Folk Tale and Fairy Tale
A folk tale is a short narrative that has been orally transmitted through successive generations within any given community and that has typically evolved over time. Although folk tales usually begin as oral tales of unidentified origin, they are generally committed to writing at some point. Folk tales may include fables, fairy tales, legends, myths, tall tales, ghost stories, or stories about giants, monsters, devils, and saints (Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill)
A fairy tale is a brief prose narrative intended to entertain or instruct that typically relates fantastic or magical occurrences involving a hero. Fairy tales are characterized by a number of common elements. They often begin “once upon a time” in an unspecified setting, feature flat (unchanging or superficial) characters, and involve magic, talking animals, disguises and/or physical transformations, and prohibitions or taboos. Fairy tales employ stock characters, such as cruel step mothers, fairy godmothers, fairies, and they usually address a simplified conflict between good and evil.
--from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
Monday, September 20, 2010
Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction?
--language does not merely reflect or record the world; it shapes it, so that how we see is what we see
--we exist in a universe of radical uncertainty, since we can have no access to any fixed point or landmark which is beyond linguistic processing
--in post-structuralism there are no fixed intellectual reference points
--we live in a “decentered universe,” one in which, by definition, we cannot know where we are, since all previous concepts to define a stable center have been destabilized. There are no absolutes or fixed points, and thus our universe is inherently relativistic
--there is an almost universally felt anxiety that language is inexact, that language will express things we hadn’t intended, or convey the wrong impression, or betray our ignorance
--inevitably, there is some breakdown between the signifier, the signified, and the receiver
--Nietzsche’s famous remark is often quoted: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
--Structuralists accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we do no have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium; post-structuralists take this notion much further, since they reject the notion that language is stable and orderly. Post-structuralism believe that we are never fully in control of language, that meanings can never be set in unchanging contexts. Linguistic anxiety is a keynote of the post-structuralist outlook.
--post-strucutalism accepts a radical break from the past (modernist revolt against the 19th c, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, WWI, WWII, Holocaust, nuclear warfare)
--deconstruction is the critical practice of post-structuralism. In deconstruction literary texts are discussed as emblems of the decentered universe. Texts previously regarded as unified artistic creations are revealed to be fragmented, self-divided, and centerless
--Derrida’s famous remark is often quoted: “There is nothing outside the text.”
--Reading and interpretation, then, are not just reproducing what the writer thought and expressed in the text. Critical reading must produce the text, since there is nothing behind it to reconstruct. Thus, the reading has to be deconstructive rather than reconstructive.
--a deconstructive reading—pulling at a loose thread; all texts are characterized by disunity rather than unity, and by reading against the grain—reading a text against itself—discontinuities will be revealed
--deconstruction demonstrates that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical, coherent whole
--all language is characterized by “deferred presence,” that is to say, the thing being signified is never actually present, and every signified concept invokes others in an endless stream of connotations
--deconstruction emphasizes textual undecidability and indeterminacy
--language does not merely reflect or record the world; it shapes it, so that how we see is what we see
--we exist in a universe of radical uncertainty, since we can have no access to any fixed point or landmark which is beyond linguistic processing
--in post-structuralism there are no fixed intellectual reference points
--we live in a “decentered universe,” one in which, by definition, we cannot know where we are, since all previous concepts to define a stable center have been destabilized. There are no absolutes or fixed points, and thus our universe is inherently relativistic
--there is an almost universally felt anxiety that language is inexact, that language will express things we hadn’t intended, or convey the wrong impression, or betray our ignorance
--inevitably, there is some breakdown between the signifier, the signified, and the receiver
--Nietzsche’s famous remark is often quoted: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
--Structuralists accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we do no have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium; post-structuralists take this notion much further, since they reject the notion that language is stable and orderly. Post-structuralism believe that we are never fully in control of language, that meanings can never be set in unchanging contexts. Linguistic anxiety is a keynote of the post-structuralist outlook.
--post-strucutalism accepts a radical break from the past (modernist revolt against the 19th c, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, WWI, WWII, Holocaust, nuclear warfare)
--deconstruction is the critical practice of post-structuralism. In deconstruction literary texts are discussed as emblems of the decentered universe. Texts previously regarded as unified artistic creations are revealed to be fragmented, self-divided, and centerless
--Derrida’s famous remark is often quoted: “There is nothing outside the text.”
