Facts About Jack Zipes Jack Zipes has a keen interest and knowledgeable about fairy Tales.

He teaches about fairy tales and fantasy literature. Jack David Zipes is an American retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. He has published and lectured on the subject of fairy tales, their evolution, and their social and political role in civilizing processes. Most recently a professor of German at the University of Minnesota, Jack Zipes has also taught at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, the University of Florida, and New York University. Zipes has written twenty-five books, many of which are accessible to the lay reader which is in keeping with his reputation as a public scholar. A PhD in comparative literature from Columbia resulted from an extended stay in Germany where he went to write a novel and discovered German which led to a reading knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish. Political activism in the late sixties forged a critical examination of fairy tales and their role in gender directives. He is married to author Carol Dines, and is the father of an eight year old daughter. During the 16th and 17th century there were no fairy tales published (after all, there were not so popular in those times). They still appeared in oral form. And Puritans did not like them, considering them to be somehow substandart. When they were finally accepted, it was mostly thanks to situation in France - they simply started to like such stories and this popularity helped to spread them. Towards the end of the 17th century they were thought to be good for children and they also became part of the court entertainments. At the end of the 17th century also the first boks of fairy tales were published. A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters. Fairy Tales typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies. The stories may nonetheless be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described)[1] and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables. Colloquially, a fairy tale or fairy story can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale.

In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in fairy tale ending. Brother Grimm Facts The older fairy tales were intended for an audience of adults, as well as children, but they were associated with children as early as the writings of the prcieuses; the Brothers Grimm titled their collection Childrens and Household Tales, and the link with children has only grown stronger with time. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are best known for their collection of fairy tales, but theres so much more to their story. From getting kicked out of work at a college, and writing a dictionary, there are so many interesting, but little known facts about the Grimm brothers. Read on to learn more about this talented linguistic pair. They came from a family of 9 kids: History only remembers two of the brothers Grimm, but there were actually several. The Grimm family had 9 kids, though only 6 survived infancy. Most of their siblings were boys: In their large family, there were many brothers Grimm. They had only one sister in a family of boys. Male figures died early in their lives: Both their father and grandfather died early, leaving the family in dire straits. The Grimm brothers seem to favor stories with female characters at the focus, and scholars believe this may be due to the loss of these male figures in their lives. Their main focus was linguistic research: Jacob and Wilhelm were really just focused on researching linguistics, and the famous Grimm tales are simply a byproduct of the research. Their birth home was destroyed in WWII: When visitors go to the birthplace to see the plaque and statue of the brothers Grimm, they are actually across the street from the home where they were born the original home was destroyed in WWII. Jacob Grimm created Grimms Law: As part of their linguistic research, Jacob studied the history and structure of past German languages, and how they relate to other languages. His research became known as Grimms Law. Wilhelm married, but Jacob never did: While working on their research, Wilhelm married and created a family with 4 children, but Jacob remained a bachelor all his life. They wrote a German dictionary: The brothers Grimm laid the foundations for, and began the work on, a humongous German dictionary that was completed over 120 years later. They went from idyllic countryside to financial hardship: While their father and grandfather were alive, the Grimm family enjoyed a lovely countryside life. However, the Grimm brothers lives changed, and they had to move to a cramped urban residence.

They had different approaches to work: Wilhelm and Jacob worked as a perfect team, with Wilhelm focusing on the imaginative and literary side, while Jacob did scholarly work. They lived in poverty: The year their fairy tales were published, they were surviving on 1 meal a day. They were fired from the University of Gottingen for political reasons: The brothers lost their jobs by signing a protest against the King. They were two of the Gottingen Seven: Their dismissal was related to being a part of the Gottingen Seven, a group that protested against the abolition or alteration of the constitution, and refused to swear an oath to the new king of Hanover. They published so much more than fairy tales: The Grimm brothers are responsible for not only fairy tales, but several other works including writings on linguistics, folklore, and a detailed German dictionary. Their stories may be purified: Some scholars believe that the tales may have been purified by those who gave the stories because the Grimms were devout Christians.

