Volume 14, Issue 1 (2000) Fairy Tale Liberation—Thirty Years Later

From the Editor

This special issue of Marvels & Tales focuses on feminist fairy-tale studies. The special title, Fairy Tale Liberation—Thirty Years Later, refers to the fact that it has been three decades since the advent of feminist fairy-tale scholarship, which began when Alison Lurie published her controversial 1970 article entitled “Fairy Tale Liberation.” The intent of this issue is to take stock of feminist fairy-tale scholarship, offer new contributions that advance the discussion of gender in fairy tales, and encourage additional research in new directions. The contributions published here include critical articles by well-known scholars, who break new ground by reconsidering problems in a new context and by advocating new models of interpretation. Ruth B. Bottigheimer reexamines conventional wisdom about the modern fairy-tale heroine in European tale collections by expanding the sociohistorical context and linking her emergence to the phenomenon of fertility control. Lewis C. Seifert considers the problems of subversion and ambiguity in literary tales by seventeenth-century French women and recommends approaches that can help us better understand how to interpret these texts.