--Reading and interpretation, then, are not just reproducing what the writer thought and expressed in the text. Critical reading must produce the text, since there is nothing behind it to reconstruct. Thus, the reading has to be deconstructive rather than reconstructive.
--a deconstructive reading—pulling at a loose thread; all texts are characterized by disunity rather than unity, and by reading against the grain—reading a text against itself—discontinuities will be revealed
--deconstruction demonstrates that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical, coherent whole
--all language is characterized by “deferred presence,” that is to say, the thing being signified is never actually present, and every signified concept invokes others in an endless stream of connotations
--deconstruction emphasizes textual undecidability and indeterminacy
Tenets of Liberal Humanism:
--a firm belief in the stable values of literature, that good literature is of timeless significance, that good literature transcends the limitations and peculiarities of the age in which it was written, and thus speaks to what is constant in human nature
--a firm belief that the literary text contains its own meaning within itself, and this meaning can be perceived through close textual analysis without the elaborate process of placing it in socio-political, literary-historical, or autobiographical contexts. This is an essentialist belief in the primacy and self-sufficiency of the text
--a firm belief that human nature is essentially unchanging, that the same passions, emotions, and situations are seen again and again throughout human history, that literature reveals what is constant in human nature
--a firm belief that individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our own unique essence. Despite all changes in environment and situation, there is always a core of “me” that is unchanging and constant. This is an essentialist belief in a transcendent self, a self that transcends all of the forces of society, experience, and language. There is something in you that will always be you, something that can never be transformed
--a firm belief that the job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader, critics are those who are specially trained to uncover the subtle, often hidden meanings and symbols in a text
--a firm belief that texts have specific authors who are responsible for the craft, structure, and meanings of their texts.
Rejection of Liberal Humanism:
--a belief that there are no stable, unchanging “givens” in the world as we know it, all of the “givens” we have accepted as stable (gender, identity, nationality) are actually fluid and unstable things rather than fixed and reliable essences. Instead of being solidly “there” in the real world of fact and experience, they are “socially constructed,” that is, dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking (essentialism versus relativism)
--a belief that all thinking and investigation is necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological commitments. The notion of disinterested enquiry is untenable and often fraudulent
--a belief that language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. All reality is constructed through language, so that nothing is simply “there” in an unproblematical way—everything is a linguistic/textual construct. Language does record reality—it shapes and creates it, so that the whole of our universe is textual.
--a belief that meaning is jointly created by writers, editors/publishers, and readers and that all meanings are contextual, that there can never be one definitive (fixed and reliable) reading/interpretation of a text
--a disbelief in all “totalizing” notions—such as notion that there is a stable category of great or classic books (since all books are culturally constructed within a specific context), or the notion that there is a human nature that transcends all experience and all situations and transcends all of the particularities of race, gender, and class. Such concepts of human nature have tended to be Eurocentric and androcentric.
--a firm belief in the stable values of literature, that good literature is of timeless significance, that good literature transcends the limitations and peculiarities of the age in which it was written, and thus speaks to what is constant in human nature
--a firm belief that the literary text contains its own meaning within itself, and this meaning can be perceived through close textual analysis without the elaborate process of placing it in socio-political, literary-historical, or autobiographical contexts. This is an essentialist belief in the primacy and self-sufficiency of the text
--a firm belief that human nature is essentially unchanging, that the same passions, emotions, and situations are seen again and again throughout human history, that literature reveals what is constant in human nature
--a firm belief that individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our own unique essence. Despite all changes in environment and situation, there is always a core of “me” that is unchanging and constant. This is an essentialist belief in a transcendent self, a self that transcends all of the forces of society, experience, and language. There is something in you that will always be you, something that can never be transformed
--a firm belief that the job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader, critics are those who are specially trained to uncover the subtle, often hidden meanings and symbols in a text
--a firm belief that texts have specific authors who are responsible for the craft, structure, and meanings of their texts.
