Books › Once upon a time
Once upon a time
201 pages
An elegant, erudite journey through the dark woods and enchanted castles of our collective cultural imagination.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a shadowy, enchanted forest with a brilliant scholar as your guide. The pace is steady and deliberate, allowing you to absorb the rich, glittering history of stories you only thought you knew. It carries an intellectual yet deeply appreciative mood, balancing the whimsical magic of childhood tales with the darker, gothic realities of their origins. The prose is elegant and erudite, effortlessly connecting Victorian literature, ancient oral traditions, and modern cinema. It is a deeply satisfying experience for anyone who loves folklore, offering a profound emotional arc that transforms nostalgic curiosity into a deep awe for the resilience of human storytelling. This is a must-read for those who want to understand why we keep returning to the dark woods.
- Mood
- intellectual
- enchanting
- reflective
- shadowy
- Tone
- scholarly
- insightful
- authoritative
- appreciative
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- cultural memory · evolution of storytelling · the power of myth · metamorphosis · female oral traditions
- The writing
- Elegant and erudite, weaving dense cultural history into accessible, glittering prose.
- The arc
- Moves from nostalgic curiosity to a profound, intellectual awe at the resilience of human storytelling.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love peeling back the whimsical layers of pop culture to reveal the dark, complex roots of traditional folklore.
Content notes
- folklore violence
- dark themes
About the book
Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over her long writing career, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich collection of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. She makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.
Description from Open Library.
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