The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove

The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove:  The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales by G. Ronald Murphy.

The Brothers Grimm, as is well known, did not collect fairy tales with the rigor of a modern folklorist.  Many of their tellers were middle-class, not peasantry, and of Hugenot and so French descent.  Furthermore, they seriously reworked them.

This is a study specifically of what they did to rework them, treating them as Kunstmärchen, literary fairy tales.


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connections

Another post on Things That Are Difficult to Convey in World-Building.

The vast importance of connections in most societies.  Your parents, your siblings, your cousins -- first, second, third, seventh, once, twice, thrice removed -- your godparents, your foster family, your in-laws. . . all are vital, and what's more, unproblematically so.  The term "nepotism" comes from the medieval era not because the practice started there but because that's where it first began to be seen as a problem.

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Dr. Boli explains lit crit

A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF COMMON TERMS IN ACADEMIC LITERARY CRITICISM.

One way of challenging the gendered nature of bourgeois society is to write a female character with thoughts of her own, since academic literary critics believe that no one but academic literary critics has discovered that women have thoughts.