Will do - thanks :)

[ellen_datlow]

I'd be surprised if it was Snow White, Blood Red as it surely isn't "trashy erotica crap"--not erotica at ALL.

[queen_of_11seas]

This sounds like a class I would love to take. Which Tanith Lee piece is in the reader? I love "The Bloody Chamber."

Snow White, Blood Red is one of my favorite collections.

A book that might interest you is Women Who Run With Wolves It talks about the archetypes of fairy tales and it has a section on Bluebeard. Its kind of geared more towards women, but it was a good read.

[sacredchao23]

"Wolfland" is the Tanith Lee story.

To be perfectly honest, I'm a little wary of pop-psychology books dealing with fairy tales and myth. I haven't read Women Who Run With Wolves in its entirity, so I can't say that I can judge it correctly, but I tend to have problems with the kind of cultural syncretism that goes on. One of the problems that tends to happen when one invokes archetypes is that cultural difference tends to get lost. I've been working on religious studies stuff recently, and the major problem that is now being corrected within the field of comparative religion is that those doing comparative religion tended to focus on the similarities between cultures while skirting the differences.

I'm still trying to find my own position in this kind of discussion, something between the over-arching concepts of the "monomyth" that Joseph Campbel proscribes and the understanding of cultural particularity.

All of that being said, Women Who Run With Wolves could be looked at (in a class such as mine) as an appropriation and thus

[queen_of_11seas]

you should be excited about it. if your not excited then you are in the wrong field.

When I read Women... I read it for the storytelling stuff... because at the time I was interested in oral storytelling and was looking for more info. i tend to gloss over the self-help bits of the book. every story she gave as an example i then tried to mutilate and turn inside out because i have to be contrary. so now i have all these twisted retellings of fairy tales. my favorite to rewrite was bluebeard.

[queen_of_11seas]

sorry that was me