Translation Seminar: The European Fairy Tale

Chances are you know something about the Brothers Grimm, but not so much, perhaps, about the complex storytelling traditions to which the stories they collected belonged. This seminar will explore the European fairy tale in all its glorious history, including works written or collected by Giovan Francesco Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy (who first coined the term “conte de fée” or “fairy tale”), Marie-Jeanne Lhériter, Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Alexander Afanasyev, Hans Christian Andersen, Joseph Jacobs, Oscar Wilde and George MacDonald. Throughout the semester, we’ll be talking about issues of translation in these tales and comparing them to the fairy-tale-inspired writing of our own age, including work by Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Kelly Link, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Joy Williams, Joyelle McSweeney, Shelley Jackson, Chris Adrian and others. The course has three main goals: 1. to acquaint you with the general history of the European tale; 2. to get you thinking about translation and the ways it impacts how we read; and 3. to inspire you to explore fairy tales as source material for your own work.