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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 398.2019
EAN num: 9780415977814
ISBN number: 0415977819
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: August 17, 2006
Publishing house: Routledge
Sale Popularity Level: 141996
Studio: Routledge
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Product Description:
In his latest book, fairy tales expert Jack Zipes takes on the question of why some fairy tales 'work' and others don't, why the fairy tale is uniquely capable of getting under the skin of culture and staying there. Why, in other words, fairy tales 'stick.' Long an advocate of the fairy tale as a serious genre with wide social and cultural ramifications, Jack Zipes here makes his strongest case for the idea of the fairy tale not just as a collection of stories for children but a profoundly important genre.
Why Fairy Tales Stick introduces new critical approaches to the study of classical fairy tales such as 'Cinderella,' 'Snow White, 'Beauty and the Beast,' and 'Hansel and Gretel' in an effort to understand how and why fairy tales have evolved over the last three hundred years and remained so relevant in our lives. Why culture has favored certain fairy tales may not be simply a question of ideology-tales reinforcing a societal status quo-but also deeply related to issues of genetics,memetics, linguistics, and evolution. Just as we as a species have evolved, Zipes argues, so has the oral folk tale been transformed as literary fairy tale to assist us in surviving and adapting to our environment.
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Rated by buyers 
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My older classroom kids love this one as they find out where their favorite fairy tales come from. This should be read under adult supervision for those under the age of 10.
Rated by buyers 
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Why fairy tales stick is a fascinating question that -- properly probed -- explains much about human cognition.
Unfortunately, and this is despite his vast volume of work in the studying fairy tales themselves, Zipes largely fails in his mission because of his unwillingness to acess other areas of study to unlock the fairy mystery.
It turns out that science and evolutionary psychology have been brought to bear in helping solve this problem. And what they tell is is that there are many contributing factors to why fairy tales stick with people and why they tend to mythically ideate.
One factor is superstition. By reading the works of Stuart Vyse, one can find that superstition is invoked where logical explanations are wanting. For example, at the betting table most people tend to make various pleas to lady luck or their favorite diety.
Another factor sort of follows naturally from the first. Once a superstition has been personified it becomes an easy step to attribute to that superstition a "theory of mind." In other words, just as we speculate on the motives of those we know, we attribute motives to our illusionary personified force and act in ways to placate those motives.
According to Pascal Boyer, who has studied why people religiously ideate, a religious component can be added when our personified force is attributed omniscience and omnipotence.
Or alternatively, if dinuted of omniscience or omnipotence, our personified force can merely be something unique...like a cat that can turn invisible or a person who survives death. In each case, the characters are memorable because they defy our usual expectations of cat and human behavior.
To the extent that fairy tales often involve these characters we have a partial explanation for why they "stick."
However, they are also memorable for the situations they create. Like watching a good movie can take one to another place and time and tease out expectations of human relations, they same occurs in fairy tales. Far from being a mere diversion these case studies give us the vital opportunity to imagine what would happen if we were to be in the same situation. In other words, we do not need to actually go there to know what being there is like.
But honestly, the story is still being filled in and thanks to psychologists like Steven Pinker and V.S. Ramashandran we are still learning much about the fascinating ways our minds cognate and why not only fairy tales but other things stick as well.
So in short, you can read this book but your time would probably be better spent reading the other authors mentioned in this review.
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