Content area
Full text
Griswold, Jerry. The Meanings of "Beauty and the Beast": A Handbook. Toronto: Broodview P, 2004.
Griswold confesses in the opening of this book that "Beauty and the Beast" has long been his favorite fairy tale and that this compilation is really the result of a very personal obsession. He further confesses that his method of examining the tale is much like "beating around the bush," and, I dare say, most readers will readily agree. Once we understand that, the work itself begins to make more sense. It is not a fully developed critical study or analysis, and Griswold has aptly subtitled this work "A Handbook." It is, indeed, a compilation of disparate materials, some only peripherally connected to the folktale itself. In addition to Griswold's own rendition of Mme. LePrince de Beaumont's tale, we find summaries of critical stances, lengthy renditions of presumed sources, going back to the Roman tale, Apuleius's "Cupid and Psyche," and Mme. de Villeneuve's "Beauty and the Beast" as redacted by Andrew Lang, a survey of illustrators, a quirky selection of modern adaptations, and a discussion of the two most famous film versions (Cocteau's and Disney's).
Given the diversity of this collection of material, it is difficult to get a handle on the intended audience. Although Griswold's casual style makes this an accessible book for the general reader, just how many general readers will want to know this much about "Beauty and the Beast" remains to be seen. With its wide-ranging sweep of a variety of perspectives -the tale's literary antecedents, its social implications, its psychological underpinnings, its continuing influence-the book is a potential text for a graduate folklore course.
But Griswold's purpose remains rather murky, and his unusual choices make for a lack of continuity in...