This book examines magic's generally maleficent effect on humans from ancient Egypt through the Middle Ages, including tales from classical mythology, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures. It shows that certain magical motifs lived on from age to age, but that it took until the Italian Renaissance for magic tales to become fairy tales.

Autorentext
Ruth B. Bottigheimer is Research Professor at Stony Brook University, USA, and author of many books on the history of magic, including Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales (1987), The Bible for Children from the Age of Gutenberg to the Present (1996), Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition (2002), and Fairy Tales: A New History (2009). She has had CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title commendations on three occasions and won the Best Book on Children's Literature 1996 award from Children's Literature Association. She is Life Fellow of Clare Hall Cambridge, UK and Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, UK.

Inhalt

1. Tales, Magic, and Fairy Tales 2. Egyptian, Greek, and Roman Magic Tales 3. Jewish Magic Tales 4. Magic Tales in Medieval Christian Europe 5. Magic Tales in the Muslim Middle Ages 6. Magic at Court and on the Piazza 7. Problematics of Magic on the Threshold of Fairy Tale Magic 8. The Evolution of Fairy Tale Magic from Straparola and Basile to Perrault 9. Afterword