Part 2, Only in a Fairy Tale

Only in a Fairy Tale:

Discerning the Form through the Art of Illustration

Part 2

“Eucatastrophe”: Sudden and Miraculous Grace

Almost anything can happen in a fairy tale.  Main characters are murdered, blinded and banished.  Characters often start out weak, and must venture through an unknown forest, facing their fears and battling enemies. And when all hope seems lost, some miracle takes place and the main character comes out on top and all is well in the kingdom again leading to their “happily ever after”.  Some may complain that this is not realistic, but that is the point, fairy tales are not supposed to be about our reality, they live in their own reality and play by different rules.  Moreover, this form of story gives its readers hope, that as difficult and seemingly impossible the world may seem, the fairy tale always gets you out of it and your problems are resolved.

J.R.R.Tolkien has probably described this literary phenomenon the best.  He refers to this fairy tale happy ending propensity as “eucatastrophe”.  He coined this term from Greek: ευ- "good" and καταστροφή "destruction".  In his essay “On Fairy-Stories”, Tolkien states:

“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending… or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn”: this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…”

In his illustration for Rapunzel, Zelinsky gives us the moment following the eucatastrophe. Readers have just finished witnessing the almost religious miracle that changes the lives of Rapunzel and her beloved, the healing power of her tears to cure his blindness. Playing into this religiosity, Zelinsky ends his tale with this icon or Renaissance-style religious composition, showing that all is well, their happy ending is real, and Rapunzel, like the grace-giving Virgin herself, is the deliverer and stands at the center of their family’s world.

Only in a Fairy Tale, PART 1

Only in a Fairy Tale:

Discerning the Form through the Art of Illustration

This will be a 5 part series based on my final project for my course this past fall on the Brothers Grimm and fairy tales.  Each post will take on a certain aspect of the fairy tale as a genre, and unpack it by looking at a specific illustration.  Hope you enjoy and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the illustrations and my analysis!

Part 1

Once Upon a Time…

      Fairy tales inhabit the world of “once upon a time”.  They are not bound up by history or specifics of culture or the intricacies of clock time, they dwell in the land of “faerie” and have rules of their own.  Within the world of fairy tales, we begin in a place that mirrors reality, but then as the journey sets off, usually through the dark woods, we enter a space where anything can happen, mothers and fathers can abandon children, wolves can devour you alive, and witches in confectionary cottages will bake you for dinner.  “Once upon a time” is a sort of “dream time” or “literary time”; it is outside of time, “upon” or above it.  It is a place where time itself breaks, the rules of time do not exist, and real time no longer is.  In this way, it resembles closely the idea of Kairos, moments where “clock time” seems to open up and no longer exist, where time falls away.

     In Anton Pieck’s illustration for Hansel and Gretel, we see this magical house, amid a callous, dark forest.  Shadowy figures loom in the background, as a warning to the reader that perhaps this place is too good to be true; unfortunately Hansel and Gretel are not privy to this knowledge until it is almost too late.  The witch’s house dwells in a time of its own, and the rules of reality, the fact that a house could not really stand made of mere sweets, do not hold.  In Derek Stratton’s illustration, ideas of time and different levels of reality jump out at the viewer.  Hansel and Gretel stand at the foreground, balanced on the threshold between the dark forest and the tempting candy land.  The witch stands as observer, more than that as a god figure of this realm of time that she dictates, with the peppermint hypnotically dangling, she controls each step that the siblings take and whether or not they will survive.  That is until the wit and cunning of a real world child supplants this “once upon a time” goddess.

Thanks to All of You!

Thanks to all of you who have stopped by here to read posts, check out reviews, interviews or book lists here at Alice in Baker Street!!  The blog just hit over 10,000 views which is AWESOME!

The new semester just kicked off this week, and this spring I'm taking some great classes, three English courses and one Art studio course : Golden Age of Children's Literature, Literature for the Young Child, an Independent Study focusing on soon to be determined topics in children's lit, and an Illustration class!!

Coming soon I'll be posting a 5 part series honing in on what makes fairy tales fairy tales by way of illustration analysis, so stay tuned for that :)

Hope all of your New Years are off to fantastic starts!!

Part 2 Journey through the Rare Books Room

Here's Part 2 of the visual tour through the Baldwin!  If you missed part 1 here's the link: http://alice-peregrinations.blogspot.com/2012/12/part-1-of-journey-through-rare-books.html

One of the treasures we found was this beautiful edition of Cinderella from the 1880s, illustrated by Eduard De Beaumont (who I want to learn more about now, because it was lovely!)  There were two copies, one which was a finished book and the other which contained sketches for the same book; it was awesome to see the process of transformation from manuscript to published work!  First here are the sketches and then the final book:

If you follow Brain Pickings, you may have seen Maria's post on Salvador Dali and his illustrated Alice in Wonderland...well here's one of the few original copies, it was AWESOME!

Hope you enjoyed the tour!!

Part 1 of a Journey through the Rare Books Room

Merry Christmas to all of you!  Hope your Holiday season has been off to a wonderful start!  As a special gift, I'm posting Part 1 of my visual journey through a Rare Books Library of Children's books!!  Enjoy:

Earlier this past semester, I had a chance to delve into the Baldwin Library for my classes.  The Baldwin is a library of historical children's literature, so pretty much an awesome rare books collections filled with children's books, old and new!  So I wanted to post a here a sort of visual tour, not a exhaustive one, but just some of the treasures I saw that day during our class time there.  Hope you enjoy (There are even a few videos I took, one with one of the original pop up books, look for them below!)!

So, this library has more than 130,000 books and periodicals in it's collection, so we got a sampling of some of the best and most interesting pieces:

A tiny "thumbnail" Bible:

A really old and AMAZING pop up book!!:

Peter Pan Portfolio of Arthur Rackham's illustrations!

Thought I'd include this video as well, to get a sense of the texture of working with this portfolio:

More from the collection:

I had never seen these illustrations for James and the Giant Peach, but I just fell in love with them:

Really old Red Riding Hood, I wish I could remember the dates!

This book was a collection of tons of illustrations from Randolph Caldecott, and there were just some of the most beautiful illustrations in here, every time I flipped to a random page I'd just find another wonderful image!