Happy Winter Solstice Down Under Fairy Tale Folk - Today (21st June) is the 2015 AFTS Conference!

Program cover, titled 'Spinning stories into golden matter', is by Debra Phillips

The 2nd Annual AFTS Conference

Transformations:

Spinning Straw into Green & Gold!

Right now, on this Winter Solstice morning Down Under, Australian fairy tale folk are getting ready to walk into the NSW Writer's Center on the East Coast of the country and gather for the 2015 Annual Australian Fairy Tale Society Conference.

Although things may have appeared quiet here and elsewhere, there's been a lot going on behind the scenes. We have speakers, authors, artists, live music, exhibits, book signings, storytelling performances and more! To see what's going on, take a look at the program below, and there will be live 'reporting' on the AFTS Twitter account HERE, as well as the AFTS official Facebook page HERE.

If you want to add comments, ask questions, or are there in person and want to add your own pics to help those folk who are following remotely have a taste of the event, please add #aftsconf2015 to your posts and/or tweets so everyone can find them!

And for Aussies, either local or abroad, (and for those who've met Aussies and heard some of our yarns), the AFTS wants your input! We're collecting Aussie folklore and fairy tale lore and stories (and versions and twists!) for our growing collection, to preserve them for the future and study and work with them in the present.

Event: Monash Fairy Tale Salon to Explore Fairy Tale Migrations

On Monday, June 9th, Belinda Calderone, chief organizer of the Monash Fairy Tale Salon (an academic-based fairy tale salon in Australia, inspired by the old French gatherings such as were frequented by fairy tale luminaries Charles Perrault & Countess d'Aulnoy), will be speaking at the Inaugural AFTS Conference, on the subject of how fairy tales have migrated across lands, with particular attention to those that made the journey to Australia.

The talk, titled Strange Lands: The transportation of European Fairy Tales in to the Australian Landscape, will essentially be a condensed consideration of the subject that will be explored in a special half-day event, later in June with the rest of the Monash Fairy Tale Salon.

When: Sunday June 29, 2014
Where: Caulfield, VIC, Australia

Since the poster is a little small, I'll transcribe the print for you here:

As part of the Glen Elra Storytelling Festival, the Monash Fairy Tale Salon, a staff and postgraduate reading group at Monash University, will be hosting a day exploring fairy tale migrations, with a special focus on Australian tales. The four-hour event will include academic papers as well as fairy tale readings and performances. For the bold at heart, come dressed as your favorite fairy tale character and be in the running to win a prize! This free event is open to anyone who has a love of fairy tales.

Registration for Transporting Tales, is now open. To register, just RSVP to arts-fairytale AT monash DOT edu and they will put you on the list.

In case you missed it, the event is open to ANYONE who loves fairy tales and is FREE! (It would also help if you lived in Victoria, Australia.)

I sincerely wish I could be there and will watch for any reports of the event that I can share with you.

(I need to find an LA-based fairy tale salon stat!)

The Australian Fairy Tale Society Awakens After a Hundred Year Sleep!

AFTS logo by Regan Kubecek

The world has a new Fairy Tale Society. In Australia! (Woot!!) *fistpump*

It's called, coincidentally, the Australian Fairy Tale Society. (The temporary online home, until the official launch in June, is HERE.)

Welcome to the world AFTS!

But the creation of this society is really a continuation of work that began one hundred (ish) years ago...

"One hundred years ago (or thereabouts) the eminent folklorist and fairy tale collector Joseph Jacobs might have been Australia’s answer to the Brothers Grimm. Jacobs was born, raised and university educated in Sydney but he moved to England in the late 19th Century to gather and publish fairy tales there. Meanwhile our rich tapestry of tales grew, yet there was no comprehensive endeavour to collect, analyse and preserve Australian fairy tales... until now."

To help make the organization the best possible resource for the collection and preservation of Australia fairy tales and to support current and new work, the new Australian Fairy Tale Society launched a crowd funding project on Monday April 28 to help them get off the ground.

