Into the Forest discussion

Our non-fiction/scholarship selection for our Mythopoeic Nominee group read is Fairy Tale in the Ancient World by Graham Anderson.


This one looks a bit obscure, so if you'd like to read this, you might want to check your local library soon, just in case you'll need to put in a Inter-Library Loan request.

Too bad! I just checked and my library does not have it!
I'll have to see about an IL loan.

My library does not have it either.

I got lucky and at some point it came into work, so I bought a copy. Hope others find it!

Bummer, not available at mine either. Nor in Inter-library loan. . . Cheapest price I can find it for is around $20.

Will be interested to hear what others think about it, and if it's worth purchasing or not.

I got a huge surprise today.

My ILL copy has arrived already! I forget exactly when I put my request in, but it was less than a week ago!

And, the other library is giving me until Sept. 9 to finish & return it, too, so I don't even have to rush to read it.

I've been putting in my ILL requests from the main city library even though it's less convenient since I suspect their budget is a lot bigger. But there's obviously advantages to going through a smaller library system.

Got a call from my local library. They were able to find a copy of this at a semi-local college. It has a hard due date on it, so I will be moving this up as my next read. It's much smaller than I thought it'd be.

I've got a copy of this now via ILL, so I'll be reading it this month! I have to say, I haven't read any non-fiction in a REALLY long time, but the topic definitely interests me.

Kelsey wrote: "I've got a copy of this now via ILL, so I'll be reading it this month! I have to say, I haven't read any non-fiction in a REALLY long time, but the topic definitely interests me."
Same here! I have not been reading much non-fiction lately, but this one looks really good!

I'm about halfway through. I will say, it's not a book to binge. Definitely a one chapter a day book.

Just finished. Curious to find out everyone else's opinions.

I'm ashamed to say I haven't started yet. It's been sitting on my end table this whole time.

Rachel wrote: "Just finished. Curious to find out everyone else's opinions."

My library doesn't have it, so I had to order it as an inter-library loan.
Sometimes that just takes a few weeks, but other times it takes months. I hope it arrives soon!

I enjoyed it

I'm starting the Snow White chapter. (But after the introductory chapters, I zipped forward to read the Little Red chapter--since I'm working on a retelling right now.)

I find it extremely interesting (though Anderson had nothing new/useful for my purposes re Little Red). But this book makes me realize how sparsely read I am in the classical texts, other than the obvious ones. References will fly straight up over my head and hover there while I decide whether the point Anderson's making is significant enough for me to take a little detour through the internet to track down the text he refers to.

Susan wrote: "References will fly straight up over my head and hover there while I decide whether the point Anderson's making is significant enough for me to take a little detour through the internet to track down the text he refers to. "

That is where I was hung up in my review. So many references were beyond me. It made it hard to enjoy. I'm not the most avid nonfiction reader, but I feel that a book should be able to stand on its own without tons of extra side research to understand what it's saying. I did find it interesting to see just how old certain elements of a story have withstood the test of time.

Rachel wrote: "I'm about halfway through. I will say, it's not a book to binge. Definitely a one chapter a day book."

I just started this morning and can see that this will be the case with me too.

I agree with Rachel--a "one chapter a day" book. Pleasurable work, but work. (Shorter paragraphs would help! When I look away to follow up a footnote or reference, I have to search for my place. ;=)

Still taking a sip of this book, like a cordial, after lunch most days.

The Medea chapter is the most interesting to me so far, even though I've only ever read the Argonautica in summary. I adore the imagery in the Turkish version--the Medea figure, falling in love at first sight, meows like a cat; and (best of all) later, somebody is said to be so frightened that all the lice scurry down from his head to his feet.

In some idle moment, I'm going to read that whole Turkish tale, if I can find it.

I finished this a week ago, but didn't get to read the appendices because my interlibrary loan was due back. Did I miss anything important at the end there?

I also didn't have the time to track down notes and references to sources and stories I was unfamiliar with, so I just had to make myself plow on, and I expect that this will be the sort of thing where bits and pieces will continue to fall into place for me as I read more related work and stories in the future.

I also thought the Medea chapter was really cool, along with the whole concept/argument that some well-known classical stories are clearly present in modern tales that are lesser-known in and of themselves. It was actually more obviously compelling for me as an argument for a continuous storytelling tradition than the chapters where Anderson tried to piece together ancient versions of more well-known fairy tales from a hodge-podge of classical texts I'd never heard of.

The best thing about this book for me was how good it is at dismantling pre-conceived notions of what qualifies a narrative as a folk/fairy tale, and what qualifies it as related to any given modern tale type. I can tell that I'm already thinking about these stories slightly differently, even if I wasn't able to follow the minutiae of his arguments for each story.

Kelsey wrote: "I finished this a week ago, ......"

I'm still waiting for a copy to come in for me to read. :)
Oh well another later read.

I'll be late as well. I'm running behind on books I need to read before their pub dates, but it will be my next book.

I just finished the Medea chapter and like everyone else, this is slow going for me. I do find some of his points interesting. While I knew that fairy tales had ancient roots, and knew some of the ancient myths and stories that showed similarities with fairy tales, I didn't know there were so many. At first, I was familiar with more of the texts he was drawing from, but the last few chapters have all been material I'm unfamiliar with.

Sometimes, I loose the point of his argument (or if he's making an argument necessarily). This seems more like a compendium of ancient tales that have obvious connections to FTs than anything else. And while interesting, I don't feel like I'm learning anything, or adding to my knowledge of FTs?

Maybe the last 2 chapters will make some points I find more intriguing. Right now, it's a difficult read for me to get through!