Rejection of Liberal Humanism:
--a belief that there are no stable, unchanging “givens” in the world as we know it, all of the “givens” we have accepted as stable (gender, identity, nationality) are actually fluid and unstable things rather than fixed and reliable essences. Instead of being solidly “there” in the real world of fact and experience, they are “socially constructed,” that is, dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking (essentialism versus relativism)
--a belief that all thinking and investigation is necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological commitments. The notion of disinterested enquiry is untenable and often fraudulent
--a belief that language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. All reality is constructed through language, so that nothing is simply “there” in an unproblematical way—everything is a linguistic/textual construct. Language does record reality—it shapes and creates it, so that the whole of our universe is textual.
--a belief that meaning is jointly created by writers, editors/publishers, and readers and that all meanings are contextual, that there can never be one definitive (fixed and reliable) reading/interpretation of a text
--a disbelief in all “totalizing” notions—such as notion that there is a stable category of great or classic books (since all books are culturally constructed within a specific context), or the notion that there is a human nature that transcends all experience and all situations and transcends all of the particularities of race, gender, and class. Such concepts of human nature have tended to be Eurocentric and androcentric.
Meaning and Value
Since the emergence of post-structural criticism, most literary scholars have generally agreed that meaning is not universal, that an act of interpretation takes place in a specific context. Language does not come with inherent meaning and cannot be immediately apprehended. It is the contextual act of interpreting, including the assumptions and intentions of the interpretive act, that determines the meaning of a text. Thus much consideration has involved the “politics of interpretation,” an area of cultural studies that refers to the purposes and presuppositions which generate meaning. Rejecting past New Criticism methods, literary scholars today tend not to discuss literature in terms of universal truths or eternal verities.
Yet literary scholars are generally less willing to accept the contingencies of value. In a landmark essay, Barbara Herrnstein Smith demonstrated that value, like meaning, depends on situations of use, social relations, and other cultural structures of significance. Cultures throughout the world have self-developed systems of value and meaning that have no place whatsoever in the categories assumed by New Criticism to be universal. For these people “other verbal artifacts (not necessarily works of literature or even printed texts) have performed—and do perform—the various functions that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare perform for us. The literary canon is not a product of essential, natural transcendental values, but of a historically specific cultural tradition.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, “Contingencies of Value.” Critical Inquiry 10 (September 1983), 1-35.
Since the emergence of post-structural criticism, most literary scholars have generally agreed that meaning is not universal, that an act of interpretation takes place in a specific context. Language does not come with inherent meaning and cannot be immediately apprehended. It is the contextual act of interpreting, including the assumptions and intentions of the interpretive act, that determines the meaning of a text. Thus much consideration has involved the “politics of interpretation,” an area of cultural studies that refers to the purposes and presuppositions which generate meaning. Rejecting past New Criticism methods, literary scholars today tend not to discuss literature in terms of universal truths or eternal verities.
Yet literary scholars are generally less willing to accept the contingencies of value. In a landmark essay, Barbara Herrnstein Smith demonstrated that value, like meaning, depends on situations of use, social relations, and other cultural structures of significance. Cultures throughout the world have self-developed systems of value and meaning that have no place whatsoever in the categories assumed by New Criticism to be universal. For these people “other verbal artifacts (not necessarily works of literature or even printed texts) have performed—and do perform—the various functions that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare perform for us. The literary canon is not a product of essential, natural transcendental values, but of a historically specific cultural tradition.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, “Contingencies of Value.” Critical Inquiry 10 (September 1983), 1-35.
Prognostications?
(Taken from Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, 1994)
A change is upon us—nothing could be clearer. The printed word is part of a vestigial order that we are moving away from—by choice and by societal compulsion. . . . This shift is happening throughout our culture, away from patterns and habits of the printed word and towards a new world distinguished by its reliance on electronic communication.
Many educators say that our students are less and less able to read, or analyze, or write with clarity and purpose. Who can blame the students? Everything they meet with in the world around them gives them the signal: That was then, and electronic communications are now.
What oral poetry was for the Greeks, printed books in general are for us. But our historical moment, what we might call “proto-electronic,” will not require a transition period of two centuries. The very essence of electronic transmissions is to surmount impedances and to hasten transitions. Fifty years, I’m sure, will suffice.