Opinions According to Zipes, fairy tales serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society. His arguments are avowedly based on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and more recently theories of cultural evolution. Jack Zipes has transformed research on fairy tales from the superficial discussions of suitability and violence to the linguistic roots and socialization function of the tales. Zipes enjoys using droll titles for his works like Dont Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. Titles such as Dont Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood mask the serious scholarship behind the books. Zipes has brought new life to the term interdisciplinary. Fortunately, he chose fairy tales as a focus for his scholarship. Political activism in the late sixties forged a critical examination of fairy tales and their role in gender directives. This background also led to the formation of the journal New German Critique and his acceptance of the editorship of The Lion and the Unicorn, a critical journal on childrens literature. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, J. R. R. Tolkien agreed with the exclusion of fairies from the definition, defining fairy tales as stories about the adventures of men in Farie, the land of fairies, fairytale princes and princesses, dwarves, elves, and not only other magical species but many other marvels. [12] However, the same essay excludes tales that are often considered fairy tales, citing as an example The Monkeys Heart, which Andrew Lang included in The Lilac Fairy Book. Most children are exposed to fairy tales through film, video, and the computer.

Statistics Zipes has written twenty-five books. In June 2002, the Office for National Statistics Omnibus survey found that: -Nearly half of adults had read at least five books or more in the previous 12 months. -A quarter of adults had not read a book during the same period, including almost half of males aged between 16 and 24. -96% said they had read something in the past seven days, whether books, magazines, newspapers or text messages. Reading material varied according to age: 70% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read a magazine, compared to 59% of 55 to 64-year-olds; 33% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read fiction, compared to 43% of 55 to 64-year-olds. An online survey of 1,432 workers, by the TUC for Quick Reads and World Book Day 2006, found that: -Only 23% of UK workplaces have borrowing shelves or book clubs. However, more than nine in ten employees (91.4%) would consider using a borrowing shelf or joining a book club if one were to be set up at work. -55.2% read or listened to audiobooks on their way to work, with fictional titles the most popular (32.6%), closely followed by newspapers (22%). In March 2007, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Councils Library and Information Update reported on a survey of 4,000 readers, which found that: -A third of those questioned read challenging literature in order to seem well-read, even though they couldnt follow what the book was about. -Almost half of respondents said that reading classics makes you look more intelligent. 40% said they had lied about having read certain books, just so they could join in with the conversation. Most people said they would expand on their literary repertoire to impress a new date. An international study of ten year olds reading habits, the PIRLS 2006 report for England found that in England, compared to the previous study in 2001: -There had been a significant fall in the proportion of children in England reading stories and novels on a daily basis. -There was a highly significant difference in the proportions of boys and girls in England who claimed to read stories or novels every day. This includes 41 per cent of girls but just 23 per cent of boys. -In 2001-2 there were 270,775,000 visits to libraries. In 2005-6 there were 290,979,000 visits to libraries.

OFCOM report The Communications Market 2007 found that: -There were over 35 million blogs worldwide in April 2006 and a new one is created every second. In the UK 45% use webpages and blogs as a means to publish their own original material, and over one in ten comment on current affairs and political issues on their homepages and weblogs.

Quotes About Jack Zipes Ever since I was eight-years-old I began writing stories and sitting on foors inlibraries and reading myself into other realms. Jack Zipes I may even be obsessed by them. Jack Zipes I defnitely believe (and can demonstrate and have demonstrated) that fairy talesrefect the conditions, ideas, tastes, and values of the societies in which they were created. Jack Zipes Due to their symbolism, it is quite often very diffcult to see how remarkablythey comment on reality. One has to do a lot of scholarly detective work to draw par-allels and to interpret their social signifcance. This is what makes studying fairy tales so challenging and fascinating. Once you begin to grasp the metaphors, the talesbecome enlightening. Jack Zipes I think that the written word and the spoken word will never die out, nor will storytelling, for even on television, people are telling live stories. Jack Zipes There is obviously a danger that technology will foster more and more alienation and destroy commu-nities. It has already happened. On the other hand, television and the internet havecreated new forms of communication. Jack Zipes Perhaps we should ask whether we would be better off if more and more peoplecontrolled the mass media instead of corporate conglommerates. Without soundingcorny, I think if technology served the people, instead of people serving technolgy, we would not have to worry about social decadence and decline. (Incidentally, fairytales measure to what extend we are losing the struggle against alienation and ex-ploitation.) Jack Zipes For the very young, ages 1 - 6 or so, I do thinkwe should take care about what stories we tell without overprotecting the childrenor censoring material. Jack Zipes I have raised my own daughter on all sorts of stories without censorship, with curse words and violent scenes, where appropriate in the plot. Depending on the relationship a child has to the storyteller, and depending on the context, I think it is important that the child be able to listen to any story imaginable. Jack Zipes The children imagine stories more gruesome and more violent than we can imagine. Jack Zipes I am presently translating Sicilian fairy tales told in the19th century, and they are remarkably similar to many French, German, and Britishtales that circulated about the same time, and the peasant women who told thesemarvelous tales would not have known of the French, German, and British versions. Jack Zipes I am gradually coming to the conclusion that there are basic instincts in thehuman species that are the same throughout the world. The instincts and disposi-tions have evolved genetically and are articulated through mental and public repre-sentations in response to a civilizing process. Jack Zipes

