The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre by Jack Zipes (review)

In this book, Zipes builds upon his past works to reexamine the evolution of the fairy tale genre. In doing so, he seeks to understand the enduring nature of fairy tales. The book also critically responds to scholarship that downplays the oral origin of fairy tales. A valuable resource for fairy tale educators and scholars alike, the book is comprised of seven chapters as well as a preface and two appendices. When read first before the chapters, the supplemental appendices serve as a framework for the book. They outline the history of the larger scholarship concerning the oral origin as well as the definition of fairy tales.

Zipes begins by examining the relationship between oral folk tales and literary fairy tales, as well as the role of fairy tales in the evolution of communication. He believes in the polygenesis of fairy tales—that tales originated within different cultures throughout the world and were invented by people who drew from a range of simple narratives to express similar struggles. Fairy tales, as a hybrid genre comprised of fact and fiction and originating from oral tales, adapted accordingly within the culture of communication of each society. Zipes draws on Richard Dawkins's explanation of a meme as a unit of cultural transmission. In later chapters, he engages in an insightful discussion of memetic transfer, drawing on Michael Drout's idea concerning meme as a replication through a process of recognitio, actio, and justificatio, and discussing Bluebeard and Catherine Breillat's cinematic remake of it as examples.

Zipes provides a critical example of how fairy tales moved from oral to written dialogues. In the history of French fairy tales the oral and literary processes of creation were intertwined. They developed from the human necessity of feminine resistance against moral codes within the period of King Louis XIV's court (28). They became popular as a counter world to reality. Zipes looks to the stories of Madame Catherine-Anne D'Aulnoy, who gave the fairy tale genre its name, examining other contemporary influences of her day as well as the stories of Melusine and Morgan le Fay. Though this is only a minor criticism, it is my opinion that Zipes overemphasizes the importance of Melusine as fairy; her initial fairy-like portrayal in the woods is less significant than her role as a loyal mother with a mysterious heritage that transforms her body into a serpent.

The strongest part of the book is Zipes's exploration of Baba Yaga in chapter four, a complex and ambiguous mother-witch figure, which is placed within a larger discussion of witches from pagan and Greco-Roman myth. His review of the Baba Yaga figure within the Slavic tradition is a very welcome contribution to the broader Western fairy tale scholarship. Zipes's discussion of the Russian context includes W. R. S. Ralston's translation of Russian folk tales as well as a second look at Vladimir Propp's contributions.

Chapters five and six also explore neglected folklorist collections. Through his discussion of four nineteenth-century female authors—Laura Gonzenbach, Nannette Lévesque, Božena Nèmcová, and Rachel Busk—Zipes gives women a voice. In their underutilized stories maidens exert agency, quite unlike the more common, passive young women from well-known collections and remakes, such as the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales or Disney films. Zipes also introduces Giuseppe Pitrè's forgotten nineteenth-century Sicilian collection and informs readers of his once international influence. Through these examples Zipes appeals to readers to consider the value of studying fairy tales as artifacts, and not to ignore lesser-known collections, as they have much to teach us, in regard to authenticity, for example.

Staying within the framework of his discussion of memetics, Zipes's last chapter looks at the work of contemporary artists to demonstrate how the morality of fairy tales still resonates. The title of the...