‘Fairytales begin with conflict because we all begin our lives with conflict. Zipes' raison d'être can be reduced to conflict, and where better to understand it than the oxymoronically-titled 'fairytale'? Zipes' first degree was in Political Science, followed up by an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature, perfectly explaining the premise from which he approaches his work. In The Irresistible Fairy Tale, Zipes sets out to 'demonstrate that the historical evolution of storytelling reflects struggles of human beings worldwide to adapt to their changing natural and social environments.’Īn authority on the Brothers Grimm, Zipes translated The Complete Fairy Tales (Bantam, 1987) that famous volume has recently received renewed attention in light of its 200th anniversary last December. The only problem with creating a groundbreaking work is how to ensure that subsequent works live up to the standard of the earlier success. Those already familiar with Jack Zipes will know his seminal scholarly work, Fairytales and the Art of Subversion (Wildman, 1983), of which 2013 marks 30 years since publication.
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