The order of print is linear, and is bound to logic by the imperatives of syntax. Syntax is the substructure of discourse, a mapping of the ways that the mind makes sense through language. Print communication requires the active engagement of the reader’s attention, for reading is fundamentally an act of translation. . . . The electronic order is in most ways opposite. Information and content do not simply move from one private state to another, but they travel along a network. Engagement is intrinsically public, taking place within a circuit of larger connectedness. . . . Electronic communication can be passive, as with television watching, or interactive, as with computers. Contents . . . are felt to be evanescent. They can be changed or deleted with a stroke of a key. . . . The pace is rapid . . . and basically movement is laterally associative rather than vertically cumulative. The presentation structures the reception and, in time, the expectation about how information is organized [bullet points?].
Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without rippling or more likely, reweaving the entire social and cultural web.
Tag-line communication, called “bite-speak” by some, is destroying the last remnants of political discourse; spin doctors and media consultants are our new shamans.
And here are some of the kinds of developments we might watch out for as our “proto-electronic” era yields to an all-electronic future:
1. Language erosion. There is no question but that the transition from the culture of the book to the culture of electronic communication will radically alter the ways in which we use language on every societal level. The complexity and distinctiveness of spoken and written expression, which are deeply bound to traditions of print literacy, will gradually be replaced by a more telegraphic sort of “plainspeak.” . . . Simple linguistic prefab is now the norm, while ambiguity, paradox, irony, subtlety, and wit are fast disappearing. . . . Language will grow increasingly impoverished through a series of vicious cycles . . . We can expect that curricula will be further streamlined, and difficult texts in the humanities will be pruned and glossed. . . . Fewer and fewer people will be able to contend with the so-called masterworks of literature or ideas.
2. Flattening of historical perspective. As the circuit supplants the printed page, and as more and more of our communications involve us in network processes . . . our perception of history will inevitable alter. Changes in information storage and access are bound to impinge on our historical memory. . . . The database, useful as it is, expunges this [historical] context, this sense of chronology, and admits us to a weightless order in which all information is equally accessible. . . . For, naturally, the entertainment industry . . . will seize the advantage. The past that has slipped away will be rendered ever more glorious, ever more a fantasy play with heroes, villains, and quaint settings and props. Small-town American life returns as :”Andy of Mayberry”—at first enjoyed with recognition, then later accepted as a faithful portrait of how things used to be.
3. The waning of the private self. We may even now be in the first stages of a process of social collectivization that will over time all but vanquish the ideal of the isolated individual. For some decades now we have been edging away from the perception of private life as something opaque, closed off to the world. . . . I am not suggesting that we are all about to become mindless, soulless robots, or that personality will disappear altogether into an oceanic homogeneity. But certainly the idea of what it means to be a person living a life will be much changed. The figure-ground model, which has always featured a solitary self before a background that is the society of other selves, is romantic in the extreme. It is ever less tenable in the world as it is becoming.
Speculations:
The Age of Print is rapidly drawing to a close. We have already entered into a new age of electronic communication and cyber space is revolutionizing the ways we live our lives, particularly in the ways we interact and communicate. We are not only constantly connected to each other, but we, as human beings, are developing whole new ways of socializing. Quite often we are closer to people one hundred miles away, if not a thousand or more miles away, than we are to those living next to us.
Friendship and love are now as much virtual online phenomena as they are physical realities.
Being wired is already becoming more important than being literate in the traditional sense. An entire new form of electronic literacy is developing at a lightning-quick pace.
The body of literate (or literary) readers is rapidly shrinking. Reading books, as we understand the process, will become an outdated—if not obsolete—skill.
Most students today are considerable less comfortable reading than students a generation ago, even a few years ago. They read less, and they understand less of what they read. They have been trained to skim, searching for the bulleted lists and images. They would generally rather watch a video than read a text.
These same students are much more comfortable with computer screens than with books. They are much more comfortable interpreting visual images and icons than textual descriptions. They have been trained to think in images rather than in deep contemplation.
These students are going to take over the world.
We are rapidly developing a new form of hieroglyphics. Emoticons are becoming wildly popular.
We are rapidly developing new electronic dialects through text messaging—OMG!
