Friday, February 27, 2015

Fairy Tale Friday--a New Series

I love fairy tales, and thanks to an army of 19th C tale-collectors Google Books has lots of copyright-free ones.   In honor of Open Access Week, I'm going to search out ones that interest me and feature them here on Fridays.





This tale includes several common folklore motifs:  A father is fooled into giving his child to a supernatural being (pictured above) (Thompson S241)*;  the child (in this case a son) is trapped in the SB's realm and is set, by said SB, several impossible tasks (Thompson H900), which the son accomplishes with directions from a woman (Princess Sigorra) (Thompson K1848); The son is finally able to flee with the aid of PS;  The son returns home, and, because he does not follow her instructions, he forgets PS.(Thompson D2003); The son's family arranges for him to get marries, and SB has to resort to complicated tricks to get to him and refresh his memory.


* Thompson, Stith, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature




Saturday, February 14, 2015

Murder Leads to Graphic Novels

I was reading a fascinating book called Victorian Murderesses, packed with all sorts of social historical detail, when I checked to see if there were whole books on one of the murderesses.  I discovered a whole graphic novel about her.


I have never been interested in graphic novels, but I thought I'd just take a look.  Looking turned to liking.  In fact, I liked it so much that I began reading other graphic novels by Rick Geary.

The Borden tragedy : a memoir of the infamous double murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892

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