Magic Tales and Fairy Tale Magic

Abstract

The history of European witchcraft and magic continues to fascinate and challenge students and scholars. There is certainly no shortage of books on the subject. Several general surveys of the witch trials and numerous regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership. While the quality of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years. The aim of this series is to help illuminate these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It will also encourage the development of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural, such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination. To help further our understanding and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, the series will include research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also explores their relevance and influence from the medieval to the modern period.Titles include:

Reconfiguring the Victorian Female Ideal in the Mary Poppins Novels

“…As far as my research focus is concerned, I am in league with those academics who have emphasized that fairy tales as historical documents and results of the socio-historical processcoloured by the mental life and culture of its epochhave always had a considerable impact on the ever-changing socializing process of children as well as adults and on the perceptions of gender issues. In more detail, Maria Tatar (1992,2003,2007) and Ruth Bottigheimer (2009) point out that these tales conveyed messages about the way people were expected to think and behave to become respectable (wo)men conforming to All the books mentioned above came in handy to study the literary depiction of the Angel, Reluctant Women, and the New Womanwith their possible motives (e.g., love, self-realization, caring, self-rescue, and rescue) and particular attributes (e.g., silence, vanity, and wisdom), reminiscent of the ambitions and traits of Travers's female characters.…”