Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings

For hundreds of years storytellers have told and retold tales that address the dangers and joys of their lives. Offering a different and sometimes unexpected perspective of these familiar tales editor Roswitha Burwick et al. present Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings. Here almost all the classical fairy tales Hansel and Gretel Little Red Riding HoodThe Frog Prince The Little Mermaid Cinderella Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty have been rewritten from different angles. Sometimes upsetting the expectation of the reader the authors turn the usual fairy tale upside down and inside out interrogating the deeper meanings of the stories. But they do not simply question the classical fairy tales; they also create their own intriguing plots. Witches are not always wicked; parents are not always to be trusted; wolves do not always eat little girls; frogs are not always princes; princesses are not always comatose. Merry Sorrows (Un)Happy Endings also mirrors the complexity of the human search for the meaning of life coming of age the path to the self. Here readers will be able to combine a close reading of the tales with a critical stance to discuss the sociopolitical historical and ideological subtexts of the stories and to expose the complex layering and modes of subversion buried in the texts.