Confronting the Real in Fairy Tales

Dear Colleagues,

Writer and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro writes: "Es imposible encontrar lo hermoso sin explorar antes todo lo terrible" ("It's impossible to find the beautiful without first exploring everything that is terrible"). As scholars of fairy tales, we find ourselves inhabiting the liminal space between diverging paths. Deep in the midst of a forest clouded by fog, we are drawn to the path that leads to light and salvation, delving into the myriad meanings of the world of magic and the supernatural. However, the trail we often avoid is the one that leads to darkness. Here is the place from which fairy tales originate: the social, political, historic, economic, and cultural conditions that inspired these stories to be told. Marina Warner argues that "wishful thinking and the happy ending are rooted in sheer misery." This collection of essays aims to examine the dark world of human experience that catalyzed the creation of fairy tales.

I am pleased to invite fairy-tale scholars, folklorists, historians, and others to submit for consideration essays that confront the real in fairy tales. I seek work that engages with classic and contemporary variants, single-author literary tales, and fairy-tale-themed films.

The essays in this Special Issue will illustrate Italo Calvino's observation that "le fiabe sono vere" ("folktales are real"). Their resonance owes to their realism as much as to their wish fulfillment. For it is not only in walking the path of magic that fears, anxieties, and hardships may be vanquished, but also through taking the courage to confront the terrible things that lie in the darkness. 

Prof. Susan Redington Bobby
Guest Editor

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