Fairy Godfather, Fairy-Tale History, and Fairy-Tale Scholarship: A Response to Dan Ben-Amos, Jan M. Ziolkowski, and Francisco Vaz da Silva

This article is a response to criticisms of my thesis that Giovanni Francesco Straparola invented the rise fairy-tale plotline in 1550s Venice. In order to clarify and support the argument that I made in my 2002 book, Fairy Godfather, I here make efforts toward establishing a common terminology, critiquing the parameters of Proppian structural analysis, and revising the trope of women-as-storytellers. I affirm the importance of sociohistorical studies of publishing, editing, and patterns of literacy for understanding the emergence and spread of rise fairy tales. I refute arguments for the existence of rise fairy tales in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages. In addition, I offer further explanations of how print technology, widespread schooling, and economic change brought about the emergence of rise fairy tales in Renaissance Venice, and to account for the post-1789 spread of rise fairy tales among European and non-European populations, I cite increasing literacy in rural areas.