Wonder Tales: Six Stories of Enchantment

by Marina Warner

Overview

Marina Warner has gathered together a magical collection of fairy tales by the great women storytellers of the 17th and 18th centuries. These are passionate, extraordinary, and occasionally proto-feminist retellings of classic fairy stories by women who ingeniously used the fairy tale genre to comment on their own times and experiences. The stories are all in superb new translations by celebrated writers, including A. S. Byatt, Gilbert Adair and John Ashbery. With a brilliant intorduction by Marina Warner, recognised as one of our greatest experts on myth and fairy tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448103171
Publisher:	Random House
Publication date:	02/29/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Marina Warner has an international reputation as a critic, historian and novelist. Her non-fiction works include The Beast to the Blonde, No Go the Bogeyman and Fantastic Metamorphoses, while her fiction includes the novels The Lost Father (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Indigo and The Leto Bundle, and short story collections including Murderers I Have Known.

Editorial Reviews

Originally published centuries ago, the six French fairy tales collected in this charmingly refined little volume appear here, some for the first time in English, in graceful contemporary translations by five internationally recognized writers, including Gilbert Adair, John Ashbery and A.S. Byatt. In her erudite 15-page introduction, novelist and critic Warner (From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers) details how the literary form was invented by French aristocrats during the reign of Louis XIV. Fairy tales were written mostly by women, who gave them universal significance with a feminist subtext, emphasizing, writes Warner, "trueness of heart and toughness of mind." Magic and metamorphosis are distinguishing characteristics of the genre. Centaurs, fairies and talking cats populate the six romantic yet moral tales. In "The White Cat," a prince stumbles upon a fabulous bejeweled palace owned by a beautiful white feline, with whom he falls in lovejust as Prince Zelindor, in "Bearskin," falls in love with a beautiful bear. In "The Counterfeit Marquise," an aristocratic boy raised as a girl suffers great frustrations when a beautiful, feminine young man awakens his passion. Though honor and true love are tested, prudence, faithfulness and devotion always triumph. The translations are elaborate but elegant, offering pleasurable diversions and tales within tales. Amusingly illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer, this stylish little book offers fanciful delights granted depth by background and context. (Oct.)

EBOOK COMMENTARY

Originally published centuries ago, the six French fairy tales collected in this charmingly refined little volume appear here, some for the first time in English, in graceful contemporary translations by five internationally recognized writers, including Gilbert Adair, John Ashbery and A.S. Byatt. In her erudite 15-page introduction, novelist and critic Warner (From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers) details how the literary form was invented by French aristocrats during the reign of Louis XIV. Fairy tales were written mostly by women, who gave them universal significance with a feminist subtext, emphasizing, writes Warner, "trueness of heart and toughness of mind." Magic and metamorphosis are distinguishing characteristics of the genre. Centaurs, fairies and talking cats populate the six romantic yet moral tales. In "The White Cat," a prince stumbles upon a fabulous bejeweled palace owned by a beautiful white feline, with whom he falls in lovejust as Prince Zelindor, in "Bearskin," falls in love with a beautiful bear. In "The Counterfeit Marquise," an aristocratic boy raised as a girl suffers great frustrations when a beautiful, feminine young man awakens his passion. Though honor and true love are tested, prudence, faithfulness and devotion always triumph. The translations are elaborate but elegant, offering pleasurable diversions and tales within tales. Amusingly illustrated by Sophie Herxheimer, this stylish little book offers fanciful delights granted depth by background and context. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

These six 17th-century French wonder or fairy tales, as editor Warner (From the Beast to the Blonde, LJ 10/1/95) explains in her introduction, fulfilled a need for relief from the social constraints and religious revivalism that prevailed during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. The 17th-century salonregularly held social gatherings presided over by prominent Frenchwomenperfected the art of public conversation and storytelling. Marie-Jeanne L'Hritier, whose tale "The Subtle Princess" is included here, inherited the salon begun by Madeleine de Scudry. Charles Perrault, who travestied himself as ma mre l'oye (Mother Goose), frequented these salons, while the Abbey of Choisy, a well-known transvestite, collaborated on "The Counterfeit Marquise." These tales are enjoyable because of the adroit skills of translators such as novelists A.S. Byatt and Gilbert Adair and poet John Ashbery. Highly entertaining reading for everyone and especially useful to scholars of French literature and French civilization.Robert T. Ivey, Univ. of Memphis

Library Journal