As well as collecting folklore, the AFTS national website* will promote current events, share fairy tale news, inspire new works, and encourage a strong network of fairy tale lovers across the land. The society will hold annual conferences and encourage discussion groups to form across the country. (*To be launched at the conference.)

by Regan Kubecek

With a crowd funding project that launched on Monday April 28, an inaugural conference on Monday 9th June, and a new national website, the Australian Fairy Tale Society (AFTS) has broken the
spell."

But they don't just want your monetary help. They looking to launch an active and ongoing collection of fairy tales in Australia:

Does Grandma tell a bawdy version of Little Red Riding Hood? Did Cinderella make her way into your childhood rhyming games? Know any good Beauty and the Beast jokes? We're searching for Australian fairy tale folklore for our new collection.

Take a look at the video to see more about the new Australian Fairy Tale Society and what they (we!) hope to do with the support of contributors (and, like most crowd-funded projects, there are some great gifts and perks, according to your donation amount - see website for details HERE).

Being a long way from home myself, I am keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a way for supporters afar to participate or spectate but nothing has been confirmed as yet. If this changes and the conference participants (or attendees) jump on Twitter, Skype or Facebook for any panel or presentation (and I get a heads up) I will definitely let you know ASAP so you can plan your live participation with the time differences etc.

Here are some event details confirmed to date (more details on papers & panels below the poster):

• Best selling and award-winning author Kate Forsyth will present her paper 'Rapunzel in the Antipodes' and be on our discussion panel looking at 'Cultural Editing: How some fairy tales get lost in the woods'.
• Sarah Gibson - Jungian analyst, creator of Re-enchantment and the Fairy Tales Re-imagined Symposiums - will address the 'Ways of Interpreting Fairy Tales', with a focus on Australian visual artists.
• Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario, who researches and teaches fairy tale, children's and fantasy literature at Monash University in Melbourne, will break open the definition of fairy tale in her exploration of 'Baroque in Oz: From Giambattista Basile to Shaun Tan'.
• Belinda Calderone, who runs the Monash Fairy Tale Salon and is completing her PhD on motherhood in fairy tales, will present her paper 'Strange Lands: The transportation of European fairy tales into the Australian landscape'.
• Jo Henwood, storyteller and co-founder of the AFTS, will tell 'An Australian Thumbelina' replete with "dingoes, wombats, echidnas and lorikeets" at the June conference.

• 

  Vasilisa Fair by Regan Kubecek

  Jenni Cargill-Strong - storyteller, singer, and founder of The Storytree Company - will share her research on the Little Red Riding Hood tale on our discussion panel looking at 'Cultural Editing: How some fairy tales get lost in the woods'.
• Griffith University Honours student Sophie MacNeill will complete our discussion panel looking at 'Cultural Editing: How some fairy tales get lost in the woods' with her extensive knowledge of Snow White.
• Storyteller and researcher, Tobias Eccles, will look at a common thread weaving through locally collected tales in his paper 'Stealing from the Sky, Stealing from the Underworld: The heroic thief in Australian fairy tales'.
• Danielle Wood, who is working on her second collection of original fairy tales, will present a reading of her latest book 'Mothers Grimm' at the conference.
• Robyn Floyd will be presenting her paper 'Constructing Australian Fantasy from a Grimm Perspective: Olga Ernst' followed by a storytelling performance of one of Olga's stories.

There will also be some fairy tale artists and writers present for panels, meet and greets and signings of their works and books.

If you're not in Australia, but still want to show your support for this new (and huge!) fairy tale endeavor, please feel free to contact the lovely and very friendly duo who got AFTS off the ground, Reilly McCarron and Jo Henwood, either via the AFTS Facebook page HERE or the crowd funder site HERE.

Although I dearly wish I could be there in person, I will most definitely be there in spirit. 

Note: all the art shown is, as credited below the images, by Aussie illustrator Regan Kubecek, who both created the AFTS logo and is the (unofficial at this time) AFTS artist. Ms. Kubecek also recently created a set of fairy tale illustrations which you can see HERE.

