December newsletter for the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy

Sussex Centr e for Folk lor e, Fairy tales a nd Fa ntasy Newsletter December 2012

Inside this Issue

A Fairy-Tale Symposium.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Issue 2 of Gramarye out now.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 2013 Events Round-up.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Encyclopedia of Fantasy free online.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 8 Neil Gaiman mix tape.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Jonathan Strange 6-part BBC series.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 8 Graham Joyce’s top 10 ‘fairy fictions’.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 C.S. Lewis in Poet’s Corner.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9 Fairy-tale movie news .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9 Why are elves associated with Christmas?.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 11 The Sackman and other stories.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

‘Old, New, Borrowed and Blue: A Fairy-Tale Symposium

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n Tuesday 26 March, Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota and founding father of the academic discipline of Fairy Tale studies, will give a lecture at the University of Chichester. He’ll be preceded by talks by children’s literature expert Nick Tucker and by Jacqueline Simpson, Visiting Professor of Folklore at the University of Chichester. This fairy tale symposium will run as follows:

3 p.m.

Jacqueline Simpson

‘Terry Pratchett, Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men’ 4.15 p.m.

Nicholas Tucker ‘Grimm Parents’ 6 p.m.

Jack Zipes

‘Once Upon a Time: Changing the World through Storytelling’.

Tuesday 26 March Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester, College Lane, Chichester PO19 6PE More details to follow; if you have any queries please contact Heather Robbins at h.robbins@chi.ac.uk

Issue 2 of Gr amarye out now

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ssue 2 of Gramarye is now available to buy here. This issue is a special illustrated edition featuring work by Brian Froud, Alan Lee, Mel Grant, Arthur Rackham, Adelaide Claxton, Margaret Jones, Edmund Dulac and many more. This issue’s contents are as follows: • ‘To tell or not to tell: are fairy tales suitable for children?’, Nicholas Tucker and Jacqueline Simpson continue their BBC Radio 4 debate; • ‘A review of Brian Froud’s work’, Anne Anderson, curator of Froud/Lee exhibit ‘The Truth About Faeries’; • An interview with Brian Froud and a preview of his latest work, Trolls; • ‘Gwyn ap Nudd: Transfigurations of a Character on the way from Medieval Literature to Neo-Pagan Beliefs’, Angelika H. Rüdiger; • ‘Count Stoneheart and the First Christmas Tree’, a retelling of a traditional tale by bestselling fantasy author Kate Forsyth; • ‘My Favourite Story when I was young’, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère; • ‘Herne’, Steve O’Brien; • ‘Whatever happened to the Pixies? The Shrinking Role of Snap, Crackle and Pop in British Rice Krispies Advertising’, Louise Jolly; • A review of Tim Killick (ed.) and Alan Cunningham’s Traditional Tales, Sophia Kingshill; • A review of Jan Susina’s The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature, Colin Manlove; • A review of Giselle Liza Anatol’s Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on the Pop Culture Phenomenon, Malini Roy;

• A review of Stephen Asma’s On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Miles Leeson.

Subscribing A two-year subscription, for four copies of Gramarye in total, is available here.

Other outlets You will also be able to purchase Gramarye from: • Amazon • Kim’s Bookshop, Chichester • Atlantis, London • Treadwells, London • Precinct Books, Haying Island • Way Out There And Back, Littlehampton • Lunartique, Bristol

A sneak peek inside the journal.

2013 Events Round-up Fairytales in the Age of iPads: Inklings, Imagination, and Technology LeTourneau University will be hosting the annual C.S. Lewis and Inklings conference on 21-3 March 2013. For more information go here.

What’s in a “Castle of Murder”? Fairy Tales across Time and Place: Celebrating Our Deepest Language The Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature and Culture on 21-3 March 2013 has invited papers and creative work on the universal place of fairy tales in the world of communication and education. For more information go here.

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference 27-30 March 2013 in Washington, DC. Papers presented will discuss fairy tales in contemporary popular culture, revisions and adaptations of fairy tales, and pedagogical uses of and approaches to fairy tales. Go here for more information.

‘The Power of Fairy Tale’ Festival 2013 ‘Tell me a story!’, 24-5 May 2013, Haapsalu, Estonia.

This festival is being organised for the third time in Haapsalu. The first day will be a conference with leaders for children’s reading: teachers, librarians, book illustrators, parents and other enthusiasts The second day is filled with activities for both children and adults, the main focus being on performing arts that involve children themselves. Go here for more information.