Have reached the (to me) extremely interesting pages about Rumpelstiltskin sources/variations )--and got even more interested to see Anderson connect this story type to the legends of the building of Troy.
One thing I always try to keep in mind, when it comes to Troy, is that so far as I know, all the Troy stories we have are told by Greeks and then the even more remote Romans, not Trojans. A major effect of that is that even if we are hearing any authentic Troy legends/myths/stories (as opposed to something created out of whole cloth by the Greeks), the names and attributes of the gods are those the Greeks knew. The Trojans had different gods.
As we discover and translate more bits of Anatolian writing, we may even learn the true name of the god who helped build Troy.

Margaret wrote: " Sometimes, I loose the point of his argument (or if he's making an argument necessarily). This seems more like a compendium of ancient tales that have obvious connections to FTs than anything else. And while interesting, I don't feel like I'm learning anything, or adding to my knowledge of FTs?..."

Unfortunately I did not finish it and had an ILL which I could not renew. I think his "argument" would be that many myths are universal.

Susan wrote: "One thing I always try to keep in mind, when it comes to Troy, is that so far as I know, all the Troy stories we have are told by Greeks and then the even more remote Romans, not Trojans. A major effect of that is that even if we are hearing any authentic Troy legends/myths/stories (as opposed to something created out of whole cloth by the Greeks), the names and attributes of the gods are those the Greeks knew. The Trojans had different gods. ..."

Yes! Troy and many other ancient civilizations. This reminded me of a book I read a long time ago about the Phoenicians and about how little we know about them. The book maintained that many of the Greek myths actually originated in ancient Phonecia. I wish I could remember the name of the book! It might have been The Phoenicians: The Purple Empire Of The Ancient World

Lila wrote: "Unfortunately I did not finish it and had an ILL which I could not renew. I think his "argument" would be that many myths are universal. ."

I agree. I think this reads more like an encyclopedic index of stories than an academic argument, which I find a bit hard to follow right now. I'm having trouble with focus. But this is so obviously well researched and informative I know I should be more engaged.

Margaret wrote: " I'm having trouble with focus. But this is so obviously well researched and informative I know I should be more engaged..."
Yep! That's why I did not finish it in the 2 weeks time I had. I kept reading other things that were more fun. But the information in it is very interesting.

Lila wrote: " This reminded me of a book I read a long time ago about the Phoenicians and about how little we know about them. The book maintained that many of the Greek myths actually originated in ancient Phonecia. I wish I could remember the name of the book! It might have been The Phoenicians: The Purple Empire Of The Ancient World ."

And then of course there are the remoter Asian stories--I'm sure there's more, but I suspect Anderson was (is?) pretty clearly a specialist in "Classics" as defined by western universities.
Perhaps Anderson should have titled his book Fairy Tale in the Ancient Mostly Western World. . . .

Hey! Expanding this book and writing about it for the general public would make a nice PhD or Masters' project for some YA fairy tale addict.

Gosh, it looks like Greek and Roman Folklore: A Handbook might be, like, the dumbed-down version for normal people? It says that "this volume will meet the needs of high school students and general readers."

Kelsey wrote: "Gosh, it looks like Greek and Roman Folklore: A Handbook might be, like, the dumbed-down version for normal people? It says that "this volume will meet the needs of high school stude..."

Ha, it does!

Susan wrote: "And then of course there are the remoter Asian stories--I'm sure there's more, but I suspect Anderson was (is?) pretty clearly a specialist in "Classics" as defined by western universities.
Perhaps Anderson should have titled his book Fairy Tale in the Ancient Mostly Western World. . . .."

That's bothered me too. He says and we know that the earliest fairy tale version of Cinderella is Chinese, yet, he doesn't explore any ancient oriental versions of it? He does have some Turkish and Egyptian tales included.

Finished last night, following the 1 chapter a night regimen. :)

I thought it a very thorough academic text, if lacking the more engaging style of fellow FT academics Jack D. Zipes or Marina Warner. But it seems to open up a lot of potential for further study, particularly, to me, by looking at ancient non-Western texts and tracing their connections to FT.

I also thought it could prove very useful to academics who look at FTs from a socio-historical (as Anderson puts it) perspective. If you look at how a FT differs from its ancient counterpoints, it could point to historical and cultural differences between storytellers. Of course, you would have to be very careful with that kind of study! In the chapter before the conclusion, Anderson mainly focuses on how finding the similarities between tales could point to an over-arching meaning behind the tales, but then ultimately dismisses this as a concrete possibility (paritularly in socio-historical criticism). I'm more interested in the differences. I think that's where storytellers and academics both have the most room to grow and explore.

I especially liked this line:
"Where storytelling is a form of wisdom -- often indeed almost the only such -- then an appreciation of the nature and limitations of wisdom can serve to take us a long way along the road to understanding the fairytale and its teller" (166).

As I suspected, I enjoyed reading the last 2 chapters the most. If I were currently researching a single tale, I'm sure I would find the chapter with that tale to be more interesting.

Finished it in time to make my interlibrary loan deadline--but I admit I skipped lightly through the chapter on psychology near the end. (Seemed to be saying that FTs with female MCs are about accommodating the self to society to survive/thrive, and that FTs with male MCs are about poor-boy-makes-good. But there were many more words, and I found that particular theory so limiting and depressing that I couldn't bring myself to read that chapter carefully.)

I agree that this book would be wonderful for researching a single tale, esp if considering writing a retelling. Also for researching sources of "familiar" stories if one is designing a lesson plan in the Western classics.

Which means that I'm still considering buying a copy for my research shelf.

Yes, even though it wasn't an enthralling read for me, I'm keeping my copy because I think it may come in handy later for research, either for my writing or for my teaching.

Margaret wrote: "Yes, even though it wasn't an enthralling read for me, I'm keeping my copy because I think it may come in handy later for research, either for my writing or for my teaching."

I would not mind having a copy for reference, but I just could not read it straight through.