num_pages: 332
description: When fairy tales moved from workrooms, taverns, and the fireside into the nursery, they not only lost much of their irreverent, earthy humor but were also deprived of their contestatory stance to official culture. Children's literature, Maria Tatar maintains, has always been more intent on producing docile minds than playful bodies. From its inception, it has openly endorsed a productive discipline that condemns idleness and disobedience along with most forms of social resistance. In this book she explores how Perrault, the Grimms, and others reshaped fairy tales to produce conciliatory literary texts that dedicate themselves to the project of socializing the child.
language: English
title: Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
titlecomplete: Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
genres: Fairy Tales, History, Cultural, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Research, Psychology, Folklore, Mythology, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 259
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: Mythopoeic Scholarship Award
category: Myth and Fantasy Studies
publisher: Princeton University Press