Blog Post Content

Maria Tatar on Fairy Tales and Fantasy: A Twitterscript

By Trent Gilliss, senior editor | Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 8:45am

An Elven LadyImage by Christos Tsoumplekas / Flickr, cc by-nc 2.0

Fairy tale themes abound in television and movies right now. And they’re not just for children anymore. Via ISDN, Krista Tippett interviewed Maria Tatar, a scholar of the Brothers Grimm and other classic tales who chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. They discuss what these old stories work in us — and how we work through them on our fears and our hopes. I live-tweeted the gems of their conversation — and there were many — and hope you'll share them with others.

Fairy Tale, Maria Tatar, Harvard University, Grimm, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel

Leave a Comment

More information about text formats

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

1 Comments

Submitted by Kathleen Lisle on Tue, 2013-03-26 17:11

This reminds me of some of Madeleine L'Engle's observations about fairy tales in "The Rock that is Higher". She wrote, "These so-called children's stories are aware of what many adults have forgotten -- that the daily, time-bound world of provable fact is the secondary world, the shadow world, and it is story, painting, song, which give us our glimpses of reality."

Share this Post

Top Blog Posts

Touch Wood in a Japanese Forest with Bach
A spectacular feat of engineering and creativity that you have to see to believe. And just guess what inspired its making. Just marvelous!
An Empathy Video That Asks You To Stand in Someone Else's Shoes
If you could stand in someone else's shoes... Hear what they hear. See what they see. Feel what they feel. Would you treat them differently? A video that speaks to the connections we all need.
The Little Monk and the Samurai: A Zen Parable
A powerful Zen parable teaching us about compassion and gratitude in the face of death.
Simple Awareness: David Foster Wallace on the Value and Responsibility of Being Educated (video)
An imaginative video that brilliantly captures the essence and impact of David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College.
The Pablo Neruda Poem Sylvia Boorstein Always Carries With Her
On this Mother's Day, in some odd way, I can think of no more fitting tribute than to listen to Ms. Boorstein reciting these lovely lines from Pablo Neruda.
apples