"Visualising Little Red Riding Hood" A Paper by Sarah Bonner - UPDATED LINKS (& additional excerpts)

Daughter by Kiki Smith 1999

UPDATED LINKS FOR ACADEMIC PAPER POST FROM 2009:

Apparently the article that I originally posted on HERE has gone out of date where it was originally hosted but, after a reader recently asked for help, I've found it again HERE, complete with references. 

Here's my original note regarding the paper: 

This is a pretty fascinating exploration for anyone interested in fairy tales being interpreted in a visual medium. While academic in tone, it's still very readable and looks at everything from advertising and fashion to artistic renderings.

Visualising Little Red Riding Hood

Gérard Rancinan. Little Red Riding Hood, 2003
©Gerard Rancinan

In recent years contemporary artists have been appropriating and re-inventing traditional fairy tales. 

Subverting and interrogating received meanings, artists are challenging the traditional parameters of tales which convey ideas of gender role and racial identity. The fairy tale is being translated from literary text into visual culture. 

The artists recoding the tales address shifts in cultural attitude, engaging predominantly with issues of identity and discrimination.

Some additional excerpts:

The visual fairy tale has developed extensively in the twentieth century through advances in film and animation technologies. Improved technology has also led to wider dissemination of the fairy tale. The language and motifs of the tales are internalised within the culture, rendering fairy tales sophisticated communications devices that influence consumer trends, lifestyle choices and gender models. The translation from text to image relies on the repeated use of tropes particular to “Little Red Riding Hood.” The presence of the wolf and red hood is sufficient to identify the tale to the reader/viewer. Where the written text demands an investment of time and offers an accumulated meaning, the image, in contrast, imposes a direct communication: the presence of a red hood immediately identifies the tale to our cultural unconscious. The simplicity of these motifs belies the complex history and interpretation that lend the tale its meaning; and despite changing historical contexts, these tropes endure. One effect of fairy tales’ adoption by visual media is that their significance is underestimated: they are rendered invisible by their very ubiquity.  

The visual aspect of the literary fairy tale began with the inclusion of illustrations printed alongside the text. At this juncture a visual language was introduced to the tales. The broad print dissemination ensured the association and consumption of the accompanying image, effectively creating a visual language, a series of motifs immediately recognisable to the viewer. The illustrator’s selection of significant scenes has served to internalise the images in a collective unconscious to the extent that the images can exist without the text as reference.

And with regard to the image shown above:

Taking the traditional fairy tale, artists are reviewing and re-inventing the tales in both parody and critique. Gérard Rancinan, Paula Rego and Kiki Smith have all produced significant bodies of work referencing fairy tales, and all respond subversively to recent cultural pressures, particularly in relation to identity construction. In their work on “Little Red Riding Hood,” a dialogue about identity and discrimination engages viewers, challenging their experience of fairy tales and introducing cultural revelations. Rancinan’s interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” [Figure 1] engages with the literary tale and subverts its meaning. Surrounded by blood-spattered hanging sheets and dangling from a hook, Red Riding Hood is cast as a cross-dressing male ballet dancer watched by a wolf behind bars. The traditional tale echoes through the motifs, and Rancinan, through selection and inversion (female cast male, wild animal caged) renders meaning ambiguous. Referencing the violence of to this tale, Rancinan upsets the formulaic and saccharine fairy tales as offered by Disney. Rendered like a crime scene, Rancian’s image abandons the forest and suspends the ominous relationship between Red Riding Hood and the wolf against a backdrop of polythene sheeting. Barthes’ anxiety returns as questions outnumber answers. 

Kiki Smith. Daughter, 1999

And with regard to Kiki Smith's work:

Daughter (1999) is a four foot high sculpture of a girl wearing the tell-tale red cape and hood [Figure 8]. Despite the fact that she is immediately identifiable as Little Red Riding Hood, there remains an uncertainty as her face sprouts hair suggesting a morphing bestiality, invoking both the werewolf myth and the freakish bearded lady of the circus arena. In this work Smith undermines the clear cut definitions of wolf and girl as given in the literary tale, instead inviting the possibility of duality. 

By her difference Daughter is made a spectacle as something other. The viewer is challenged to accommodate and reconcile what we know of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. The opposites of predator and prey embodied in Daughter force the viewer to review their experience of the tale and, to an extent, themselves, recognising the equal presence of innocence and malignance. In this work the artist imagines that Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf have come together as outcasts and given birth to Daughter. Helaine Posner suggests that “their improbable offspring becomes the embodiment of male, female, and animal characteristics, the unique progeny of disparate beings” (10). In Daughter unification is found to challenge the parameters of good and evil predicated in the traditional Grimm tale.

There is MUCH more fascinating commentary to read so, if you haven't already, please do. 

As it gave me the option to embed, I am doing so below. Hope it's helpful!

Read More or Download

Grandma, What a Big History You Have!

Oh I sincerely wish they'd had done a "mockumentary reveal" of Red's "genealogy" care of TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" That's how I would have chosen to announce Little Red Riding Hood's travels along the Silk Road and her connection to the Middle East.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This is the big fairy tale news of the season for folklorists and scholars (in particular): one anthropologist, Dr. Jamie Tehrani, has traced Red Riding Hood's lineage via unique means (especially with regard to fairy tales) and believes he's found her origin. He published his findings three days ago, on November 13, 2013 in PLOS ONE.

✒ ✒  ✒ (click the "Read more" link below this line to discover LRRH's ancient ancestor) ✒ ✒ ✒  ✒ 

Fairy Tale Fights - The Academic Version

The Story of the Three Bears by H.J. Ford from the Green Fairy Book

(Many thanks to Heidi from SurLaLune for finding the artist! I knew that style looked familiar... :D )

Less than a week ago Once Upon A Blog published notice of an anthropological study, said to prove the ancient origin of fairy tales. (You can read that post HERE).

It would seem Dr. Tehrani's announcement and his talk at the British Science Fair last week have stirred up an old, yet apparently still hot, debate in the academic ring of fairy tale studies.

In one corner we have the oral traditionalists; in the other: the literary-origin camp.

Heavy weights from both camps have already weighed in and traded some verbal fisticuffs.

Representing the literary-origin advocates we have the highly respected Ruth Bottigheimer:
(Quotes from The Star)

"Tehrani has bought into the newest wave of biology-based understanding of literature, taking evolutionary genetics as his model. But his views are based on slippery assumptions that can't be verified and that have no legs in the real world.

Of course, all narratives have ancient origins: Aesops's fables date back to the sixth century B.C. But "modern revisionists distinguish between different kinds of traditional tales" – folk stories differ from fairy tales – "and understand that they have histories of different lengths."

Elements of a narrative told here and there over time do not a "fairy tale" make."

! (exclamation punch, er, point added by the Fairy Tale News Hound)

Dark Fairytale - Battle by Ken Wong

Keeping his cool with a smooth 'bob-and-weave' response, we have Donald Haase (also highly respected):

"Yes, there is debate in the field over dating. Fairy tales are in the thick of the culture wars."

The editor of Marvels & Tales, a twice-yearly journal of fairy tale studies, says Tehrani is right to conclude that a form of Red Riding Hood exists in many varied cultures. What's news, however, is that the story may date back further than 2,600 years: "It's intriguing, it's plausible, but tracing the ancestry of fairy tales can be very difficult. I want to see his evidence."

Arguably the most well known and respected fairy tale authority, Jack Zipes, also firmly (and famously) in the oral-traditionalists corner, doesn't hesitate to respond, or to pull his punch:

"All our storytelling originated thousands of years ago, centuries before the print editions of fairy tales," he says. "Anyone who says they arrive only with print is just stupid. People have similar experiences around the world and always have had."

Ouch.

But this is just the warm up. They're all waiting eagerly for the paper to be published before winding up for the knock-out.

If you're interested in getting up to speed you can read the original news post HERE (which links to the original Telegraph UK article) and the one I'm quoting today HERE.

I'm planning on getting a ringside seat for the next round if I can. In the meantime, this is just begging for an editorial cartoon.

