Just for Giggles: Intro to the Annotated Bib.

After spending a few boring hours compiling this annotated bibliography, I had to write an introduction to it. Oh boy, oh boy. Still, being able to actually write something other than "In this article..." was great fun.

So, in the spirit of sharing a painful experience, I'm going to share my intro. It's rough and I'll probably make some changes, but here's my rough:

Introduction

I began the semester unsure of how best to work up to my thesis. As I will be writing a creative thesis, the element of research will not be as prominent for me as for my peers who will be writing a critical thesis. I decided the best topic for my research would be to focus on the style of story I would be writing: magical realism. The more I thought about my topic, the further back I wanted to look at it. At this point I realized how much magical realism stories have in common with folklore and fairy tales, and that was when I narrowed my research.

In many ways, magical realism is simply a contemporary version of the fairy tale. Fairy tales tap into our subconscious and run through our cultural identity. They speak in the language of symbols and magic, teaching us about extraordinary possibilities and happy endings. As a result, fairy tales are an excellent medium for a wide variety of critical schools: feminism, sexuality, and cultural studies are especially applicable.

The contemporary fiction genre of retold fairy tales has developed in conjunction with these critical schools. These retold tales offer their own interpretation of the original story, as well as a commentary on the ideas and values represented in the original. Feminist retellings are especially popular and change passive female characters, like Sleeping Beauty, into active heroines. Another facet of retellings is modernized versions of the classic stories. Updated tales are popular in all forms of stories, and allusions, such as titling a film “Cinderella Man,” surround us.

My initial goal of researching fairy tales was to gain a better understanding of where the genre of magical realism comes from. However, as my research progressed and I looked at example after example of the ways fairy tales have endured for centuries and remain a central aspect of our cultural consciousness I realized something. These stories describe and influence much more than a genre of fiction. They describe and influence the foundation of our culture. Not only are fairy tales where magical realism comes from, fairy tales are where we come from.