Interrupting Soliloquy

Personally, I think that if you're going to read the Brother Grimm's Fairy Tales in anyway seriously, this is a book to keep by your side. Its major fault is that it leans slightly toward the didactic, but hey, it's what we're here for, reading a university press book, right?

Hell, even just as someone who is thinking about going into writing, or just wants to delve into the history of Grimms can find a lot of it here. Bottigheimer is singularly skilled at getting her points across with as much detail and evidence as possible. The final result is a book that not only dissects the perspectives of the Grimms Brothers and their interpretation of stories, but also our perception of them (and consequently, ALL OTHER STORIES, from Grimm to all the way to modern writers of today). The Grimms' fairy tales, OF ALL media, tends to be overlooked in terms of how it was influenced. Its ubiquitous "original" quality gives it the impression that it sprung forth from the ground, untouched, like friggin' Athena from Zeus head. To say that it had no middle man from mouth to page is to underestimate the men who took it upon themselves to jot down the stories being heard around them, and the intensity of their need to impact society in a way that THEY deemed fit.

This all, in turn, gives a brand new way to look at modern literature. The speaking roles, the language used to describe characters, all of it. And when you see it that way, it's disheartening to see how little has changed since the Grimms bent the stories to their will.