From the Editor

Interest is continually building around the fairy tale in early modern French Studies, in part thanks to scholars like Holly Tucker. The editors initially saw this special issue on "Reframing the Early French Fairy Tale" grow out of a session Tucker organized at the annual Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entitled "Fairies and Enchantments/Fées et féeries" (October 2002). At this same conference Tucker gave an exciting talk about the popularity of fairy-tale courses at her university. Through her activities at conferences and other types of forums, not to mention through her own scholarly work, Tucker has proven to be a great advocate for the teaching and study of the early modern French fairy tale. In her own work, notably Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France (2003), Tucker herself has worked to reframe our approach to the genre by carrying out readings of literary tales grounded in sociopolitical, medical, and popular knowledge about childbirth. As Guest Editor, Tucker has assembled scholars who challenge current paradigms used to approach the study of the fairy tale. The essays in this volume demand that we question the "Frenchness" of French literary tales, that we acknowledge the hybridity of the genre, and that we reconsider the nature and function of fairy-tale violence and voyeurism. These essays highlight tensions between literary and folk traditions, frame narrative and tale, punitive and transformational violence, the human and the monstrous, and the salon and the freak show. The editors of Marvels & Tales are grateful to Holly Tucker for serving as Guest Editor of this special issue.

We also want to take this occasion to acknowledge two colleagues who are joining the editorial team of Marvels & Tales with this issue. Sadhana Naithani of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi joins the journal's Editorial Board, to which she brings her multidisciplinary expertise in German studies, folklore, and the folktales of India. From Wayne State University, R. Seth C. Knox comes aboard as Assistant Editor to contribute his editorial skills to the journal's ever-growing editorial operation. We welcome them both.