Once Upon a Time: On the Nature Of Fairy Tales de Luthi, Max - 1976

Bloomington: Indiama University Press, 1976. Soft cover. Very Good. 8vo. Soft cover. 179 pp. Rubbing to covers, creasing to joints, sunning to spine. Luthi approaches fairy tales and related genres (local legends and saints' lives) as works of art, forms of pure fiction richly imbued with poetic symbolism. In each chapter he singles out one or two tales for discussion, and each stands as a model for some particular way or combination of ways - sociological, psychological, structural, or stylistic - of exploring the meanings and social function of traditional tales and of illuminating their symbolism and structural dynamics. Taken together, the eleven chapters in this first paperback edition constitute a compressed introduction to the variety of ways in which fairy tales may be read.