Thanks to Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for drawing my attention to the excelsior file. Having just spent some time in the blog’s archives I’ve got to agree with their marking this one a thinking blog — it sure is!
Now one of my interests is fairy tales. I’ve studied them, read them, written about them, talked about them, and will be co-teaching an online Rutgers grad course on them this summer (for the second time — we had a blast doing this course in 2004). I consider myself fairly well informed about the Grimm Brothers tales, but upon reading through the excelsior file, realized that perhaps not as informed as I thought. The gentleman has taken on the task of reading A-Grimm-A-Day with the plan of posting on at least one a week.
Excelsior began with one I know pretty well, “The Frog Prince,” one of those beastly bridegroom variants (hey, what can I say — I spent a summer studying these with a great scholar, Russell Peck at the University of Rochester). But then he moved on to “The Virgin Mary’s Child,” (also known as our ‘Our Lady’s Child”) one I had forgotten entirely. Next he wrote about “A Tale About the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” (By the way, excelsior is reading an edition translated by Jack Zipes while I’m linking to the tales in a much older edition at the wonderful surlanlune fairy tale site.) He then posted on “Faithful Johannes”. Most recently, he has posted on the more familiar “The Twelve Brothers.” (I’m a big fan of Birdwing, Rafe Martin’s take on what happened to the youngest brother in that particular tale.)
I’m really enjoying excelsior’s fresh take on these tales. Each post includes his retelling, his commentary and thoughts, and some very cool images. It is an ambitious project and I sure hope he can keep going with it!
educating alice 