The concept of reading is undergoing a drastic transformation. In the near future nearly all reading will take place on computer screens or on Kindle-like apparatuses. What will constitute reading will take place in shorter and shorter durations, and in shorter and shorter forms. Readers will scan for highlighted bits, bytes, and bullets of information.
Students categorically prefer to research online rather than in libraries.
The concept of literacy is undergoing a drastic transformation. If there is a new Dark Ages, the dividing line between the ignorant masses and the enlightened few will be technological knowledge, not humanistic knowledge.
The means through which we receive information wholly affects the way we process that information.
We are losing our capacity to use language in skillful and subtle ways.
Eventually, English departments will be merged into History departments and eventually go the way of Philosophy departments. Libraries will become museums.
(Taken from Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, 1994)
A change is upon us—nothing could be clearer. The printed word is part of a vestigial order that we are moving away from—by choice and by societal compulsion. . . . This shift is happening throughout our culture, away from patterns and habits of the printed word and towards a new world distinguished by its reliance on electronic communication.
Many educators say that our students are less and less able to read, or analyze, or write with clarity and purpose. Who can blame the students? Everything they meet with in the world around them gives them the signal: That was then, and electronic communications are now.
What oral poetry was for the Greeks, printed books in general are for us. But our historical moment, what we might call “proto-electronic,” will not require a transition period of two centuries. The very essence of electronic transmissions is to surmount impedances and to hasten transitions. Fifty years, I’m sure, will suffice.
The order of print is linear, and is bound to logic by the imperatives of syntax. Syntax is the substructure of discourse, a mapping of the ways that the mind makes sense through language. Print communication requires the active engagement of the reader’s attention, for reading is fundamentally an act of translation. . . . The electronic order is in most ways opposite. Information and content do not simply move from one private state to another, but they travel along a network. Engagement is intrinsically public, taking place within a circuit of larger connectedness. . . . Electronic communication can be passive, as with television watching, or interactive, as with computers. Contents . . . are felt to be evanescent. They can be changed or deleted with a stroke of a key. . . . The pace is rapid . . . and basically movement is laterally associative rather than vertically cumulative. The presentation structures the reception and, in time, the expectation about how information is organized [bullet points?].
Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without rippling or more likely, reweaving the entire social and cultural web.
Tag-line communication, called “bite-speak” by some, is destroying the last remnants of political discourse; spin doctors and media consultants are our new shamans.
And here are some of the kinds of developments we might watch out for as our “proto-electronic” era yields to an all-electronic future:
1. Language erosion. There is no question but that the transition from the culture of the book to the culture of electronic communication will radically alter the ways in which we use language on every societal level. The complexity and distinctiveness of spoken and written expression, which are deeply bound to traditions of print literacy, will gradually be replaced by a more telegraphic sort of “plainspeak.” . . . Simple linguistic prefab is now the norm, while ambiguity, paradox, irony, subtlety, and wit are fast disappearing. . . . Language will grow increasingly impoverished through a series of vicious cycles . . . We can expect that curricula will be further streamlined, and difficult texts in the humanities will be pruned and glossed. . . . Fewer and fewer people will be able to contend with the so-called masterworks of literature or ideas.
2. Flattening of historical perspective. As the circuit supplants the printed page, and as more and more of our communications involve us in network processes . . . our perception of history will inevitable alter. Changes in information storage and access are bound to impinge on our historical memory. . . . The database, useful as it is, expunges this [historical] context, this sense of chronology, and admits us to a weightless order in which all information is equally accessible. . . . For, naturally, the entertainment industry . . . will seize the advantage. The past that has slipped away will be rendered ever more glorious, ever more a fantasy play with heroes, villains, and quaint settings and props. Small-town American life returns as :”Andy of Mayberry”—at first enjoyed with recognition, then later accepted as a faithful portrait of how things used to be.
3. The waning of the private self. We may even now be in the first stages of a process of social collectivization that will over time all but vanquish the ideal of the isolated individual. For some decades now we have been edging away from the perception of private life as something opaque, closed off to the world. . . . I am not suggesting that we are all about to become mindless, soulless robots, or that personality will disappear altogether into an oceanic homogeneity. But certainly the idea of what it means to be a person living a life will be much changed. The figure-ground model, which has always featured a solitary self before a background that is the society of other selves, is romantic in the extreme. It is ever less tenable in the world as it is becoming.
Speculations:
The Age of Print is rapidly drawing to a close. We have already entered into a new age of electronic communication and cyber space is revolutionizing the ways we live our lives, particularly in the ways we interact and communicate. We are not only constantly connected to each other, but we, as human beings, are developing whole new ways of socializing. Quite often we are closer to people one hundred miles away, if not a thousand or more miles away, than we are to those living next to us.
Friendship and love are now as much virtual online phenomena as they are physical realities.
Being wired is already becoming more important than being literate in the traditional sense. An entire new form of electronic literacy is developing at a lightning-quick pace.
The body of literate (or literary) readers is rapidly shrinking. Reading books, as we understand the process, will become an outdated—if not obsolete—skill.
Most students today are considerable less comfortable reading than students a generation ago, even a few years ago. They read less, and they understand less of what they read. They have been trained to skim, searching for the bulleted lists and images. They would generally rather watch a video than read a text.
These same students are much more comfortable with computer screens than with books. They are much more comfortable interpreting visual images and icons than textual descriptions. They have been trained to think in images rather than in deep contemplation.
These students are going to take over the world.
We are rapidly developing a new form of hieroglyphics. Emoticons are becoming wildly popular.
We are rapidly developing new electronic dialects through text messaging—OMG!
The concept of reading is undergoing a drastic transformation. In the near future nearly all reading will take place on computer screens or on Kindle-like apparatuses. What will constitute reading will take place in shorter and shorter durations, and in shorter and shorter forms. Readers will scan for highlighted bits, bytes, and bullets of information.
Students categorically prefer to research online rather than in libraries.
The concept of literacy is undergoing a drastic transformation. If there is a new Dark Ages, the dividing line between the ignorant masses and the enlightened few will be technological knowledge, not humanistic knowledge.
The means through which we receive information wholly affects the way we process that information.
We are losing our capacity to use language in skillful and subtle ways.
Eventually, English departments will be merged into History departments and eventually go the way of Philosophy departments. Libraries will become museums.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Lead Respondent Assignments
09/27, M
CFT, 25-50, 66-73 (Beauty and the Beast)
Beauty and the Beast (WD film)
LT, 55-68
TT, 21-34
BT, 78-91
Chris Sheffey, Katie-Rose Watson, Cathy Moody, and Ashleigh White
10/ 04, M
Beauty and the Beast (cartoon)
LT, 69-81
TT, 35-50
BT, 92-115
Sam Pai, Mary Martin, and Arceli Long
10/18, M
CFT, 74-1000 (Snow White)
LT, 82-93
TT, 51-82
BT, 116-133
Jacqueline Taft and Jason Allcon
10/25, M
Snow White and the Seven Drawfs (WD film)
LT, 94-107
TT, 83-94
BT, 134-149
Becca Allen, Bill Hamlett, and Misa Ho
11/01, M
CFT, 101-137 (Cinderella)
LT, 108-120
TT, 95-108
BT, 150-165
Calvin Smith, Ashlyn Hudson, and Kelsey Turnbull
11/08, M
Cinderella (WD film)
LT, 108-120
TT, 109-124
BT, 166-184
Britany Gable, Amanda Benson, and Omir Perez
11/15, M
CFT, 79-206, (Hansel and Gretel)
Hansel and Gretel (cartoon)
TT, 125-155
BT, 185-195
Connor Safford, Ross Harrison, and Kensey Gilbert
11/22, M
Hansel and Gretel (film)
TT, 157-191
BT, 214-138
Caitlin Haden, Mary Morton, and Brent Skoda
09/27, M
CFT, 25-50, 66-73 (Beauty and the Beast)
Beauty and the Beast (WD film)
LT, 55-68
TT, 21-34
BT, 78-91
Chris Sheffey, Katie-Rose Watson, Cathy Moody, and Ashleigh White
10/ 04, M
Beauty and the Beast (cartoon)
LT, 69-81
TT, 35-50
BT, 92-115
Sam Pai, Mary Martin, and Arceli Long
10/18, M
CFT, 74-1000 (Snow White)
LT, 82-93
TT, 51-82
BT, 116-133
Jacqueline Taft and Jason Allcon
10/25, M
Snow White and the Seven Drawfs (WD film)
LT, 94-107
TT, 83-94
BT, 134-149
Becca Allen, Bill Hamlett, and Misa Ho
11/01, M
CFT, 101-137 (Cinderella)
LT, 108-120
TT, 95-108
BT, 150-165
Calvin Smith, Ashlyn Hudson, and Kelsey Turnbull
11/08, M
Cinderella (WD film)
LT, 108-120
TT, 109-124
BT, 166-184
Britany Gable, Amanda Benson, and Omir Perez
11/15, M
CFT, 79-206, (Hansel and Gretel)
Hansel and Gretel (cartoon)
TT, 125-155
BT, 185-195
Connor Safford, Ross Harrison, and Kensey Gilbert
11/22, M
Hansel and Gretel (film)
TT, 157-191
BT, 214-138
Caitlin Haden, Mary Morton, and Brent Skoda
Excerpts from "Novel Reading, A Cause of Female Depravity"
(from the Monthly Mirror, November 1797)
I now begin to hope I shall see good old days come round again--that moderately stiff stays, covered elbows, and concealed bosoms, will soon be prevailing fashions; and, what is of far greater importance, that chastity--pure and spotless CHASTITY!-- will once more be the darling attribute of women.
