From the Beast to the Blonde

Book excerpt: This brilliant and timely study looks beyond the Freudian interpretation of fairy tales, to the tellers of the tales, and to the social and cutural contexts in which the tales are told and re-told through the centuries, from the ancient sibyls to the eighteenth-century SALONIERES, from Angela Carter to Disney. The value and enduring popularity of folk and fairy tales derives not only from their mythic significance but, crucially, from the fact that their concerns are rooted in the material world. Lively, provocative and ground-breaking, FROM THE BEAST TO THE BLONDE is Marina Warner's first major work of non-fiction since the acclaimed MONUMENTS AND MAIDENS.