HNAR-327: Writing and Reading Fairytales

C.S. Lewis called fairytales "lies breathed through silver." This certainly evokes the beauty, extravagance and simplicity, the imagistic power of these stories. But what we all know about fairytales is that they are not lies at all; they reveal truth. Also: secrets, fears, archetypes, problematic gender models, reflections of culture. In this class, we will delve into fairyland, places of magic and transformations of ordinary people. From the "old wives' tales" brewed in, as Tolkien put it, a "cauldron of story," to the printed standards of the Grimm Brother's, to modern literary retellings by Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter, and yes of course, Disney. We'll use all these modes to try to make sense of what is essential to these tales-to find the bones of story, and then, the fat and meat made by subjectivity and culture, and then, the heart and the brain, the psychology, the silver and the lies of these tales. The classwork will consist of reading response analysis and also, writing our own versions of tales, spinning and weaving and making anew from what we've learned.