The Castle Of Truth And Other Revolutionary Tales

A collection of radical political fairy tales—some in English for the first time—from one of the great female practitioners of the genre Hermynia Zur Mühlen (1883–1951), one of the twentieth century’s great political writers, was not seemingly destined for a revolutionary, unconventional literary career. Born in Vienna to an aristocratic Catholic family, Zur Mühlen married an Estonian count. But she rebelled, leaving her upper-class life to be with the Hungarian writer and Communist Stefan Klein, and supporting herself through translations and publications. Altogether, Zur Mühlen wrote thirty novels, mysteries, and story collections, and translated around 150 works, including those of Upton Sinclair, John Galsworthy, and Edna Ferber. A wonderful new addition to the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series, The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales presents English readers with a selection of Zur Mühlen’s best political fairy tales, some translated from German for the first time. In contrast to the classical tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Zur Mühlen’s candid, forthright stories focus on social justice and the plight of the working class, with innovative plots intended to raise the political consciousness of readers young and old. For example, in “The Glasses,” readers are encouraged to rip off the glasses that deceive them, while in “The Carriage Horse,” horses organize a union to resist their working and living conditions. In “The Broom,” a young worker learns how to sweep away injustice. With an informative introduction by Jack Zipes and period illustrations by George Grosz, John Heartfield, Heinrich Vogeler, and Karl Holtz, The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales revives the legacy of a notable female artist whose literary and political work remains relevant in our own time.

A collection of political tales—first published in British workers’ magazines—selected and introduced by acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres—the fairy tale, fable, allegory, parable, and moral tale—and penned by a range of lesser-known and celebrated authors, including Schalom Asch, Charles Allen Clarke, Frederick James Gould, and William Morris, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages—and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. In Workers’ Tales, acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than forty of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume. Throughout, the tales in this collection exemplify themes and ideas related to work and the class system, sometimes in wish-fulfilling ways. In “Tom Hickathrift,” a little, poor person gets the better of a gigantic, wealthy one. In “The Man Without a Heart,” a man learns about the value of basic labor after testing out more privileged lives. And in “The Political Economist and the Flowers,” two contrasting gardeners highlight the cold heart of Darwinian competition. Rosen’s informative introduction describes how such tales advocated for contemporary progressive causes and countered the dominant celebration of Britain’s imperial values. The book includes archival illustrations, biographical notes about the writers, and details about the periodicals where the tales first appeared. Provocative and enlightening, Workers’ Tales presents voices of resistance that are more relevant than ever before.

"The present volume contains thirty-five fairy tales by nineteen writers, presented chronologically by author"--Introduction.

An enchanting collection that introduces the author and activist Naomi Mitchison to a new generation of readers The Fourth Pig, originally published in 1936, is a wide-ranging and fascinating collection of fairy tales, poems, and ballads. Droll and sad, spirited and apprehensive, The Fourth Pig reflects the hopes and forebodings of its era but also resonates with those of today. It is a testament to the talents of Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999), who was an irrepressible phenomenon—a significant Scottish political activist as well as a prolific author. Mitchison's work, exemplified by the tales in this superb new edition, is stamped with her characteristic sharp wit, magical invention, and vivid political and social consciousness. Mitchison rewrites well-known stories such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "The Little Mermaid," and she picks up the tune of a ballad with admiring fidelity to form, as in "Mairi MacLean and the Fairy Man." Her experimental approach is encapsulated in the title story, which is a dark departure from "The Three Little Pigs." And in the play Kate Crackernuts, the author dramatizes in charms and songs a struggle against the subterranean powers of fairies who abduct humans for their pleasure. Marina Warner, the celebrated scholar of fairy tales and fiction author, provides an insightful introduction that reveals why Mitchison’s writing remains significant. The Fourth Pig is a literary rediscovery, a pleasure that will reawaken interest in a remarkable writer and personality.