vvGiven that the instincts and dispositions that evolve genetically are the same but altered by the environment, we arebound to feel the world and respond to the world in very similar ways and to recordour responses in similar but different ways. Jack Zipes Actually, vampires, draculas, and ghosts play a negligible role on fairy tales. Strictly speaking, they form another type of genre -- ghost stories, horror stories,etc. They appear more often in legends than in fairy tales. Jack Zipes The vamp, witch, dracula, etc. have all been redefined by feminists and other subversive writers who want to question what the good religious and proper people have condemned as evil. Jack Zipes It is diffcult to defnite what evil is today. Is evil banal in the form of George Bush and thus muchmore dangerous than the axis of evil incarnated by the clearly sadistic and brutal Hussein? The traditional defnitions and categories do not work in our postmodern world, and this sets writers dangerously free to concoct their worlds of good andevil. I say dangerously because the writer has a huge responsibility and if he/ she has a large following or readership, the infuence can be dangerous. However, whatis more dangerous is the power of the mass corporations that control the distribution and reception of news, stories, etc. The mass corporations are, to my mind, thevamps of today. Jack Zipes Whenever I teach a course on fairy tales and fantasy literature, I become engaged with my students, and we exchange ideas about different authors,their works, etc. Jack Zipes I do not read in one particular genre. I read all over the place. Jack Zipes I dont have an urge to write blockbuster fantasy or horror. But I have written several small pieces of fiction under a pseudonym, and I prefer to keep it that way. Jack Zipes No tale or fairy tale is ever new. Jack Zipes Fairy tales provide us with the tools, aesthetic tools, to cope with a rapidly changing world. Because of its utopian potential, it can provide us metaphorically with the distance we need to contemplate our situation and then to act. However, sometimes the fairy tale (and fantasy literature in general) can become an escape, and we read to escape dreadful and uncomfortable situations. The best of fairy tales, however, provoke us to act and help us understand the lies and deceit that emanate from the White House and other dirty corners of the world. Jack Zipes I dont feel too guilty when I read pornographic or erotic literature which I occasionally do. Jack Zipes

The best fairy tales and fairy-tale films deal with the human condition and survival. Jack Zipes Most children today, at least in America, dont read fairy tales. They watch them on TV or in a movie theater. I work as a storyteller in elementary schools, and nine out of ten children know nothing about Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, or Hans Christian Andersen or even L. Frank Baum. Their initiation into the fairy-tale realm is through film. Jack Zipes The mediation of the stories is no longer through parents and storytellers in communities but through print, the anonymous narrator, and visuals. Jack Zipes American writers and publishers have radically changed the plots and characters of the traditional tales and/or created fascinating and boring new tales. The changes range from an inane puritanical sanitization of the traditional tales - an insipid endeavor to protect children from the horrors of reality - to remarkable and provocative innovation that challenges children to think for themselves. The recent Shrek films are good examples of such innovation while the run-of-the mill Disney films and even the Shelley Duvall adaptations of Faerie Tale Theatre dumb down children. If they protect them from anything, they protect them or blind them from using their own imaginations and own thinking to question the world around them. Jack Zipes

Bibliography of Suggested reading by Jazk Zipes Primary Works

Anthony, Edward and Joseph. The Fairies Up-to-Date. London: Thornton Butterworth, c. 1920. Broumas, Olga. Beginning with O. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Carryl, Guy Wetmore. Grimm Tales Made Gay. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902. Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. London: Gollancz, 1979. Dahl, Roald. Revolting Rhymes. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982. Donoghue, Emma. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. New York: Harper Collins, 1997. Gearhart, Sally Miller. Roja and Leopold in And A Deers Ear, Eagles Song and Bears Grace: Animals and Women, Eds. Theresa Corrigan and Stephanie Hoppe. Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1990./ Hay, Sara Henderson. Story Hour. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1982. Heriz, Patrick de. Fairy Tales with a Twist. London: Peter Lunn, 1946. Husain, Shahrukh. Handsome heroines: Women as Men in Folklore. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Janosch. Not Quite as Grimm. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1974. Kramer, Rita. Rumpelstiltskin: His Story. South Dakota Review 25 (Summer, 1987): 78-81. Lee, Tanith. Red as Blood, or Tales of the Sisters Grimmer. New York: DAW, 1983. Redgrove, Peter. The One Who Set Out to Study Fear. London: Bloomsbury, 1989. Scieszka, Jon and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. New York: Viking, 1992. Sexton, Anne. Transformations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. Strauss, Gwen. Trail of Stones. London: Julia MacRae Books, 1990. Velde, Vivian Vande. Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995. Walker, Nancy. Feminist Fairy Tales. San Francisco, 1996. Wells, Joel. Grim Fairy Tales for Adults. New York: Macmillan, 1967. Yolen, Jane. Tales of Wonder. New York: Schocken Books, 1983. Dragonfield and Other Stories. London: Futura, 1985.

