Long-time PAMLA Member Roswitha Burwick’s New Revised Fairy Tale Collection

Congratulations to Roswitha Burwick on the publication of her exciting new revisionary fairy tale collection:

Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings: Fairy Tales For Our Times (Ed. Roswitha Burwick, et al.)

For hundreds of years, from fairy tale to fairy tale, storytellers have told and retold tales that address the dangers and joys of their lives. Many of the beloved classical fairy tales, however, have become outmoded and reflect denigrating patriarchal views.

Presenting a different—sometimes unexpected—perspective of these well–loved tales, editor Roswitha Burwick, et al. present Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings.

Here, almost all the classical fairy tales—Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Frog Prince, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty—have been rewritten from different angles.

Sometimes upsetting the expectation of the reader, it turns the usual fairy tale upside down and inside out, interrogating the deeper meanings of the stories.  But they do not simply question the classical fairy tales; they also create their own intriguing plots.  Witches are not always wicked; parents are not always to be trusted; wolves do not always eat little girls; frogs are not always princes; princesses are not always comatose.

Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings also mirrors the complexity of the human search for the meaning of life, coming of age, the path to the self.  Here, readers will be able to combine a close reading of the tales with a critical stance to discuss the sociopolitical, historical, and ideological subtexts of the stories and to expose the complex layering and modes of subversion buried in the texts. To order the book, or for more information, go to:  www.merrysorrows.com