Kurt Schwitters revolutionized the art world in the 1920s with his Dadaist Merz collages, theater performances, and poetry. But at the same time he was also writing extraordinary fairy tales that were turning the genre upside down and inside out. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is the first collection of these subversive, little-known stories in any language and the first time all but a few of them have appeared in English. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes, one of the world's leading authorities on fairy tales, this book gathers thirty-two stories written between 1925 and Schwitters's death in 1948--including a complete English-language recreation of The Scarecrow, a children's book illustrated with avant-garde typography that Schwitters created with Kate Steinitz and De Stijl founder Theo van Doesburg. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales also includes brilliant new illustrations that evoke the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Schwitters wrote these darkly humorous, satirical, and surreal tales at a time when traditional German fairy tales were being co-opted by the Nazis. Filled with sharp critiques of German life during the Weimar and early Nazi eras, Schwitters's tales are rich with absurdist events and insist that not everyone--and perhaps not anyone--lives happily ever after. In "Lucky Hans," the starving protagonist tries to catch a rabbit only to have it shed its fur like a coat and run off naked into the forest. In other tales, a sarcastic gypsy stands in for a fairy godmother and an army recruit is arrested for growing to monstrous size. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales is a delightfully strange and surprising book.

"The French folklorist and Breton-language poet François-Marie Luzel (1826-1895) published several volumes of Breton tales that he collected in Brittany and translated into French. Unlike many nineteenth-century folklorists, including the Brothers Grimm, who relied on correspondents to conduct much of their scholarly research, Luzel and his sister Perrine transcribed nearly all of the tales they collected by spending many winter nights at Breton veillees, social gatherings that took place in houses and cottages throughout Brittany during the winter months of darkness, where communities of family and neighbors would come together to tell traditional stories and share news, gossip, and songs. The folklorist Michael Wilson has translated 29 of Luzel's French tales into English for this volume. Many of these tales have never appeared in English; others have not been translated into English for nearly a century. The tales are organized into a series of five veillees to capture the full context of the tales' original performance at these gatherings. Introductory material provides historical and literary context about Luzel, his surprisingly modern approach to collecting and publishing folk tales, and the Breton culture he worked throughout his life to preserve"--

"Although the influence of the Brothers Grimm on folklore in virtually every country in the West has been widely studied, a similar development in the early part of twentieth-century China is virtually unknown. This book collects and translates more than 40 tales selected from the "Lin Lan" series, published in China from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. The pseudonym "Lin Lan" was created in 1924, when a group of three literary stories about the legendary Xu Wenchang (1521-1593), himself the author of many literary works still popular today, were published in a morning newspaper. The success of this first attempt encouraged the creators to publish more folk tales and fairy tales, which ultimately played a major role in the development of modern folk literature in China. The series, written and developed by a Shanghai publisher under the pen name Lin Lan, was divided into three subgenres-minjian chuanshuo (folk legends/tales), minjian tonghua (folk fairy tales), and minjian qushi (comic folk tales)-published in 43 volumes containing nearly one thousand tales in all. The tales were collected the tales from oral storytellers throughout China in response to a call from the publisher, and combined elements of European fairy-tale literature with traditional Chinese narratives"--

A collection of magical Italian folk and fairy tales—most in English for the first time The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales presents twenty magical stories published between 1875 and 1914, following Italy’s political unification. In those decades of political and social change, folklorists collected fairy tales from many regions of the country while influential writers invented original narratives in standard Italian, drawing on traditional tales in local dialects, and translated others from France. This collection features a range of these entertaining jewels from such authors as Carlo Collodi, most celebrated for the novel Pinocchio, and Domenico Comparetti, regarded as the Italian Grimm, to Grazia Deledda, the only Italian woman to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. With one exception, all of these tales are appearing in English for the first time. The stories in this volume are linked by themes of metamorphosis: a man turns into a lion, a dove, and an ant; a handsome youth emerges from a pig’s body; and three lovely women rise out of the rinds of pomegranates. There are also more introspective transformations: a self-absorbed princess learns about manners, a melancholy prince finds joy again, and a complacent young woman discovers gratitude. Cristina Mazzoni provides a comprehensive introduction that situates the tales in their cultural and historical context. The collection also includes period illustrations and biographical notes about the authors. Filled with adventures, supernatural and fantastic events, and brave and flawed protagonists, The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales will delight, surprise, and astonish.