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Disability, deformity, and disease in the Grimms' fairy tales

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  • Author: Schmiesing, Ann
    Date:
    Created
    2014
    Summary:

    Although dozens of disabled characters appear in the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales, the issue of disability in their collection has remained largely unexplored by scholars. In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, author Ann Schmiesing analyzes various representations of disability in the tales and also shows how the Grimms' editing (or "prostheticizing") of their tales over seven editions significantly influenced portrayals of disability and related manifestations of physical difference, both in many individual tales and in the collection overall.

    Contents:
    • Able-bodied aesthetics? : the Grimms' preface to the Kinder-und Hausmärchen
    • The simulacrum of wholeness : prosthesis and surgery in "The three army surgeons" and "Brother Lustig"
    • Gender and disability : the Grimms' prostheticizing of "The maiden without hands" and "The frog king or Iron Henry"
    • Cripples and supercripples : the erasure of disability in "Hans my hedgehog," The donkey," and "Rumpelstiltskin"
    • "Overcoming" disability in the Thumbling, Dummy, and Aging Animal Tales.
    Genre:
    Original Publisher: Detroit, MI, Wayne State University Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9780814338421, 0814338429