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Cinderella Across Cultures: New Directions and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
The Cinderella story is retold continuously in literature, illustration, music, theatre, ballet, opera, film, and other media, and folklorists have recognized hundreds of distinct forms of Cinderella plots worldwide. The focus of this volume, however, is neither Cinderella as an item of folklore nor its alleged universal meaning. In Cinderella across Cultures , editors Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère, Gillian Lathey, and Monika Wozniak analyze the Cinderella tale as a fascinating, multilayered, and ever-changing story constantly reinvented in different media and traditions.
The collection highlights the tale's reception and adaptation in cultural and national contexts across the globe, including those of Italy, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia. Contributors shed new light on classic versions of Cinderella by examining the material contexts that shaped them (such as the development of glass artifacts and print techniques), or by analyzing their reception in popular culture (through cheap print and mass media). The first section, "Contextualizing Cinderella," investigates the historical and cultural contexts of literary versions of the tale and their diachronic transformations. The second section, "Regendering Cinderella," tackles innovative and daring literary rewritings of the tale in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in particular modern feminist and queer takes on the classic plot. Finally, the third section, "Visualising Cinderella," concerns symbolic transformations of the tale, especially the interaction between text and image and the renewal of the tale's iconographic tradition.
The volume offers an invaluable contribution to the study of this particular tale and also to fairy-tale studies overall. Readers interested in the visual arts, in translation studies, or in popular culture, as well as a wider audience wishing to discover the tale anew will delight in this collection.
The collection highlights the tale's reception and adaptation in cultural and national contexts across the globe, including those of Italy, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, and Russia. Contributors shed new light on classic versions of Cinderella by examining the material contexts that shaped them (such as the development of glass artifacts and print techniques), or by analyzing their reception in popular culture (through cheap print and mass media). The first section, "Contextualizing Cinderella," investigates the historical and cultural contexts of literary versions of the tale and their diachronic transformations. The second section, "Regendering Cinderella," tackles innovative and daring literary rewritings of the tale in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in particular modern feminist and queer takes on the classic plot. Finally, the third section, "Visualising Cinderella," concerns symbolic transformations of the tale, especially the interaction between text and image and the renewal of the tale's iconographic tradition.
The volume offers an invaluable contribution to the study of this particular tale and also to fairy-tale studies overall. Readers interested in the visual arts, in translation studies, or in popular culture, as well as a wider audience wishing to discover the tale anew will delight in this collection.
440 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2016
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About the author
Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère
8 books1 followerMartine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and former Associate Dean of the Humanities.
She has published on Dickens, Conrad, Nabokov, Rushdie and Angela Carter, the international fairy tale tradition from Antiquity to the present, and literary translation (theory, practice, reception). She is the author of Origin and Originality in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction (1999), which focuses on the poetics and politics of cultural translation, and Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s Translational Poetics (2013), which traces the interplay of translation and rewriting in Carter’s fiction. She co-edited After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth (2010), Des Fata aux fées: regards croisés de l’Antiquité à nos jours (2011), and guest-edited Angela Carter traductrice – Angela Carter en traduction (2014). Her latest co-edited book Cinderella across Cultures : new Directions and Interdisciplinary Perspectives is in press (2016).
She has published on Dickens, Conrad, Nabokov, Rushdie and Angela Carter, the international fairy tale tradition from Antiquity to the present, and literary translation (theory, practice, reception). She is the author of Origin and Originality in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction (1999), which focuses on the poetics and politics of cultural translation, and Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s Translational Poetics (2013), which traces the interplay of translation and rewriting in Carter’s fiction. She co-edited After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth (2010), Des Fata aux fées: regards croisés de l’Antiquité à nos jours (2011), and guest-edited Angela Carter traductrice – Angela Carter en traduction (2014). Her latest co-edited book Cinderella across Cultures : new Directions and Interdisciplinary Perspectives is in press (2016).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 20, 2017
There are a lot of wonderful articles in here on various aspects of Cinderella across time, but I think my favorite is Jack Zipes's on Cinderella as underdog. The man has put together a stunningly complete filmography of cinema adaptations of the story here, including the earliest silent versions, Brannagh's live-action one for Disney in 2015, and even My Big Fat Greek Wedding (how did I miss that was a Cinderella version? Obviously in retrospect) and Pretty in Pink. Frankly, the whole collection is worth looking through.
February 17, 2017
A fascinating, unique collection of literary criticism on the fairy tale "Cinderella." I particularly enjoyed the first section that contextualized the tale in a number of ways as well as the essay about Donna Jo Napoli's Bound.
February 7, 2016
Privileged to have read the preview
November 15, 2023
Some moot points and some points I think are not true at all! But very usable for my thesis and a wide range of perspectives and angles.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews