Press Play to hear Nothando Zulu speaking on participation on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Nothando Zulu writes..
Participation, Participation, Participation...

I began telling stories as a member of an acting ensemble in 1976, presenting storytelling as a major part of our repertoire. We worked primarily in park and recreation centers and schools. As members moved away or went into other fields, we evolved into‐ and I cofounded ‐ the Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) in direct response to the demand for storytelling to deliver the inspirational and cultural lessons embodied in our stories.

Early on I encouraged members of the audience to share the storytelling space by becoming a part of the story and one of the characters in the story. On many occasions, I was unable to use all the audience members who wanted to participate! It was wonderful to have so many trying to join in the storytelling process and reinforces oral storytelling as a powerful medium. Therefore, I decided to use a kind of birthday system for who I would choose:

• I start with participatory stories in mind
• I ask the audience who had a birthday in the prior month
• Depending of the number of positive responses, I decide on the story to
present.

One example is Ananse and His Six Children. If I receive more than six positive responses, I make some twins or triplets and sometimes quadruplets! I may use the age of the participant to determine the specific role of each participant. In the story Ananse and The Moss Covered Rock, Little Miss Bush Deer has to be at least a third grader, to understand and answer “No” to each of the questions asked by the Ananse character. When the participant is younger, (s)he may miss the concept and answer in the affirmative.

Audience participation is fun and most effective when the storyteller has extensive experience with audience inclusion.

Breif Bio
Nothando Zulu is a Master storyteller who has been sharing stories with audiences for over 30 years. She shares stories that entertain, educate, motivate and inspire. She has performed at many venues locally, nationally and internationally. She draws from an extensive resource of colorful, often funny characters whose antics and follies leave audiences pondering their own life’s lessons. As Director of Black Storytellers Alliance, she and her husband with the help of the Board of Directors has produced a three-day storytelling festival celebrating the art of Black storytelling called, “Signifyin’ & Testifyin’” (now in the 17th year). Nothando is also a wife, mother, grandmother, community and political activist who believes in the power of stories.

Read more about Nothando Zulu on her website http://www.yourfavoritestorytellers.org/nothando-zulu.htm
and on the Black Storytellers Alliance Website http://www.blackstorytellers.com/

Press Play to hear Doug Elliot talk about using storytelling to support nature based education on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #090 Doug Elliot for $2.23 Sharing the Passion of Nature through Storytelling.

Doug Elliot Writes...
How do you find a story in nature (or anywhere else for that matter)? I often start with an incident, an encounter, a problem or a question-something happens to you, you meet someone, see something, or you wonder about something. The narrative I tell is my journey of investigation, trying to figure it out.

The incident is your hook, not only to your listeners when you're storytelling, but also to yourself as an explorer and an investigator. Then I let my curiosity be my guide. I start asking questions. Any journalist will tell you your ability to get a good story is often directly related to your ability to ask good questions. The first and probably the ultimate resource is yourself. How do/did I relate to that incident, encounter, problem or question? How did I feel?

The next step might be an initial resolution concerning your opening incident or a preliminary answer to the question you have set up.

Simply seeing or experiencing something and figuring out what it is can be an interesting vignette, but it's rarely enough to make a good story. This initial vignette (incident, encounter, problem or question) becomes what Joseph Campbell refers to as the "call to adventure." Your challenge becomes how to find and tap those "ripples on the surface of life" that Campbell writes about "which reveal hidden springs as deep as the soul itself."

After you've explored your feelings and reactions and probed your own background, you find others who might have something to say about what you're investigating. This subsequent investigation-your reading, research, and your conversations with other people-becomes the adventure, the backbone or plot line of the narrative. Some of the various bits of information you gather or anecdotes and tales you hear can possibly stand on their own, but ideally the stories and information will be used as sub-plots to develop your entire piece. Then, instead of delivering a natural history lecture, you end up with a classic mythic hero's journey, where the hero (you, most likely) answers the "call to adventure." Wherever the investigation takes you becomes the journey. These facts, tales, and lore become stepping stones on a quest in search of truth and meaning. Rather than delivering a bunch of facts about a critter, phenomenon, or situation, you tell a story.

Bio

Doug Elliott has performed and presented programs at festivals, museums, botanical gardens, nature centers and schools from Canada to the Caribbean. He has been a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough TN. He has lectured and performed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and conducted workshops for the Smithsonian Institution. He has led ranger training sessions for the National Park Service and guided people in the wilderness from down-east Maine to the Florida Everglades.

He was named harmonica champion at Fiddler's Grove Festival in Union Grove NC. He is the author of four books, many articles in regional and national magazines and has recorded a number of award-winning albums of stories and songs.

Elliott's passion for the natural world developed in early childhood roaming the woods and waters around his home. His dad used to say, "That boy knows what's under every rock between here and town.”

He still roams the woods today. He has traveled from the Canadian North to the Central American jungles studying plant and animal life and seeking out the traditional wisdom of people with intimate connections to the natural world. And he still looks under rocks. These days he uncovers more than just a few strange critters; he brings to light the human connection to this vibrant world of which we are a part.

More at http://www.dougelliott.com/about.html

I will not share or give away your email address.

And don’t forget to subscribe by iTunes or your browser to The Art of Storytelling Podcast so you can get bi-weekly inspirations from Bother Wolf direct to your desktop. Read the info on the right to find out how. It’s free and it’s super simple.

Press Play to hear Eric Wolf speak how you can support the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Pre-loaded Apple Ipod with 100 episodes For more details on the Ipod Click Here. Order now for $438.00.

For Immediate Release Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf is an internationally recognized podcast listened to in 142 countries worldwide with over 50,000 total lifetime downloads, 13,000 distinct listeners, and 8,000+ downloads in the last thirty days. With over 88+ storytellers interviewed on the show this website is rapidly becoming the worlds première source for teaching storytelling online. Through this encyclopedia of storytelling techniques a listener can improve their communication skills and get a complete storytelling education.

Heather Forest, Elizabeth Ellis, Judith Black, Jay O’Callahan, Andy Offutt Irwin, and many other storytellers are interviewed on how to use storytelling techniques in performing for and teaching storytelling to children. The Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf has draw guests from all over the world and created an amazing storytelling education resource of storytelling techniques that is unmatched on the World Wide Web. All episodes available right now online for immediate listening and download in the commercial lower quality version for easier down load.

Individuals wishing to pre-purchase this commercial free ipod can pay $338.55 till July 27th. On July 27th the price for a preloaded ipod with 85 shows will increase too $394.65. The Apple Ipod allows listeners to scan easily to any point in each of the 85 hour long shows.

Eric Wolf is the host and producer of the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf show witch is dedicated to supporting the teaching storytelling worldwide by providing access to storytelling techniques and a grounded storytelling education for anyone.

For More Information go to:
http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/category/press-release/

For a Full List of Episodes go to:
http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/past-guests/

For more Information Contact:
Eric Wolf (937) 767-8696

Press Play to hear Ben Sota is the Artistic Director of the Zany Umbrella Circus and he speaks on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf about the art of showmanship.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #083 Ben Sota & the Zany Umbrella Circus for $2.23 A Conversation on Showmanship.

Ben Writes...
Thoughts of showmanship.

As a circus performer I able to show people fantastic things. Performances on the trapeze, tight wire. juggling seven balls, and give them a glimpse of what many think is impossible.

For me showmanship is about connecting that fantastic to my audience. For me showmanship is inclusion....

As a circus performer my characters stride to be unassuming and unpretentious. The performance uses storytelling to bridge that fantastic to an every day life.

A contract happens, the everyday mixes with the surreal and the audience has a memorable experience that they can relate to. These ideas and more are featured in my interview with storytellers Brother Wolf.

Enjoy, Ben Sota)

Bio of Ben Sota is the Artistic Director of the Zany Umbrella Circus

Ben has studied at the San Francisco Circus Center, Trapeze Arts, and Acro Sports. He has produced over thirty shows and performed at the National Council on Foundation, the National Storytelling Convention, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, at Al Hussein Amphitheater in Amman Jordan, and at hundreds of other venues.

In the spring of 2006 Ben had the honor of a performance at the White House in June of 2006, he raised eyebrows by dressing in burlap pants. He told senators and congressmen folk art stories of his grandfather’s circus in South Dakota during the dustbowl; this performance caused bipartisan smiles and conversations about the importance of the arts in situations of need.

More commonly than the White House, Ben can be found performing at arts festivals, for social justice causes, and community celebrations, and for schools and universities all over the world.

As a teacher the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts has selected Ben as an artist residency teacher. He has also been recognized by the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh as is listed as an outreach teacher; he is a member of the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour and is recognized as a commonwealth speaker of Pennsylvania. Recently he was awarded the Eben Demarest Trust, a prize based on his artist merit that Jackson Pollock once one.

In October of 2007 the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum debuted an interactive exhibit called “Circus for Social Change”. The 1,800 sq. ft. exhibit showcases Ben’s projects of giving around the world. The exhibit gives children a chance to walk on a tight wire and try out circus.

Ben’s work has been supported by the Heinz Foundation, the Grable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Pittsburgh Foundation, and many others.

Ben has worked hard to bring circus to those who need it most. He has taught thousands to juggle, walk on a tightrope, and perform trapeze. Many of his students come from at-risk backgrounds

Recently Ben traveled to New Orleans, Jordan, andAfghanistan to perform and teach.

Patch Adams wrote, “I hope all will generously support your work it is real people to people aid” when speaking about Ben’s work.

Wavy Gravy wrote, “For the last 5 years I have watched Ben teach children juggling and aerial arts with patience, kindness, imagination, and great skill. Ben Sota is truly a GREAT artist. I highly recommend him without reservation as a unique and extraordinary talent in any performing or teaching situation.”

Learn more about Ben's Sota's work at http://www.zanyumbrellacircus.com

Press Play to hear Jay O’Callahan speak about learning about Stories by telling to my Children on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Jay O'Callahan writes...

I'm at work right now on a story commissioned by NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration to celebrate its 50th anniversary. As I create the NASA story I'm aware I'm using all of the knowledge I gained telling stories to my own children. As I told stories to my children I began using repetition, rhythm, changing my voice, using a gesture here and there and inventing situations that involved struggle or risk, When my son Ted was about nine months old I'd make up little songs and rhythms to make him smile. Just making my voice go up high and then suddenly come down delighted him.
One night Ted was sitting in a soapy bath and I read him some of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. He laughed at the sounds.

When Ted got older I read books to him like The Gingerbread Man and discovered that he loved the repetition running through the story.

Run, run fast as you can
You can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man.

I began reading one of Richard Scary's book in which there was a character called Pierre the Paris Policeman. The line was, "Pierre the Paris Policeman was directing traffic one day." I would sing that line with a French accent and lift up my hand to stop an imaginary car. The voice and accent brought the character alive. That was an important discovery. And if I read it in any other way it wasn't Pierre and Ted would say, "Say it right."

After my daughter Laura Elizabeth was born I told both my children "hand stories." I'd take one of their hands, look at the palm of the hand and let a line, a bump or a curve in the hand suggest an image and I'd begin the story. It might go like this. "Once upon a time Ted saw a pink cloud resting by a tree. The cloud looked sad so Ted went over to cheer it up." I was dreaming aloud and characters and images would spring to mind. I imaged that's always happened to storytellers. I liked telling the hand stories because they were quiet and personal and my children liked being the hero and heroine. Some of those hand stories eventually turned into the Artana stories which take place in a mysterious land where two children, Edward and Elizabeth are the hero and heroine.

As I was telling to my children I learned the importance of a listener, particularly a listener with the sense of wonder and delight. My children listened me into being a storyteller.

Now as I work on this complicated story about NASA I use the knowledge I gained from my children. I ask myself this question: What is wondrous about NASA? And I'm on the alert for compelling characters and the risks they take and the struggles of their lives. I try to incorporate rhythm and repetition; I use a voice to become a character and find that a gesture helps bring the character alive.

As I shape the story and as it grows, I'm using the listeners. The listeners draw out mysteries in the story that I would have missed without them. Here I am back to the beginning.

Biography

Jay O'Callahan grew up in a section of Brookline, Massachusetts which was called “Pill Hill” because so many doctors lived there. The 32-room house and landscaped grounds were a magical atmosphere for a child’s imagination to blossom. When Jay was fourteen, he started making up stories to tell to his little brother and sister to entertain them.

After graduating from Holy Cross College, a tour in the Navy took Jay to the Pacific. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught and eventually became Dean at the Wyndham School in Boston, which his parents had founded. "In the summers I’d go off to Vermont or Ireland to write. I also did a lot of acting in amateur theatre, and that’s where I met a beautiful woman (Linda McManus) who later became my wife. When we had our first child, I left teaching and became the caretaker of the YWCA in Marshfield, a big old barn on a salt-water marsh. That gave me time to write and to tell stories to my children. When I decided to call myself a storyteller, it was like getting on a rocket." Within three years, Jay was telling stories in hundreds of schools and in addition he was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to create and perform Peer Gynt with the orchestra. His stories were broadcast on National Public Radio's “The Spider's Web," which brought Jay national attention.

Jay was now publicly telling stories he had created for his children. His stories were filled with rhythms, songs and characters as diverse as Herman the Worm, Petrukian, a medieval blacksmith, and the Little Dragon. Orange Cheeks, inspired by a time Jay got in trouble as a little boy, was the first of his personal stories.

One of his most popular stories, Raspberries was born when Jay's son Teddy was four. Teddy banged his shin outside their cottage and was weeping, "I broke my leg." Jay told a story full of rhythms to cheer Teddy up.

Jay was also beginning to tell stories to adults. In 1980, while on vacation in Nova Scotia, he sat on and off for a month in the kitchen of an old man and a blind woman. Out of that kitchen came the story of The Herring Shed. “I realized then that part of my gift was to sit down with ordinary people where they were comfortable, listen, and later weave a story together so that others could enjoy it. The process still amazes me: one year I'm in a kitchen in Nova Scotia and a few years later, I’m performing The Herring Shed to a thousand people at Lincoln Center." Time Magazine called The Herring Shed "genius."After the Herring Shed came Jay's Pill Hill stories for which is was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. The Pill Hill stories are loosely based on his boyhood.

Storytelling has brought Jay around the earth. “The storyteller of old got on a horse. I get on a plane, parachute into a community and I’m part of its life for a while before moving on to the next one.” Jay has told stories to students at Stonehendge, to adults in the heat of Niger, Africa, to theatergoers in Dublin and London and at storytelling festivals in Scotland, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. His stories have also been heard on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Jay’s stories also include commissioned works like The Spirit of the Great Auk, Pouring the Sun, Edna Robinson and Father Joe.

When he isn't on the road, Jay runs a writing workshop at his home. His other interests include reading everything from Walt Whitman to Herman Melville to Flannery O’Connor to Emily Dickinson. And he enjoys listening to jazz, classical music and opera. “I love Maria Callas. Her singing touches a joy that’s very deep.”

Jay has just finished a political novel called Harry’s Our Man, and is creating a story commissioned by NASA for its 50th anniversary.

Press Play to hear Bil Lepp who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on How to Lie and not get Caught on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Bio:
Bil Lepp is a nationally renowned storyteller and five time champion of the West Virginia Liars’ Contest. His outrageous, humorous tall-tales and witty stories have earned the appreciation of listeners of all ages and from all walks of life. From elementary school to veterans’ homes, from churches to colleges, from festivals to formal dinners. Though a champion liar, his hilarious, insightful stories often contain morsels of truth which shed light on subjects such as politics, religion, death, relationships, and human nature. An award winning storyteller, author, and recording artist, Lepp’s release, The Teacher in the Patriotic Bathing Suit, received the Parent’s Choice Approved award, and Mayhem Dressed as an Eight Point Buck won a 2008 NAPPA Honors award. Lepp has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and at major storytelling and corporate events across the country. Says Bill, Everywhere I slept, I’ve lied. Bill is the author of four books and eight audio collections, and lives in Charleston, WV with his wife and two children.

To hear about Bil Lepp’s latest exploits goto his website at…
http://www.leppstorytelling.com

Press Play to hear Janice M. Del Negro who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on revising feminist folk-tales: naming the women. on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Dr. Janice M. Del Negro writes
When Eric and I talked about a topic for this interview, he asked me what was I passionate about? I am passionate about naming the women.

That being said, I was reluctant to use the word “feminist” in the title of this podcast. The word “feminist” is a trigger word that elicits, in many people, a strong emotional response. Since I agree with Mark Twain – “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug”- the choice of the word “feminist” was problematic, because nearly everyone has a distinct personal definition of that particular word. Eric bypassed that concern, however: “people will search ‘feminist’ online,” he said to the library school professor. So here we are, “Revisioning the Feminist Folktale,” and I am not sure that two people on the planet have the same definition of what “feminist” means, never mind folktale, or oral tradition. So I’ll stick to passion.

I am passionate about retelling folktales. I am passionate about excavating old tales, tales that have already survived for centuries, for emotional truths that resonate with contemporary listeners. There is no definitive version of a folktale, no “original”; we can point to the earliest remembered, written, or preserved version, but not to an “original.” Folktales change over time in order to survive, and re-telling folktales for present-day listeners is a contemporary offshoot of what is popularly understood as the oral tradition.

Tales come to us differently today than in the past. A handful of contemporary American storytellers can say they heard folktales from family or friends, tales that were handed down orally, from mouth to ear, but many of us who retell folktales first meet the tales on the page. Sometimes the tales work just as we find them; sometimes they resonate oddly, indicating currents beneath the surface. Those currents offer an opportunity to retell from where the teller stands now, instead of from where the story stood then.

My stand includes my gender. I am a woman. I am fascinated by the women in folktales, not just the women characters, but the women storytellers. Many of the tales we have were collected by men operating within the social mores of their times. The stories these good men chose to collect and the manner in which they collected them were filters through which the stories travelled, affecting the tale’s content and presentation. I look at a folktale so collected and I want to know: what isn’t there? What would the stories be like if the women were telling them to each other in the kitchen, while the collector was making notes on the polite version in the parlor? Those are the stories I want to tell, and since no one collected them in quite that way, I make my own. Filtered through my own experiences, I try and make an old tale new.

Stories may be static on the physical or virtual page, but for as long as the storyteller is telling, the story has blood and breath. Every retelling of a folktale, imbued with the individual blood and breath of the storyteller, is unique. The storytelling community recognizes this in a practical and concrete way: there are many popular conference and festival programs in which several tellers elect to retell the same folktale, just to show what is possible.

I am enormously interested in the fact that many female storytellers choose to retell traditional tales from points of view not always represented in collected or anthologized versions of folktales. Milbre Burch, Elizabeth Ellis, Susan Klein, Barbara Schutz-Gruber, Megan Wells, my own students (and too many others to name even with unlimited bandwidth) approach folktales through their own artistic processes. I cannot speak to the specifics of anyone’s process but my own, and even my process is malleable; the process changes with every story, because every story speaks differently to every teller.

JMD

Janice M. Del Negro, PhD.
Author, Educator, Storyteller

Janice M. Del Negro is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where she teaches Storytelling, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, and Foundations in Library and Information Science. Professor Del Negro did her doctoral work at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Del Negro has been a featured speaker, storyteller, and workshop leader at the National Storytelling Festival, the Allerton Conference (”Stories: From Fireplace to Cyberspace”), the Illinois Library Association, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Fox Valley Music and Storytelling Festival, the Champaign Public Library Children’s Literature Festival, and many other celebratory events. She has spoken and conducted workshops on various aspects of children’s literature and publishing, storytelling, and reading motivation for teachers, librarians, parents, and other educators in a variety of settings, including the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the State Library of Illinois, the North Carolina State Library, and the University of San Diego.
Del Negro’s first picture book, Lucy Dove (1998) won the Anne Izard Storytelling Award; her second picture book, Willa and the Wind (2005) was an ALA Notable Book, and an Honor Book for the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Her recent collection of supernatural tales for young adults, Passion and Poison, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2007, received starred reviews in both Horn Book and School Library Journal.
Del Negro has performed and lectured extensively in libraries, schools, and community centers throughout the United States. Her specialties include retelling traditional folktales, reading motivation through literature and storytelling, and transformation stories, with a gentle emphasis on women and ghosts. Her first recording, Journeywomen and Ghostly Passages, was released in July, 1991; her most recent recordings, Romantic Wonder: Tales of Love and Magic, and Shadow’s Sisters: Shapeshifters, Wraiths, and Spirited Women, were released in April, 1999. She is currently working on a new recording entitled Fortune’s Daughters: Folktales and Ghost Tales, to be released in 2008. Del Negro has reviewed for Booklist Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and School Library Journal, and is currently reviewing for Booklist.
She has served on both the Newbery, Caldecott, and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award committees. In 2004-2005 Del Negro served as chair of the 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award committee. and subsequently served as chair of the 2007 Caldecott Award Committee.
Del Negro was formerly the director of the Center for Children’s Books, a special collection of children’s books located at the University of Illinois. Before taking her position as Center director, she was the editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a monthly review journal of books for youth. Del Negro went to the University of Illinois from the State Library of North Carolina, where she was a consultant for children’s services and public libraries throughout the state. Prior to this she worked for fourteen years as a children’s librarian for the Chicago Public Library, including five years as Assistant Director of Children’s Services.