(essayist believes that depravity has become "fashionable" among women)
I have been at some trouble to trace to its source this great calamity [female depravity] . . . and I find those who made novel-reading an indispensable branch in forming the minds of young women, have a great deal to answer for. Without this poison instilled, as it were, into the blood, females in ordinary life would never have been so much the slaves of vice.
A girl with her intellectual powers enervated by such a course of reading, falls an easy prey to the first boy who assumes the languishing lover. He has only to stuff a piece of dirty paper into the crevice of her window, full of thous and thees and thys and mellifluous compounds hyeroglyphically spelled, perhaps, and Miss is not long in finding out that "many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
And yet this, bad as it is, is not the worst result of such pernicious reading. It is no uncommon thing for a young lady who has attended her dearest friend to the altar, a few months after a marriage which, perhaps, but for her, had been a happy one, to fix her affections on her dearest friend's husband, and by artful blandishments allure him to herself. Be not staggered, moral reader, at the recital! Such serpents are really in existence.
"And was novel-reading the cause of this?" inquires some gentle fair one . . . "was novel-reading the foundation of such frail conduct?" I answer yes! It is the school the poor deluded female imbibes erroneous principles, and from thence pursues a flagrantly vicious line of conduct; it is there she is told that love is involuntary, and that attachments of the heart are decreed by fate. Impious reasoning.
(from the Monthly Mirror, November 1797)
I now begin to hope I shall see good old days come round again--that moderately stiff stays, covered elbows, and concealed bosoms, will soon be prevailing fashions; and, what is of far greater importance, that chastity--pure and spotless CHASTITY!-- will once more be the darling attribute of women.
(essayist believes that depravity has become "fashionable" among women)
I have been at some trouble to trace to its source this great calamity [female depravity] . . . and I find those who made novel-reading an indispensable branch in forming the minds of young women, have a great deal to answer for. Without this poison instilled, as it were, into the blood, females in ordinary life would never have been so much the slaves of vice.
A girl with her intellectual powers enervated by such a course of reading, falls an easy prey to the first boy who assumes the languishing lover. He has only to stuff a piece of dirty paper into the crevice of her window, full of thous and thees and thys and mellifluous compounds hyeroglyphically spelled, perhaps, and Miss is not long in finding out that "many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
And yet this, bad as it is, is not the worst result of such pernicious reading. It is no uncommon thing for a young lady who has attended her dearest friend to the altar, a few months after a marriage which, perhaps, but for her, had been a happy one, to fix her affections on her dearest friend's husband, and by artful blandishments allure him to herself. Be not staggered, moral reader, at the recital! Such serpents are really in existence.
"And was novel-reading the cause of this?" inquires some gentle fair one . . . "was novel-reading the foundation of such frail conduct?" I answer yes! It is the school the poor deluded female imbibes erroneous principles, and from thence pursues a flagrantly vicious line of conduct; it is there she is told that love is involuntary, and that attachments of the heart are decreed by fate. Impious reasoning.
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