However, Yolen’s deft and sensitive writing pulls no punches and never shies away from the historical horrors she is portraying. This is a bold approach, and in the hands of a lesser writer could run the risk of trivialising its subject matter. The castle becomes the schloss in the village where the Jews are interned, the wall of rose thorns the barbed wire surrounding the concentration camp, the curse of sleep the sleep of death, the rosy red of Briar Rose’s cheeks the symptoms of gas poisoning. In her novel Briar Rose (1992), her entry in Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale series, Yolen uses the tale of Sleeping Beauty to talk about the Holocaust. Children know this, the families and story tellers who have passed down fairy tales from generation to generation knew this, Jane Yolen knows this. Just because a story is a fairy tale does not make it twee and inconsequential. Beyond the fact that everybody enjoys a bit of escapist entertainment now and then and there’s nothing wrong with that, this is a frustrating argument for those of us who know and love the genre because it elides how the fantastic can be powerfully and effectively used to explore real world issues. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.”Īn argument used to dismiss non-realist fiction, but specially Fantasy, is that it is pure escapism.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |