Fairy-tale author
Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić (1874-1938) has been called the "Croatian Anderson", or more recently the "Croatian Tolkien", and twice nominated for a Nobel, in the 1930s, before she committed suicide. Her most famous fairy-tale collection,
Croatian Tales of Long Ago (1916), was recently adapted as a flash animation, some of which can be
viewed online (flash, pop-ups) in an award-winning site. The
original book in English translation (1923) at Internet Archive includes
some cool artwork.
posted by stbalbach
on Sep 25, 2009 -
9 comments
Little Red Riding Hood's wayward past revealed: "Once upon a time, (the story) was a seduction tale. An engraving accompanying the first published version of the story, in Paris in 1697, shows a girl in her déshabille, lying in bed beneath a wolf. According to the plot, she has just stripped out of her clothes, and a moment later the tale will end with her death in the beast’s jaws — no salvation, no redemption. Any reader of the day would have immediately understood the message: In the French slang, when a girl lost her virginity it was said that 'elle avoit vû le loup' — she’d seen the wolf."
posted by feelinglistless
on Sep 19, 2004 -
32 comments