The following is a response by Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook University, to a review of the book, Fairy Tales: A New History, in the Journal of Folklore Research Reviews (09/21/11). Click here to read the original review.

The Journal of Folklore Research Reviews characteristically offers informative accounts of emerging scholarship and methodologies in thoughtful reviews that communicate the content and intent of specialist studies. Donald Haase’s review of my 2009 book Fairy Tales: A New History did neither one nor the other.

That Haase’s review was negative was unsurprising, because my work has elicited emotional reactions since the publication of my 2002 study of Straparola’s role in establishing a new kind of plot in the European fairy tale tradition. What was surprising was Haase’s indifference to communicating either the book’s professed intention or its actual content. Instead, he characterized the book (“abandons complexity,” “truncates the history of the fairy tale”), belittled it (“does not reflect a book of peer-reviewed scholarship”), and ignored its origins as a series of lectures at Oxford University entitled “An Archaeology of Fairy Tales.” Haase complains about the lengthy listing of my articles in the Works Cited (without acknowledging their function as documentation for positions taken in the book); he discovers the absence from the Works Cited of a 1982 article (about competing lexical and narrative levels in some Grimm tales), which he quotes out of context, whose contents he misrepresents, and with which he impugns my honesty [1]; and he laments the absence of works by Nancy Canepa and Jack Zipes from the Works Cited. Their valuable (Canepa) and influential (Zipes) corpus is, however, unrelated to the thesis developed in Fairy Tales: A New History, which would have been evident had Haase reported on the substance of the book. Given the absence of a serious account of the book’s contents, Haase’s close reading of the website of SUNY Press is unexpected, not to say silly, while his concern that readers might “buy into” a new view of the history of European fairy tales is perplexing to those who believe that scholarship involves civil discussions of competing concepts.

Different intellectual and personal styles animate reviews in scholarly journals and in publications for a generally educated public, but it is, I think, correct to say that both generally aim for overall fairness. When, for instance, the esteemed reviewer Michiko Kakutani excoriated the book of a prominent author in the New York Times, the editorial staff recognized her review as one-sided and sought balance by providing a second review of the same book on the same page. One might argue that commercial considerations played a role here, but the underlying question of fairness is one to which an academic journal should also aspire.

Haase’s review of Fairy Tales: A New History lies so far outside the regular parameters for JFRR reviews that it cries out for characterization as such. Because JFRR archives its reviews as a resource for future scholars, I respectfully request that this letter and a summary of the contents of Fairy Tales: A New History be attached to Haase’s archived review. I also respectfully request that JFRR distribute this response to Haase’s review to its subscribers.

NOTES

[1] “Tale Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimms’ Fairy Tales” in New German Critique 27 (l982): 141?50.

[Editor’s Note: In response to Ruth Bottigheimer’s respectful request that we attach to the original review a summary of the book’s contents, we refer our readers to http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4772-fairy-tales.aspx at the SUNY Press website, which does contain such a description.]

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[Review length: 594 words • Review posted on November 4, 2011]