New Anthropological Study Confirms Fairy Tales Are Ancient In Origin

My thanks to Diamonds and Toads for finding this article and posting about it! You can find Kate's post HERE. I couldn't help but join in to spread the news... :)

The UK Telegraph just published an article on a study by anthropologists that's 'revealed' the 'origin' of fairy tales is far older than was previously thought. There are many who already believed fairy tales have an ancient origin but this is apparently the first time this has been systematically studied with a scientific system. Quote: "the researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor...".

Essentially this now proves fairy tales existed in some form in ancient times (in as much as proving such a thing is possible) - well before Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm's grandparents were around.

Here are some other quotes from the article, showing how they used the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the many variants to do their research:

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

...Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf. In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

...He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations. By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable.

You can read the rest of the fascinating article HERE.

Red Riding Hood by Sanjai Bhana

Dr Jamshid (Jamie) Tehrani of Durham University presented his findings at the British Science Festival on Tuesday in his talk "Fairy Tales and Chinese Whispers: Towards a Darwinian analysis of descent with modification in oral traditions", during the Darwin's Theory and Cultural Sciences event. (If anyone has access to the talk, - video, notes or report - I'd be very interested in looking at it!)

If this subject interests you, you may want to check out the article on "The Quest for the Earliest Fairy Tales: Searching for the Earliest Versions of European Fairy Tales with Commentary on English Translations" (by Heidi Anne Heiner) and the Fairy Tale Timeline at SurLaLune.

I also recommend the book shown below, "Fairy Tale in the Ancient World" by Graham Anderson. Here's the description from Amazon.com:

Graham Anderson examines texts from the classical period which resemble "our" Cinderellas, Snow Whites, Red Riding Hoods, Bluebeards and others, and argues that many familiar fairy tales were already well-known in antiquity in some form. Examples include a Jewish-Egyptian Cinderella, complete with ashes, whose prince is the biblical Joseph; a Snow White whose enemy is the goddess Artemis; and Pied Piper at Troy, with King Priam in the role of the little boy who got away. He breaks new ground by putting forward many previously unsuspected candidates as classical variants of the modern fairytale, and argues that the degree of cruelty and violence exhibited in many ancient examples mean such stories must have often been meant for adults.

While well researched and excellent for students of fairy tales and folklore it's a quick and enjoyable read for non-academics too. I recommended it. You can buy it HERE.

NOTE: I couldn't find the artist to credit for the European tole (?) painting in the center of the post. If anyone knows please let me know so I can correct this.

Visualizing Red Riding Hood (a paper)

I found this interesting paper from a 2006 issue of Moveable Type - a publication of the Postgraduate Society of the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London.

The post-graduate student, Sarah Bonner, takes a look at how society is interpreting the tale of Red Riding Hood through visual means and incorporating it even more into society's make-up.

From her paper:

In recent years contemporary artists have been appropriating and re-inventing traditional fairy tales. Subverting and interrogating received meanings, artists are challenging the traditional parameters of tales which convey ideas of gender role and racial identity. The fairy tale is being translated from literary text into visual culture. The artists recoding the tales address shifts in cultural attitude, engaging predominantly with issues of identity and discrimination. In this paper I examine the visual development of “Little Red Riding Hood,” investigating the manner in which the literary tale has been adopted by contemporary artists, how the visual responds to the textual, and cultural attitudes embedded in reiterations of the tale.

This is a pretty fascinating exploration for anyone interested in fairy tales being interpreted in a visual medium. While academic in tone, it's still very readable and looks at everything from advertising and fashion to artistic renderings.

You can read the whole paper (with some pics throughout) here.

She also cites her references - a handy list, should you wish to do some more study on the subject.

_________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: APRIL 29, 2014

Apparently the article has gone out of date where it was originally hosted but I've found it again HERE, complete with references. As it gave me the option to embed, I am doing so below. Hope it's helpful!

Visualising Little Red Riding Hood

In recent years contemporary artists have been appropriating and re-inventing traditional fairy tales. Subverting and interrogating received meanings, artists are challenging the traditional parameters of tales which convey ideas of gender role and racial identity. The fairy tale is being translated from literary text into visual culture. The artists recoding the tales address shifts in cultural attitude, engaging predominantly with issues of identity and discrimination.

Read More or Download