Description

Jack Zipes has spent decades as a scholarly scavenger discovering forgotten fairy tales in libraries flea markets used bookstores and internet searches and he has introduced countless readers to these remarkable works and their authors In Buried Treasures Zipes describes his special passion for uncovering political fairy tales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries offers fascinating profiles of more than a dozen of their writers and illustrators and shows why they deserve greater attention and appreciation

These writers and artists used their remarkable talents to confront political oppression and economic exploitation by creating alternative imaginative worlds that test the ethics and morals of the real world and expose hidden truths Among the figures we meet here are douard Laboulaye a jurist who wrote acute fairy tales about justice Charles Godfrey Leland a folklorist who found other worlds in tales of Native Americans witches and Roma Kurt Schwitters an artist who wrote satirical antiauthoritarian stories Mariette Lydis a painter who depicted lostandfound souls Lisa Tetzner who dramatized exploitation by elites Felix Salten who unveiled the real meaning of Bambis dangerous life in the forest and Gianni Rodari whose work showed just how political and insightful fantasy stories can be