Content area
Full Text
Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. By Jack Zipes. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 170pp. Pbk 13.99. ISBN 0 415 91850 2
Jack Zipes's latest work is a collection of six interrelated essays on the fairytale from the sixteenth century to the present in which he discusses the "socialisation of children, the impact of the fairytale on children and adults, and the future development of fairy tale as film." The tone of each essay is particular to its topic, but through them all runs his constant enthusiasm for the worth of fairytales and his genuine concern for our children who are persuaded to pursue happiness by the seductive way of the market place.
By "framing the civilising discourse of the fairy tale" in his first chapter, "Of Cats and Men," Zipes can analyse and compare several stages in the development of the tale known to us today as "Puss in Boots." Straparola included the first recorded version of this tale, in which the cat is a fairy in disguise without boots, in his Piacevoli Notti (152340). Zipes...