Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood by Maria Tatar

The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, published in 2002, in which Maria explores how profoundly fairy tales have influenced our culture.

The Annotated African American Folktales.

Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, published in 1993.

The Hard Facts of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, published in 1987.

Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature, published in 1978.

In a long and immensely distinguished academic career, Professor Tatar has written books about the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and childhood reading. She served as Dean for the Humanities at Harvard from 2003-2006. Her work reached a turning point after presenting with Bruno Bettelheim on the Brothers Grimm at a symposium in New York City, and she began to focus on folklore and the literary culture of childhood. However, at Princeton in the late 60s and early 70s, fairy tales and folklore were not considered 'academic', so she focused her attention on the literary canon, writing a dissertation on German Romanticism and the turn toward psychology and interiority.Īfter gaining her Doctorate in 1971, Maria joined the faculty of Harvard University and was the first woman to earn tenure by rising through the ranks.

She gravitated towards the work of the Grimm Brothers, drawn by the primal nature of their storytelling, and the strange intersection of violence and beauty in the tales. Then it was on to Princeton to study for her doctorate.Īlthough she had moved thousands of miles from the country of her birth, Maria remained fascinated by European culture, and studied at the University of Munich and at the Free University in Berlin. Maria graduated from the high school there, and took her bachelors degree at Denison University. A promised job did not materialise for her father, and the family of six, down to their last fifty dollars in New York City, was sponsored by the congregation of a church in Highland Park, Illinois. Her family emigrated from Hungary, and entered the United States as displaced persons. Maria’s own tale can be traced back to post-war Europe. She is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost scholars on folk and fairy tales and children’s literature. Maria Tatar is an American academic, author, teacher, and currently the John L Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. Vice Chancellor, it is my pleasure to read the citation for Professor Maria Tatar for the award of Honorary Doctor of Arts.

Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood by Maria Tatar