Although WR courses focus primarily on academic writing, in WR 100: “Fairy Tales and Literature” I ask students to write their own versions of a traditional fairy tale. This assignment, an “alternative genre” second paper, allows students to understand how and why fairy tales are written from the inside, rather than simply from an outside scholarly perspective. It also reinforces the importance of narrative structure: students come to understand that just like a fairy tale, an academic paper must tell a story, although an intellectual one. The assignment has three components: an introduction to the fairy tale, meant to draw a reader into the project as a whole; the fairy tale itself; and finally an analysis in which students explain how and why they wrote their versions.
Hannah Levin’s “Bad Parenting: The True Villain of ‘Rumpelstiltskin’” is a powerful retelling of “Rumpelstiltskin” not only because it’s so emotionally engaging, drawing us right into the story of the boy who was bargained away, but also because it functions as a response to, and analysis of, the Grimm version on which it’s based. The most successful fairy tale retellings do just that: they talk back to their predecessors, allowing us to see the story differently. If we look at Hannah’s version the way a scholar would, we can see how subtly she’s responding to and reformulating themes found in the Grimm version, such as the importance of names. But now it’s the boy’s lack of a name that becomes central, marking his abandonment. In this tale, Hannah talks back to the Brothers Grimm, telling them what she thinks of their tale and creating a new one of her own, in clear, lyrical prose, that gives voice to a character who is too often forgotten.
— THEODORA GOSS
WR 100: Fairy Tales