I don't know if I've really ever talked all that much about my love of fairy and folk tales on this blog. I mean, I talk about how fantasy draws from those traditions, but I love the tales themselves and finding out about the cultures that gave birth to those tales, theory about tales, and on and on. One of my favorite classes at Simmons was my folklore class, taught by folklore expert and author Kate Bernheimer*. We focused mostly on the Grimm tales in the curriculum because that made for a convenient text, but we also studied retellings like Angela Carter, many different picture books, different versions of the same tales across cultures, and the scholarship of folklore experts like Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Bettelheim, Marie-Louise von Franz, and . . . a very important one whose name I'm blanking on.

So when I saw on Endicott Studio a link to Joseph Campbell's reading list for an Introduction to Mythology at Sarah Lawrence, it gave me a whoooole nother list of books I should look up someday. There are so few books on that list that I've read! (Some might be more outdated than others, but it's a good list.) The first one that I need to rectify is The Mabinogion, a gap in my education that I've regretted many times already.

Also in that page they link to Endicott's own favorite reading list, with more books I should read. And reread--some of those books from that class I need to read again.



*Editor of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales.