#jack zipes

For a bit of context, these two books are the two parts of "The Great Treasury of Sicilian Fairy and Folk Tales", translated in English for the very first time in 2004 by Jack Zipes.

Now, if you know Jack Zipes, you might wonder how come he translates Sicilian fairytales when he is a translator of German texts and German fairytales... Well it is actually because this collection of Sicilian fairytales was originally a German collection!

They were originally collected by the German folklorist Laura Gonzenbach, and published in German. Quite the irony... Sicilian fairytales only available in German. It also explains why they were so hard to obtain for a long time.

These specific illustrations are associated with a set of twelve fairytales, which are...

"Quaddaruni and his sister" ; "Sorfarina"...

... "Don Giovanni di la Fortuna", "Prince Scursuni"...

... "The Godchild of saint Francis of Paula", "The Pig King"...

... "The Robber with a Witch's head", "Clever Peppe"...

... "The Beautiful Maiden with the Seven Veils", "The Twelve Robbers"...

... "The Wicked Schoolmaster and the Wandering Princess", "The Beautiful Anna".

While you can buy each book individually (the first volume is red, the second pale blue), you can also get the full collection in one volume, called "Beautiful Angiola: The Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach" (Not to be confused with the first volume of the collection, "Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales, Collected by Laura Gonzenbach")

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

- Philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political activist

Published:

- The Communist Manifesto (1848)

- Capital, Volume I (1859)

- Volumes 2 and 3 published posthumously by Frederick Engels, his longtime work partner and best friend.

Labor Theory of Value

Constant Capital: the raw materials, the cost of running the factory, etc.

Variable Capital: the cost of labor

Surplus Value: value added to the product through labor; wages = “profit” (stolen surplus value)

Capitalism

- Economic system

- Class relations

- Dependent upon technological innovation

- Primitive Accumulation (Enclosure in Europe)

- Colonial Violence Abroad: raw materials and enslaved labor as inputs, “subjection of Nature’s forces,” constantly expanding markets

Bourgeoisie: owners of the means of production.

Proletariat: own only their own bodies; sell their labor for a wage.

Revolution! “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Base: the economic system (feudalism, capitalism, communism, etc.)

Superstructure: everything else (the judiciary, the form of government, educational systems, fashion, the arts, coercive institutions like the police and military…and fairy tales!)

Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

- Italian Marxist & Communist Politician

- wrote The Prison Notebooks (1929-1935)

Cultural Hegemony:

The domination of culture by a ruling class that imposes their worldview (beliefs, explanations, values, mores, etc.) onto all others within society

- Meant to maintain the domination of the status quo

- Eventually seen as normal and natural (even by those who have only been manipulated into sharing it) because it has blocked out all alternatives…but all cultures are constructed and contingent

- The proletariat must critique, reject, and replace bourgeois culture with its own beliefs/values.

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)

Co-wrote The Dialectic of Enlightenment, published in 1947

The Frankfurt School:

School of social theory and critical philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt, particularly active between the wars

Critical theory:

- Western Marxist philosophy developed in the Frankfurt School, as Horkheimer put it, to “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”

- Universally critical, including self-critical, of all social sciences, with an aim towards not only understanding culture and society in its specific historical contexts, but changing them for the better.

Homogenizing and Hegemonizing:

- The product of technological innovation, like all capitalist industries

- 20th century advances in printing, radio, and especially film technologies: production, reproduction, distribution

- The means of cultural production are owned by the same class (the bourgeoisie) that owns all the means of production under capitalism.

Popular/mass culture:

- Made by the elite (requiring technological skill and special training) for the folk (the proletariat) to buy

- Culture as commodity

- The means of creating & continuing bourgeois cultural hegemony in the modern industrial capitalist world

- The content is all fundamentally the same; the technology of production is constantly revolutionized and is the main selling point. All smaller, un-industrial forms of cultural production are overrun or contextually tethered to mass culture.

Follower question: What cultural messages do you see reinforced through these werewolf romance books, judging them solely by their covers?

More homogenizing and hegemonizing:

Everyone is a consumer of the cultural commodity, which is made to look like a great variety of commodities, but which only has a single, unifying content that justifies and perpetuates bourgeois domination. The plot of every mass-produced book, film, and TV show is fundamentally based on bourgeois values that support the continuation of the capitalist status quo. Unity of content is concealed by a thousand different packaging designs.

Jack Zipes (1937- ]

Self-proclaimed critical theorist, very well-respected. His background is primarily German folklore.

Published Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale in 1993

Fairy Tale as Myth

Oral folk culture is appropriated by elite, literary culture.

Oral culture vanishes easily; the written word can survive with just one copy.

Elite culture (classically, the aristocracy) can erase the adaptable folk version of the fairy tale and replace it with its own immutable version of the fairy tale.

The collective, evolving, lived experience of the folk is replaced by the status quo elite worldview.

Fairy tales begin to look like myths: eternal, universal, “natural,” unchanged and unchangeable as they are reproduced down the generations.

Duplication

Literally, a fake; creating something unoriginal, a copy of the real thing.

Repetitive, reinforcing, safe and comforting, not risky and challenging

Traditional and socially conservative, not innovative or progressive

“To duplicate a classical [mythologized] fairy tale is to reproduce a set pattern of ideas and images that reinforce a traditional way of seeing, believing and behaving.”

Freezes ideas and values in time; replicates them extensively and indefinitely

Homogenizing and hegemonizing, as Adorno & Horkheimer would say

Revision

“The purpose of producing a revised fairy tale is to create something new that incorporates the critical and creative thinking of the producer and corresponds to changed demands and tastes of audiences.” However! “This does not mean that all revised classical fairy tales are improvements or progressive.”

       - “Producer” – singular

       - This is NOT a collective process, as it would be in folk oral tradition.

Class War and Technological Innovation

The folk fairy tale is appropriated by the aristocracy, which revises it to contain its own worldview.

The revised literary fairy tale can now be duplicated through printing technology unavailable to the folk.

The mythologized literary fairy tale is stolen again by the newly ascendant ruling class: the bourgeoisie.

New industrial technologies mythologize the new bourgeois revision and spread it widely, now among the folk, who buy it as a commodity.

“Fairy tales are born out of necessity and desire.”