Fairy tales shape our cultures and enrich our imaginations; their narrative stability and cultural durability are incontestable. This Norton Critical Edition collects forty-four fairy tales, from the fifth century to the present. The Classic Fairy Tales focuses on six tale types: "Little Red Riding Hood," "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White," "Cinderella," "Bluebeard," and "Hansel and Gretel," and presents multicultural variants and sophisticated literary rescriptings. Also reprinted are tales by Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.

Introduction

The Texts of The Classic Fairy Tales

　INTRODUCTION: Little Red Riding Hood

The Story of Grandmother

Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood

Brothers Grimm, Little Red Cap

James Thurber, The Little Girl and the Wolf

Italo Calvino, The False Grandmother

Chiang Mi, Goldflower and the Bear

Roald Dahl, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

Roald Dahl, The Three Little Pigs

　INTRODUCTION: Beauty and the Beast

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast

Giovanni Francesco Straparola, The Pig King

Brother Grimm, The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich

Angela Carter, The Tiger’s Bride

Urashima the Fisherman

Alexander Afanasev, The Frog Princess

The Swan Maiden

　INTRODUCTION: Snow White

Giambattista Basile, The Young Slave

Brothers Grimm, Snow White

Lasair Gheug, the King of Ireland’s Daughter

Anne Sexton, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

　INTRODUCTION: Cinderella

Yeh-hsien

Charles Perrault, Donkeyskin

Brothers Grimm, Cinderella

Joseph Jacobs, Catskin

The Story of the Black Cow

Lin Lan, Cinderella

The Princess in the Suit of Leather

　INTRODUCTION: Bluebeard

Charles Perrault, Bluebeard

Brothers Grimm, Fitcher’s Bird

Brothers Grimm, The Robber Bridegroom

Joseph Jacobs, Mr. Fox

Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg

　INTRODUCTION: Hansel and Gretel

Brother Grimm, Hansel and Gretel

Brothers Grimm, The Juniper Tree

Joseph Jacobs, The Rose-Tree

Charles Perrault, Little Thumbling

Pippety Pew

Joseph Jacobs, Molly Whuppie

　INTRODUCTION: Hans Christian Andersen

The Little Mermaid

The Little Match Girl

The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf

The Red Shoes

　INTRODUCTION: Oscar Wilde

The Selfish Giant

The Happy Prince

The Nightingale and the Rose

Criticism

Bruno Bettelheim, [The Struggle for Meaning]

Bruno Bettelheim, "Hansel and Gretel"

Robert Darnton, Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, [Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother]

Karen E. Rowe, To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale

Marina Warner, The Old Wives’ Tale

Zohar Shavit, The Concept of Childhood and Children’s Folktales: Test Case-"Little Red Riding Hood"

Jack Zipes, Breaking the Disney Spell

Donald Haase, Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales

Maria Tater, Sex and Violence, The Hard Core of Fairy Tales

Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, From The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography

Vladimir Propp, Folklore and Literature

From Morphology of the Folktale, The Method and Material

Thirty-One Functions

Propp’s Dramatis Personae

Selected Bibliography