The 16th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR) 25-30 June 2013; Organizers: Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore & Vilnius University.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Folk Narrative in the Modern World: Unity and Diversity. For more information, go here.

Robert Louis Stevenson conference 2013 RLS 2013 will be held in Sydney, Australia, from 8-10 July 2013, at the University of New South Wales. For more information go here.

The 2013 George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling Symposium 8-9 March 2013 in the Atrium, the centre for the School of Creative and Cultural Industries at University of Glamorgan. Theme: Storytelling and Children’s Books. Go here for more information.

An Inklings Week in Oxford St Aldates Church, Oxford, England, 14-19 July 2013 In the 50th anniversary year of the death of C. S. Lewis and the 40th anniversary year of the death of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Inklings Fellowship celebrates their contribution to faith and culture. For more information go here.

World Fantasy Convention Brighton, UK, 31 October – 3 November 2013 Guests of Honour: Alan Lee; Brian Aldiss; Tessa Farmer; China Miéville. A host of other authors, artists, publishers and industry insiders will also be attending. For more information go here.

In Other News

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on’t forget to follow our Facebook and Twitter feeds for all the latest folklore, fairy tale and fantasy news:

‘The Tallow Candle’ discovered A long-lost fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, written in his teens, was recently discovered in a box at the National Archives of Funen. Read the English translation here.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy online The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) is now free and searchable online here.

Neil Gaiman Mix Tape Someone’s made an online mix tape of all the songs mentioned in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Jonathan Strange coming to the BBC The BBC are planning a Jonathan Strange 6-parter for next year.

Graham Joyce’s Top 10 ‘Fairy Fictions’ Graham Joyce chooses his top 10 ‘fairy fictions’.

C.S. Lewis in Poet’s Corner Alister McGrath, Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education at King’s College London, explains why Lewis deserves his spot in Westminster for the Telegraph.

Latest Fairy-Tale Movie News

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ate Blanchett is expected to play the evil stepmother in Cinderella. The film has been scripted by Chris Weitz, who wrote ‘The Golden Compass’ movie script, and will be directed by Mark Romanek of ‘Never Let Me Go’.

Fairy Tale Movies due out in 2013

Jack the Giant Slayer

If you think you know the story, ~ you don’t know Jack.

The long-standing peace between men and giants is threatened, as a young farmer leads an expedition into the giants’ kingdom in hopes of rescuing a kidnapped princess.

Hansel and Gretel Witchhunters Classic Tale New Twist

Hansel and Gretel are a formidable team of bounty hunters who track and kill witches all over the world.

Dorothy of Oz

There’s trouble in OZ A computer-animated adventure: Back in Kansas, Dorothy Gale decides to return to Oz in order to help her friends.

Meanwhile, outside of Hollywood ...

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You may not have heard of the Belgium comedy ‘The Fairy ’, which was released on DVD this summer. A hotel clerk searches all over Le Havre for the fairy who made two of his three wishes come true before disappearing.

Why are elves associated with Christmas?

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rof. Bill Gray was interviewed live on Simon Mayo’s BBC Radio 2 show on Tuesday explaining why exactly elves are associated with Christmas. It’s now here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b01p6qdl#programme-broadcasts, about 17.50 mins in, and available until next Tuesday.

Transcript Simon Mayo: This is from yesterday’s Confession, where one of the things that Santa’s ex-little helper was doing was dressing up as an elf at his home in Kent and then coming in, using public transport and then being laughed at all the way to a prestigious South London department store where he was working as one of Santa’s elves. So then we had a conversation afterwards which essentially boiled down to: what is it with elves and Christmas? Is there any connection there?

Where does that come from? Because elves go back hundreds of years, but what’s it got to do with Christmas?

Here’s the man who will explain everything (let’s hope). He’s Bill Gray, Professor of Literary History and Director of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy – top alliteration – at the University of Chichester. Hello Professor Bill.

Bill Gray: Hi Simon.

SM: Thank you very much indeed for being there.

So, first of all before we get onto Christmas and elves, am I right in saying these are hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old, these things?

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BG: Yes, elves go back a long, long way, especially in Germanic folklore, but they only come into the Christmas story much later.

SM: So what’s the difference between elves and goblins and fairies?

BG: Well, in Germanic mythology elves were very prestigious but after the Norman Conquest, French language took over, a lot of the old Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking disappeared, and elves became amalgamated with fairies and all the names for those sorts of supernatural creatures, and it gets a bit of a mish-mash, which is one of the things that Tolkien was very keen to try and sort out to re-establish elves as important creatures.

