Poliglocia

I believe Tale of Tales recovers the subversive potential of fairy tale. The synopsis for the movie in Germany presented it as "Fantasyfilm". It may be useful to know that the German word for fantasy is actually spelled "Fantasie", whereas the English word has come to be used by Germans what the rest of the world tries to make sense of as "high fantasy" or "swords and sorcery", thus covering the wide range from Conan to Harry Potter. But should this cover fairy tales as well? Opinions may differ. Although professor Tolkien would argue that all folk narratives, from Beowulf to Briar Rose , have a particular though anonymous author, some poet, behind them, I prefer to believe in collective creation (as posed by, for example, Levi-Strauss) that shapes a tale bit by bit like the ocean shapes a round stone. Of course, such unconscious processes can't be considered to be fantastic. I'd rather follow Stephan Frings, who claims that fan...