Once upon a time, there was a witch. She was beautiful and powerful. She was frightening and dangerous. She was everything people feared and everything many of them wanted to be.
Folklorists Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman discuss the versatile figure of the witch in the folkloric medium of the fairy tale. Using the collection of the Brothers Grimm, Cleto and Warman explore the many distinctive witches they gave us and their relationships to self-determination, community, and nature. Then Cleto and Warman focus on the witches who appear in five fairy tales: “Rapunzel,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Three Spinners,” “Frau Trude,” and “All Kinds of Fur.” By illuminating different aspects of the figure of the witch as she appears in the Grimms’ tales, they demonstrate the complexity and power that characterize her, even within a single collection of stories.
These witches represent the many ways of being a woman in the world and are a rich repository of education, inspiration, and enchantment, Cleto and Warman say.
Cleto and Warman are former instructors of folklore and literature at Ohio State University and co-founders of the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.
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