Transformations: Gender and the Literary Fairy Tale

Writer Philip Pullman characterizes the fairy tale by what he calls its “perpetual state of becoming and alteration,” and indeed the fairy tale seems defined by its inherently transformative nature. The goal of this course is to examine the genre of the literary fairy tale in its perpetually transforming state. By tracing its movement across time and geographical borders, we will attempt to answer the fundamental question of what defines a fairy tale, and in doing so we will consider the limitations of genre, the complexities of translation, and the problematic notion of authorship. In addition to thinking about questions of form, we will also examine how gender and sexual politics function in the fairy tale. This course will introduce students to the notion of the fairy tale as a uniquely rich site to work through questions about sexuality and gender. In this course, we will read some of the earliest versions of literary fairy tales from Western Europe as well as contemporary retellings, in order to consider the ways in which retelling fairy tales can be a form a radical, critical engagement with an original text.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)