The Irish Fairy Tale

Vito Carrassi is a writer and translator who teaches folklore at the University of Bari. His main fields of research are literary anthropology, narratology, Irish and Italian folklore.

Beginning with a critical reappraisal of the notion of "fairy tale" and extending it to include categories and genres which are in common usage in folklore and in literary studies, this book throws light on the general processes involved in storytelling. It illuminates the fundamental ways in which a culture is formed, while highlighting important features of the Irish narrative tradition, in all its wealth and variety and in its connections with the mythical and historical events of Ireland. The Irish Fairy Tale argues that the fairy tale is a kind of "neutral zone," a place of transition as well as a meeting place for popular beliefs and individual creativity, oral tradition and literary works, historical sources and imaginary reconstructions, and for contrasting and converging views of the world, which altogether allow for a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of reality. The book focuses on stories by Yeats and Stephens, whose approach to the subject marks the culmination of a long tradition of attempts at linking past and present and of bridging the gap between what appear to be contradictory facets of a single culture. This leads to a comparative study of Joyce's Dubliners, which illustrates the universal and exemplary nature of the notion of fairy tale put forward in the work.

CONTENTSAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Narrativity, between Orality and Writing2.The  Fairy tale: Reformulation of a ConceptNotesChapter 1. A Celtic Legacy and Christian Syncretism1. A Methodological Introduction2. The Celtic Heredity3. The Christian Appropriation of Celtic TraditionNotesChapter 2. The Precursors of Yeats in the Recuperation  of the Narrative Tradition1. The Royal Hibernian Tales2. Thomas Crofton Croker and His Followers3. Patrick Kennedy4. Letitia McClintock, Lady Wilde, Douglas Hyde5. The Literary Reception of the Written Gaelic TraditionNotesChapter 3. A Rebirth in the Light of the Tradition1. The National Question and Literary Rebirth2. Yeats, the Inspiration of the Irish Revival3. The Distinguishing Characteristics of Yeats' Collections4. The Fairy Tale according to StephensNotesChapter 4. The Fairy Tale between fabula and historia1. The Space-Time Coordinates of the Fairy Tale2. The Dynamic Established by the Fairy TaleNotesChapter 5. The Process of Composition of the Fairy Tale1. The Triangle Composed of Etain, Midir and Eochaid and the Origin of the Fairy Tale2. An Analysis of the Priomscel and the Structure of the Fairy Tale3. Classification of the Functions and Characterization of the Fairy TaleNotesChapter 6. Plurality and Metanarrative in the Fairy Tale1. Substructure and Metastructure2. Deep Structure and Surface Structure3. The Narrativity Produced by the Fairy TaleNotesChapter 7. The Significance of the Fairy Tale in the Historical and Cultural Context1. An Indicative Metaphor2. The Epiphanic and Pragmatic Components of the Fairy Tale3. The Dialectic between  Signifier and SignifiedNotesChapter 8. Between the Fairy Tale and Tale1. The Five Phases of the Fairy Tale2. The Fairy Tale and the Pseudo-Fairy Tale3. The Joycian Tale in the Light of the Fairy TaleNotesChapter 9. Narrative Construction and Re-Construction of the World1. Paradigm and Syntagma, Fabula and Plot2. An Essential DialecticNotesChapter 10. Beyond Ireland: a General Perspective1. Narrativity as a Quest for Meaning2. A Model of Universal SignificanceNotesSelect Bibliography