Product Description: Franz Anton Mesmer's concept of animal magnetism exercised a profound influence on key European and American thinkers. Mesmer, who saw in his discovery the secret of health, had hoped to recover the harmony between man and nature by harnessing the power of magnetic fluids...read more

In these compelling new essays, leading critics sharpen our understanding of the narrative structures that convey meaning in fiction, taking as their point of departure the narratological positions of Dorrit Cohn, Grard Genette, and Franz Stanzel. This collection demonstrates how narratology, with its attention to the modalities of presenting consciousness, offers a point of entry for scholars investigating the socio-cultural dimensions of literary representations. Drawing from a wide range of literary texts, the essays explore the borderline between fiction and history; explain how characters are constructed by both author and reader through the narration of consciousness; show how gender shapes narrative strategies ranging from the depiction of consciousness through intertextuality to the representation of the body; address issues of contingency in narrative; and present a debate on the crucial function of person in the literary text. The contributors are Stanley Corngold, Gail Finney, Kte Hamburger, Paul Michael Ltzeler, David Mickelsen, John Neubauer, Thomas Pavel, Jens Rieckmann, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Judith Ryan, Franz Stanzel, Susan Suleiman, Maria Tatar, David Wellbery, and Larry Wolff.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Description: A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales—now for the first time in EnglishMove over, Cinderella: Make way for the Turnip Princess! And for the “Cinderfellas” in these stories, which turn our understanding of gender in fairy tales on its head...read more

Presents new translations of forty fairy tale classics in a volume that includes previously omitted tales and is complemented by hundreds of annotations that explore the historical origins, cultural complexities, and psychological effects of the stories.

In 1931, a young woman writer, living in Germany, penned her answer to Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the era of cinematic glamour. The resulting novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature, in the same tradition as Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and Bertoldt Brecht's Three Penny Opera. Like Isherwood and Brecht, Keun revealed the dark underside of Berlin's "golden twenties" with both empathy and honesty. Unfortunately, a Nazi censorship board banned Keun's work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies of , The Artificial Silk Girl. Only one English translation was published in Great Britain, before the book disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing war. Today, more than seven decades later, a new translation is about to bring this lost classic to light once more.At the beginning of The Artificial Silk Girl, Doris vows to write down all that happens to her—not as a mere diarist, but as the glamorous star of her own life-story. "I want to write like a movie," she declares. But, instead of scripting what she hopes will be a quick rise to fame and fortune as either an actress, or as the mistress/wife of a wealthy man, Doris describes a slow descent into near prostitution and homelessness. She becomes the cinematic lens through which we see pre-war Berlin. It is not the dazzling and exciting city of promise it seems to be on the surface; Doris unwittingly shows us a bleak, seamy urban landscape. In the words of another character in the novel, "the city is sick." It is "sick" with intolerance, cruelty, and apathy … On every corner, there are beggars and whores and men selling perfume and posters of naked women. Doris hungers for a real home, real silk blouses, real love … But, there is no Hollywood happy ending awaiting her, as there is for Loos's Loralei Lee.Doris begins her career as an independent woman on the stage, in a play by Schiller. Soon she wangles her way into getting one line to recite. But, then Doris steals a fur coat from the theatre's cloakroom … She flees from the police and from her home city of Cologne, and travels to Berlin to stay with a friend. In Berlin, she is unable to get a job. Nevertheless, as long as she has the fur, the ultimate symbol of luxury and seductive glamour, she feels invincible. And she is unwilling to return it. When her living situation with the friend and the friend's husband proves difficult, Doris leaves, but has no one to whom she can turn. Will she be able to survive on her own on the streets of Berlin? Will she, at last, be able to give up on the Hollywood dream?Keun is an important literary voice—at last rediscovered and restored to the same heights as such literary luminaries as Isherwood and Brecht. The Artificial Silk Girl belongs on the bookshelf of students of German literature, women's literature, and master works of classic fiction, in general.

Product Description: The tale of Bluebeard's Wife--the story of a young woman who discovers that her mysterious blue-bearded husband has murdered his former spouses--no longer squares with what most parents consider good bedtime reading for their children...read more

Discusses how the Grimms censored fairly tales, examines the violence and cruelty found in the stories, and suggests an approach to interpreting them (view table of contents)

Twenty-six classic fairy tales are supplemented by extensive literary, cultural, and historical commentary.

Nineteen of the original, unsanitized, unholy tales as they were first collected by the Brothers Grimm range from the true horror of Aschenputtel (the Cinderella story) to Rapunzel's dark secret, in an anthology of fairy tales written for adults. IP. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In a book that confronts our society's obsession with sexual violence, Maria Tatar seeks the meaning behind one of the most disturbing images of twentieth-century Western culture: the violated female corpse. This image is so prevalent in painting, literature, film, and, most recently, in mass media, that we rarely question what is at stake in its representation...read more

Discusses how fairy tales became children's literature, and the occurrence of violence, cannibalism, and conflicts between parents and children in these stories