John Cabot University Press Presents "The Irish Fairy Tale"
John Cabot University Press is pleased to present its latest volume, The Irish Fairy Tale: A Narrative Tradition from the Middle Ages to Yeats and Stephens, by Vito Carrassi. Translated by Kevin Wren
Beginning with a critical reappraisal of the notion of “fairy tale” and extending it to include categories and genres which are in common usage in folklore and in literary studies, this book throws light on the general processes involved in storytelling. It illuminates the fundamental ways in which a culture is formed, while highlighting important features of the Irish narrative tradition, in all its wealth and variety and in its connections with the mythical and historical events of Ireland. The Irish Fairy Tale argues that the fairy tale is a kind of “neutral zone,” a place of transition as well as a meeting place for popular beliefs and individual creativity, oral tradition and literary works, historical sources and imaginary reconstructions, and for contrasting and converging views of the world, which altogether allow for a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of reality. The book focuses on stories by Yeats and Stephens, whose approach to the subject marks the culmination of a long tradition of attempts at linking past and present and of bridging the gap between what appear to be contradictory facets of a single culture. This leads to a comparative study of Joyce’s Dubliners, which illustrates the universal and exemplary nature of the notion of fairy tale put forward in the work.
Vito Carrassi is a writer and translator who teaches folklore at the University of Bari. His main fields of research are literary anthropology, narratology, Irish and Italian folklore.
John Cabot University Press seeks to provide a bridge between European and American culture by bringing to the attention of the English-speaking academic world important contributions to debates, activities, and research that have recently been taking place in Italy. It also publishes works originating on both sides of the Atlantic that, as bridges themselves, examine relationships between the culture of English-speaking countries and the culture of ancient Rome and Italy.
Books are distributed in the United States by the University of Delaware Press.
