Folklore Forum

Jack Zipes. Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xvii + 171, bibliography, film bibliography, index.

Steve Stanzak
Indiana University

As the subtitle suggests, this work by distinguished fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes endeavors to dispel the romanticized image of Andersen in popular culture by offering a more accurate and nuanced examination of the Danish storyteller. Although published during the bicentennial commemoration event of Andersen’s birth (the book carries the event’s logo), Zipes nevertheless avoids celebrating Andersen. Instead, Zipes aims to reevaluate the life and works of the prolific storyteller so that he may be taken as a serious literary figure. (more…)

Laura Gonzenbach. The Robber with a Witch’s Head: More Stories from the Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales. Trans. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. xxxii+230. Illus., notes, bibliography.

The Robber with a Witch’s Head is the second volume of Jack Zipes’s translation of Laura Gonzenbach’s nineteenth-century collection of Sicilian folk narrative. While this volume completes the translation of Gonzenbach’s work, the introduction to the volume is a slight revision of the introduction to the first volume, and thus it could easily stand alone as a translation of Italian folk narrative. (more…)