Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

by Maria Tatar

The cultural resilience of fairy tales is incontestable. Surviving over the centuries and thriving in a variety of media, fairy tales continue to enrich our imaginations and shape our lives. This Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales examines the genre, its cultural implications--and its critical history. The editor has gathered fairy tales from around the world to reveal the range and play of these... (more)

Grimm's Grimmest

by Maria Tatar, Jacob Grimm

Murder, kidnapping, cruel and unusual punishment, violent revenge—these are not the bedtime stories mummy used to read. Newly reissued with a fresh cover, Grimm's Grimmest presents nineteen original, unsanitized, wholly unholy tales as they were first collected by the Brothers Grimm circa 1822—all fiendishly illustrated. The tales harken back to a time when travelers risked roasting or worse, and bad manners... (more)

Die schönsten Märchen der Brüder Grimm.

by Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Anastassija Archipowa

On Ugliness

by Umberto Eco, Alastair McEwen (translator)

In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty , renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of the sordid and the scandalous come from? Is ugliness also in the eye of the beholder? Eco’s encyclopedic... (more)