Dale Jarvis in the Flesh.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #060 Jack Zipes for $2.23 Fairy Tales are still relevant to the children of today.

Jack Zipes writes…
At their best, the storytelling of fairy tales constitute the most profound articulation of the human struggle to form and maintain a civilizing process. They depict metaphorically the opportunities for human adaptation to our environment and reflect the conflicts that arise when we fail to establish civilizing codes commensurate with the self-interests of large groups within the human population. The more we give into base instincts – base in the sense of basic and depraved – the more criminal and destructive we become. The more we learn to relate to other groups of people and realize that their survival and the fulfillment of their interests is related to ours, the more we might construct social codes that guarantee humane relationships. Fairy tales are uncanny because they tell us what we need and they unsettle us by showing what we lack and how we might compensate for lack.

Fairy tales hint of happiness. This hint, what Ernst Bloch has called the anticipatory illumination, has constituted their utopian appeal that has a strong moral component to it. We do not know happiness, but we instinctually know and feel that it can be created and perhaps even defined. Fairy tales map out possible ways to attain happiness, to expose and resolve moral conflicts that have deep roots in our species. The effectiveness of fairy tales and other forms of fantastic literature depends on the innovative manner in which we make the information of the tales relevant for the listeners and receivers of the tales. As our environment changes and evolves, so we change the media or modes of the tales to enable us to adapt to new conditions and shape instincts that were not necessarily generated for the world that we have created out of nature. This is perhaps one of the lessons that the best of fairy tales and teach us: we are all misfit for the world, and yet, somehow we must all fit together. Fairy tales have an extraordinary, uncanny power over us, and Georges Jean locates this power on the conscious level in the way all good fairy tales aesthetically structure and use fantastic and miraculous elements to prepare us for our everyday life. Magic is used paradoxically not to deceive us but to enlighten us. On an unconscious level, Jean believes that the best fairy tales bring together subjective and assimilatory impulses with objective intimations of a social setting that intrigue readers and allow for different interpretations according to one’s ideology and belief. Ultimately, Jean argues that the fantastic power of fairy tales consists in the uncanny way they provide a conduit into social reality. Yet, given the proscription of fairy-tale discourse within a historically prescribed civilizing process, a more careful distinction must be made between regressive and progressive aspects of the power of fairy tales in general to understand the liberating potential of contemporary tales for all human beings. Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” and Ernst Bloch’s concept of “home” can enable us to grasp the constitutive elements of the liberating impulse behind the fantastic and uncanny projections in fairy tales, whether they be classical or experimental. In his essay on the uncanny, Freud remarks that the word heimlich means that which is familiar and agreeable and also that which is concealed and kept out of sight, and he concludes that heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich or uncanny. Through a close study of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fairy tale The Sandman, Freud argues that the uncanny or unfamiliar (unheimlich) brings us in closer touch with the familiar (heimlich) because it touches on emotional disturbances and returns us to repressed phases in our evolution: If psychoanalytic theory is correct in maintaining that every effect belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs. This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny; and it must be a matter of indifference whether what is uncanny was itself originally frightening or whether it carried some other affect. In the second place, if this is indeed the secret nature of the uncanny, we can understand why linguistic usage has extended das Heimliche (‘homely’) into its opposite, das Unheimliche; for this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. This reference to the factor of repression enables us, furthermore, to understand Schelling’s definition of the uncanny as something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light. Freud insists that one must be extremely careful in using the category of the uncanny since not everything which recalls repressed desires and surmounted modes of thinking belongs to the prehistory of the individual and the race and can be considered uncanny. In particular, Freud mentions fairy tales as excluding the uncanny. In fairy tales, for instance, the world of reality is left behind from the very start, and the animistic system of beliefs is frankly adopted. Wish-fulfillments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of inanimate objects, all the elements so common in fairy stories, can exert no uncanny influence here; for, as we have learnt, that feeling cannot arise unless there is a conflict of judgment as to whether things which have been “surmounted” and are regarded as incredible may not, after all, be possible; and this problem is eliminated from the outset by the postulates of the world of fairy tales.

Although it is true that the uncanny becomes the familiar and the norm in the fairy tale because the narrative perspective accepts it so totally, there is still room for another kind of uncanny experience within the postulates and constructs of the fairy tale. That is, Freud’s argument must be qualified regarding the machinations of the fairy tale. However, I do not want to concern myself with this point at the moment but would simply like to suggest that the uncanny plays a significant role in the act of reading or listening to a fairy tale. Using and modifying Freud’s category of the uncanny, I want to argue that the very act of reading a fairy tale is an uncanny experience in that it separates the reader from the restrictions of reality from the onset and makes the repressed unfamiliar familiar once again. Bruno Bettelheim has noted that the fairy tale estranges the child from the real world and allows him or her to deal with deep-rooted psychological problems and anxiety-provoking incidents to achieve autonomy. Whether this is true or not, that is, whether a fairy tale can actually provide the means for coping with ego disturbance, as Bettelheim argues, remains to be seen. It is true, however, that once we begin listening to or reading a fairy tale, there is estrangement or separation from a familiar world inducing an uncanny feeling which can be both frightening and comforting.

Actually the complete reversal of the real world has already taken place before we begin reading a fairy tale on the part of the writer, and the writer invites the reader to repeat this uncanny experience. The process of reading involves dislocating the reader from his/her familiar setting and then identifying with the dislocated protagonist so that a quest for the Heimische or real home can begin. The fairy tale ignites a double quest for home: one occurs in the reader’s mind and is psychological and difficult to interpret, since the reception of an individual tale varies according to the background and experience of the reader. The second occurs within the tale itself and indicates a socialization process and acquisition of values for participation in a society where the protagonist has more power of determination. This second quest for home can be regressive or progressive depending on the narrator’s stance vis-à-vis society. In both quests the notion of home or Heimat, which is closely related etymologically to heimlich and unheimlich, retains a powerful progressive attraction for readers of fairy tales. While the uncanny setting and motifs of the fairy tale already open us up to the recurrence of primal experiences, we can move forward at the same time because it opens us up to what Freud calls “unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in fantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of volition which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will.”

Obviously, Freud would not condone clinging to our fantasies in reality. Yet, Ernst Bloch would argue that some are important to cultivate and defend since they represent our radical or revolutionary urge to restructure society so that we can finally achieve home. Dreaming which stands still bodes no good. But if it becomes a dreaming ahead, then its cause appears quite differently and excitingly alive. The dim and weakening features, which may be characteristic of mere yearning, disappear; and then yearning can show what it really is able to accomplish. It is the way of the world to counsel men to adjust to the world’s pressures, and they have learned this lesson; only their wishes and dreams will not hearken to it. In this respect virtually all human beings are futuristic; they transcend their past life, and to the degree that they are satisfied, they think they deserve a better life (even though this may be pictured in a banal and egotistic way), and regard the inadequacy of their lot as a barrier, and not just as the way of the world. To this extent, the most private and ignorant wishful thinking is to be preferred to any mindless goose-stepping; for wishful thinking is capable of revolutionary awareness, and can enter the chariot of history without necessarily abandoning in the process the good content of dreams.

What Bloch means by the good content of dreams is often the projected fantasy and action of fairy tales with a forward and liberating look: human beings in an upright posture who strive for an autonomous existence and non-alienating setting which allows for democratic cooperation and humane consideration. Real history which involves independent human self-determination cannot begin as long as there is exploitation and enslavement of humans by other humans. The active struggle against unjust and barbaric conditions in the world leads to home, or utopia, a place nobody has known but which represents humankind coming into its own: The true genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end, and it starts to begin only when society and existence become radical: that is, comprehend their own roots. But the root of history is the working, creating man, who rebuilds and transforms the given circumstances of the world. Once man has comprehended himself and has established his own domain in real democracy, without depersonalization and alienation, something arises in the world which all men have glimpsed in childhood: a place and a state in which no one has yet been. And the name of this something is home or homeland.[x] Philosophically speaking, then, the real return home or recurrence of the uncanny is a move forward to what has been repressed and never fulfilled. The pattern in most fairy tales involves the reconstitution of home on a new plane, and this accounts for the power of its appeal to both children and adults.

