Certificate in Intercultural Communication - German Folk and Fairy Tale GERM 2011   German Folk and Fairy Tale
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The Grimm Brothers' celebrated collection of folktales, first published in the early 1800s, contain narratives which persist in obvious and less obvious ways. References like 'Cinderella stories', 'leaving a trail of breadcrumbs', and 'kissing frogs' are part of our cultural shorthand, but it's the latent content of the tales, their magic, excess and extremes, violence, beauty and poetic force, which has continually drawn the attention of artists, writers, and critics. Older forms and diverse variants of many of the most famous stories present us with fragments of psychic history and shed light on developments in sexual politics, gender norms and societal trends. The course will include many stories from other traditions and time periods from ancient to contemporary, as part of the exploration of narrative patterns, their proliferation and their evocative power. We will study the specific factors which made the Grimms' collection significant; developments in the scholarship of folklore and definition of the genre; feminist critiques and creative reworkings of particular narratives; and the analysis of tale structures and motifs from a variety of critical approaches. Readings and instruction are in English.
CROSS-LISTING: GWST 2211.03
EXCLUSIONS: GERM 1080.06