Selected Anthologies:
Attic Press. Rapunzels Revenge. Dublin: Attic Press, 1985. Sweeping Beauties. Dublin: Attic Press, 1989. Auerbach, Nina and U.C. Knoepflmacher, Eds. Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Carter, Angela, Ed. The Virago Book of Fairy Tales. London: Virago, 1990. Datlow, Ellen and Terri Windling, eds. Black Thorn, White Rose. New York: William Morrow, 1993.

eds. Snow White, Blood Red. New York: William Morrow, 1994. eds. Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears. New York: William Morrow, 1995. Lurie, Alison, Ed. Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Tales. New York: Corwell, 1980. Fairytales for Feminists Series published by Attic Press in Dublin: Rapunzels Revenge, 1985. Ms Muffet and Others, 1986. Mad and Bad Fairies, 1987. Sweeping Beauties, 1989. Minard, Rosemary, Ed. Womenfolk and Fairy Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Park, Christine and Caroline Heaton, eds. Caught in a Story: Contemporary Fairytales and Fables.London: Vintage, 1992. Phelps, Ethel Johnston, Ed. Tatterhood and Other Tales. Old Westbury, New York: Feminist Press, 1978. ed. The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from around the World. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981. Philip, Neil, Ed. The Cinderella Story. London: Penguin, 1989. Pogrebin, Letty Cottin, ed. Stories for Free Children. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Ragan, Kathleen, ed. Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters. New York: Norton, 1997. Shwartz, Susan, Ed. Hecates Cauldron. New York: Daw Books, 1982. Zipes, Jack. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1983. Ed. Dont Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. New York: Routledge, 1986. Ed. Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment: French Classical Fairy Tales. New York: New American Library, 1989. Ed., Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture. New York: Viking, 1991.

Bibliography
Bacchilega, Cristina. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf, 1976. Blackwell, Jeannine. Fractured Fairy Tales: German Women Authors and the Grimm Tradition. Germanic Review 62 (Fall, 1987): 162-174. Bottigheimer, Ruth B., ed. Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Grimms Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Canepa, Nancy L., ed. Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. Dundes, Alan. The Study of Folklore. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965. Farrer, Claire, ed. Women and Folklore. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

Harries, Elizabeth Wanning. Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the Fairy Tale. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Jones, Steven Swann. The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination. New York: Twayne, 1995. Kolbenschlag, Madonna. Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-bye: Breaking the Spell of Feminine Myths and Models. New York: Doubleday, 1979. Lthi, Max. Once Upon a Time. On the Nature of Fairy Tales. Trans. Lee Chadeayne & Paul Gottwald. New York: Ungar, 1970. The European Folktale: Form and Nature. Trans. John D. Niles. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982. McGlathery, James M. Fairy Tale Romance: The Grimms, Basile, and Perrault. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 1985. ed. The Kristeva Reader . New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. Feminism/Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1990. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Eds. Louis Wagner and Alan Dundes. Trans. Laurence Scott. 2nd rev. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Theory and History of Folklore. Trans. Adriadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin. Ed. Anatoly Liberman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Rowe, Karen E. Feminism and Fairy Tales. Womens Studies 6 (1979): 237-57. To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale. Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm. Ed. Ruth B. Bottigheimer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Seifert, Lewis C. Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Off with their Heads: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Sale, Roger. Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E. B. White. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. New York: Hilt, Rinehart &Winston, 1979. Velten, Harry. The Influence of Charles Perraults Contes de ma Mre LOie on German Folklore. The Germanic Review 5 (1930): 14-18. Weigle, Marta. Spiders & Spinsters: Woman and Mythology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: Morrow, 1991. Waelti-Walters. Fairy Tales and the Female Imagination. Montreal: Eden Press, 1982. Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers. London: Chatto and Windus, 1994. Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. London: Heinemann, 1979. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Socio- Cultural Context. Revised Edition. New York: Routledge, (1983) 1993.

Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. London: Heinemann, 1983. Fairy Tale as Myth\Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.