In Bloch’s two major essays on fairy tales, “Das Märchen geht selber in Zeit” (“The Fairy Tale Moves on its Own in Time”) and Bessere Luftschlösser in Jahrmarkt und Zirkus, in Märchen und Kolportage” (“Better Castles in the Air in Fair and Circus, in the Fairy Tale and Popular Books”), Bloch is concerned with the manner in which the hero and the aesthetic constructs of the tale illuminate the way to overcome oppression. He focuses on the way the underdog, the small person, uses his or her wits not only to survive but to live a better life. Bloch insists that there is good reason for the timelessness of traditional fairy tales, “Not only does the fairy tale remain as fresh as longing and love, but the demonically evil, which is abundant in the fairy tale, is still seen at work here in the present, and the happiness of ‘once upon a time,’ which is even more abundant, still affects our visions of the future.”

It is not only the timeless aspect of traditional fairy tales that interests Bloch, but also the way they are modernized and appeal to all classes and age groups in society. Instead of demeaning popular culture and common appeal, Bloch endeavors to explore the adventure novels, modern romances, comics, circuses, country fairs, and the like. He refuses to make simplistic qualitative judgments of high and low art forms, rather he seeks to grasp the driving utopian impulse in the production and reception of art-works for mass audiences. Time and again he focuses on fairy tales as indications of paths to be taken in reality. What is significant about such kinds of “modern fairy tales” is that it is reason itself which leads to the wish projections of the old fairy tale and serves them. Again what proves itself is a harmony with courage and cunning, as that earliest kind of enlightenment which already characterizes “Hansel and Gretel”: consider yourself as born free and entitled to be totally happy, dare to make use of your power of reasoning, look upon the outcome of things as friendly. These are the genuine maxims of fairy tales, and fortunately for us they not only appear in the past but in the now.

Bloch and Freud set the general parameters for helping us understand how our longing for home, which is discomforting and comforting, draws us to folk and fairy tales. They provide clues and reveal why we continue to be attracted to the uncanny.

Learn more about Jack Zipes on Wikipedia.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #052 Jan Andrews & Jennifer Cayley for $2.23 The Power of Folk Tales in children’s lives.

Folktales bring us the wisdom of the ages. They have been honed and shaped over centuries. They are there for everyone, functioning on the one hand as entertainment and on the other through offering so many layers of meaning that they are accessible to all. Adults may proclaim that Jack and Ti-Jean, Cinderella and Red Riding Hood (and all those other lesser-known heroes and heroines of the stories we ought to be telling more often) are archetypes. Children simply recognize in these long-lived characters various aspects of their own being. Folktales become then one of the places where children experience what it is to know themselves as adventurers.

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller called Joan Bodger who was running a Headstart program in Harlem. It was before Headstart got going. Experts came to visit, to see what all the fuss was about. One of them asked Joan, somewhat disparagingly, “What do you want for these children?” Joan answered, “I want them to be poets and princes. Poets to the extent that they have command of their own language. Princes – you know, like the heroes in the old stories: they may be shoveling the muck in the stables but they will stand at the centre of their own lives.”

We cannot imagine a parent or educator who would not have a similar aim (although we would, of course, say “princesses” as well). We’ve both been working with children for many years now – Jan as storyteller and writer of books for young people; Jennifer as storyteller and specialist in arts education. We’ve seen how a story told seems to be able to leap directly over barriers to some deep place of understanding we know will stand young listeners in good stead. We do not set out to be teachers but we are aware that the folktales inform and instruct as nothing else can. “What will you carry away with you from what you’ve heard today,” we ask often. The answers are always surprising and always heartfelt.

Here’s something else. The folktales belong to oral tradition. They were meant to be remembered and they are. Go into a school once, come back a year later, two years, meet the same children. They will always be able to name the stories told. That speaks volumes for how well the stories must be doing their work of handing on a torch of strength from those who have gone before us and in whose steps we tread.

We do not believe the folktales are “pure magic.” We believe they must be handled with care.

For more information on Jan Andrews go to http://www.janandrews.ca