SM: Yes, and I saw ‘The Hobbit’ just a couple of days ago.

BG: Lucky you!

SM: Yes, and I’m going to see it again on Saturday and Peter Jackson is going to be on the movie show they do over on 5 Live. However, he has a big thing and anyone who has seen Lord of the Rings trilogy will know that elves have their place, that they make great swords and all that kind of stuff. So would you go along with his sort of version of what this is all about?

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BG: Yes, I think so. I mean elves only became tiny partly by association with fairies, which also used to be really quite scary, at least human-sized, creatures, but everything got downsized from about Shakespeare’s time onwards, so that elves too became these tiny little cute creatures which essentially became the Christmas elves. But elves originally were not at all cute; like fairies, they could be very scary, very powerful, beings.

SM: So when did elves start to help Santa then?

BG: Really it’s the beginning of the 19th century; there’s a particular poem which we all know, ‘T’was the Night before Christmas’, but what people probably don’t know is that poem itself had a huge influence in creating our ideas of Christmas, and in that poem it actually says, of Santa Claus, that he was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf. So Santa himself was an elf.

SM: Wow, I didn’t know that; I should’ve known.

Of course, it’s now familiar now you’re saying it.

So Santa Claus is an elf!

BG: Well, I got a surprise actually when I read over the poem myself; I couldn’t believe it – it’s so obvious what’s happening but I hadn’t really paid it much attention before.

SM: So in our story yesterday, our confession, Santa’s ex-little helper was dressing as an elf with curly shoes and all that, putting blusher on cheeks – BG: Very cute, I imagine.

SM: Yes, very cute. So if you were going to dress as a real elf – you know, ‘real’ in inverted commas – how would you ... what would you wear?

BG: I think I’d contact Peter Jackson actually, because I think his depiction of elves is much closer to the old version, certainly the one Tolkien wanted to get back to, that I think is a truer version.

SM: And being Professor of Literary History and Director of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy, do you ever find yourself thinking, ‘I’d love to see one, you know, one day’?

BG: Well, I’d love to... I’ve seen them.

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SM: Oh, you have seen them?

BG: I’m joking, but I think there’s different ways of being real and I think as part of human beings’ consciousness, and stories especially, they’re so real and such an important part of that culture that goes back thousands of years; I think they symbolise hugely important things to us, so we ridicule them and marginalise them to our detriment. I think they’re an important part of who we are.

SM: Bill, we appreciate your time with us, thank you very much.

The Sackman and other stories ‘The Why Factor’, BBC World Service, airing Friday 20 December at 19:30

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rof. Bill Gray has contributed to an episode of ‘The Why Factor’ on our fascination with the Sackman and other bogey figures who steal (and do other bad things to) children that, for example, don’t go to sleep.

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This kind of figure appears in various cultures.

This suggests that this kind of scary figure is to do

with basic anxieties and issues about how an individual comes to terms with the demands of joining a culture, and what the child has to give up (or sacrifice) in order to join a culture.

A particular version of this story is ‘The Sandman’, a figure in European folk culture who encourages children to go to sleep by throwing sand in their eyes. This folk character is given a sinister twist in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fairy tale ‘The Sandman’ where the Sandman’s sand causes children’s eyes to pop out, which he then collects in a bag to take back to feed his own children on the moon.

In Hoffmann’s fairy tale the protagonist becomes obsessed with this figure who somehow becomes identified with a mysterious figure who used to visit his father, and eventually the protagonist goes out of his mind with terror.

Sigmund Freud based his famous essay ‘The Uncanny’ mostly on Hoffmann’s fairy tale, and of course turns it into a psychodrama about the Oedipus complex, with eyes obviously (?) symbolising testicles. However, in more general terms Freud’s thought is about the terrible anxiety that we have all had to face when we had to give up the mother’s body (and all that it symbolises: security, fulfilment, physical gratification, etc.) in order to join the human (men’s) club where the benefits of culture and civilisation come at the cost of our most primitive drives and desires. Hence we are both fascinated and repulsed by figures (such as the Sandman) who stand guard on the boundaries between different stages of development where we are challenged to be (or not to be!) fully human, or enculturated. The folkloric figure of the Sandman has had an afterlife not only in E.T. A. Hoffmann and Freud, but also in comics written by Neil Gaiman.

Listen to the broadcast here; the podcast here.

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Feedback Please contact Heather Robbins (h.robbins@chi.ac.uk) with any suggestions or feedback