ENG 498: Senior Seminar: Little Red Riding Hood Iterations, Once Upon a Time, RWBY (Anime-style), and Innocence to Maturity

Across various time periods, audiences, aesthetics, and cultural landscapes, Little Red Riding Hood is a universal icon, and her story is one of the world's most retold tales. In "Revisioning Red Riding Hood Around the World: An Anthology of International Retellings, " Sandra L. Beckett presents over fifty notable modern retellings, only two of which have appeared previously in English. The tales include works published in twenty-four countries and sixteen languages, in texts that span more than a century, but with the majority written in the last fifty years. They include retellings for children, adolescents, and adults, as well as crossover works intended for an audience of all ages. The tales in this volume progress from works that recast the story of Little Red Riding Hood from traditional perspectives through more playful versions to more unconventional approaches. Seven sections are arranged thematically: Cautionary Tales for Modern Riding Hoods, Contemporary Riding Hoods Come of Age, Playing with the Story of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Rehabilitating the Wolf, The Wolf's Story, The Wolf Within, and Running with the Wolves. Beckett provides an interpretative introduction to each text and insightful information on its author and/or illustrator. A variety of genres are represented, including fairy tale, short story, novella, novel, poetry, illustrated books, and picture books. More than 90 illustrations, both color plates and black-and-white images, reveal further narrative layers of meaning. The number and diversity of retellings in "Revisioning Red Riding Hood "demonstrate the tale's remarkable versatility and its exceptional status in the collective unconscious and in literary culture, even beyond the confines of the Western world. This unique anthology contributes to cross-cultural exchange and facilitates comparative study of the tale for readers interested in fairy-tale studies, cultural studies, and literary history.

Everyone has at one time been inspired or enchanted by fairy tales, with their evil witches, pure princesses, heroic princes, and happy endings. Yet over the years, most of these popular tales have undergone many transformations, as editors and storytellers have shortened and sentimentalized them, as well as slanted them to suit the demands of the time. Now reissued, Iona and Peter Opie's magnificent The Classic Fairy Tales, presents twenty-four of the best-known fairy tales in their original written form. Drawing on years of expertise, the editors provide introductions to each fairy tale, tracing the development of each story and noting points of interest. We learn, for example, that in a 17th century version of "Sleeping Beauty", the prince actually raped the princess in her sleep. Goldilocks, it turns out, evolved from the little old woman of the original story into a young girl. Little Red Ridinghood was actually eaten by the wolf, and in an early version of the "Frog Prince," the princess had to sleep with the frog to free him from his spell. With classic tales from the likes of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, and the works of such famous illustrators as Gustav Dore, Kate Greenaway, and George Cruikshank.

The great child psychologist gives us a moving revelation of the enormous and irreplaceable value of fairy tales - how they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children.