| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 287 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Cover; Half Title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of Illustrations; Introduction; Memories of Bedtime Stories; The Tale of Rumpelstiltskin; 1 The Story's History; The Life and Times of Rumpelstiltskin: Foreword From Eden; Who Owns This Story?; An Unlovely Story About Unpleasant People; Where Rumpelstiltskin Came From; The Search Begins; Rumpelstiltskin, Any Language's Native Speaker; A Story Is Reborn; The Story's Setting; The Problem of Meaning; Six Roadsigns Through the Maze; The Map to Meaning; 2 Meaning Is Purpose |
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Prologue in Prehistory: Guilty Pleasures and the Pleasure of ContritionWithin the Realm of Memory; A Third Word-Root; Droopy but Trustworthy; A Little Guy by Any Other Name . . .; Compensation; What's That Between Your Legs?; The Distaff Side: Real Men Don't Do Fiber Arts; A Gadget Ordains a Sex; An Extinct Species and Its Descendants; Rumpelstiltskin's Shadow Across Literature; 3 Rumpelstiltskin's Author; The Room Where the Story Was Born: The Poor Girls Salon; In the Spinning Chamber; The Spinning Chamber as Salon; A Room of Her Own, and It's Not Virginia Woolf's; Spinning and Destiny |
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Spinning and FateFairytales vs. Myths of Spinning; 4 The Spinner's Libido; Spinning: Erotic Prelude or Alternative to Sex; Motherhood Extolled, Begrudging Fatherhood; Replacement Parents; Enter the Spinsters; Insurrection of the Spinsters; Art Not for Sale; The Imagination as Female; Let That Be a Warning to You; 5 Fairytale Contracts and Commerce; Magical Helper or Legal Villain; Business Is Business; Crimes Against the Crown; Lessons to Be Learned; Justice, Then and Now; A Negotiated Child Unobtainable by Magic; How Rumpelstiltskin Gained a Bad Reputation; 6 Supernatural Zoology |
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He's Not a Troll or a DwarfGnomes and Others; What to Call a Unique Being?; The Price of True Love; 7 The Talking Cure; The Courage to Speak Truth; Balancing Work and Play; Rumpelstiltskin's Humiliation on Display; Secrets of the Spinning Room; Talk as Therapy; Healing Takes Time; 8 The Devil versus Motherhood; Something Else Not Mentioned; Speaking His Name Makes Him Vanish; There's Evil in the Story but Is Rumpelstiltskin Diabolic?; A Detour: A Note About Spinning Gold; Rumpelstiltskin the Brewer; Domestic Dangers; Spinning While Stoned; A Central Question: Where Has Mother Gone? |
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Updating the Motif of the Lost MotherA Surrogate Mother's Care; What Follows Nobody's Idea of a Happy Ending; 9 The Unknown Name; Community and Strangers; Nameless Lone Wanderers; How to Rescue a Tarnished Name; What's in a Name?; And Finally; 10 A Bad Reputation, Unearned; Beauty and Its Lack; After Beauty Comes Manners and Experience; The Power of His Name; The Well-Guarded Chamber; A Rape by Any Other Name; Greeting Rumpelstiltskin; A "Dirty" Joke?; Spinning That Rehabilitates Reputations; The Politics of Rumpelstiltskin; 11 A Lamentable Example of Self-Abuse; Abuse and Self-Abuse |
| Summary |
Everyone knows Rumpelstiltskin's story--or thinks they do. We heard it as children. We might affectionately remember the adult voices reciting the tale or recall the light in the room and the time of day when we enjoyed hearing this scripted performance. A grown-up's voice added roughness and pitch to mimic the characters, to murmur tension-filled passages, to pause drawing out the suspense between the Queen's guesses. Maybe the storyteller's voice finally rose to exult when shouting the discovered name or, drawing close, whispered it malevolently. Those long-ago readers intended to enchant us, sometimes to put us to sleep, and for a while we delighted in this magical performance. Then we grew up: obligated to attend to an adult's endless travails, we forgot little Rumpelstiltskin. But he eventually returned. Years later we told this story to our children joining a parade of generations stretching back--no one knows how far. We voluntarily enrolled in a long procession that greys toward the back of the line, blurred, nameless, and wispy before the figures pale translucent and finally become invisible. We became merely the foremost reciters of a tale whose narration enrolled us in a club whose rules we think we know, but don't really. This tale may count among the world's oldest dirty jokes. The punchline misplaced, over time its wickedly funny insights about adult life passed for childish nonsense |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Harry Rand is a senior curator of cultural history at the Smithsonian Institution |
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Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 03, 2020) |
| SUBJECT |
Rumpelstiltskin (Folk tale) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80002457
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Rumpelstiltskin (Folk tale) fast |
| Subject |
Fairy tales -- Germany -- History and criticism
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Children's Literature.
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Fairy tales
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Germany
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781351204156 |
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1351204157 |
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9781351204132 |
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1351204130 |
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9781351204125 |
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1351204122 |
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