Fairytale Reflections (17) Jane Yolen at SMoST

It's Thursday and I haven't shared last week's Fairytale Reflections (17) Jane Yolen at SMoST! And it's Jane Yolen. Of course, we all know who Jane is, so no introductions are really necessary although Kathrine Langrish offers a great one in the post, including discussing Touching Magic and Briar Rose.

Yolen doesn't pick a favorite fairy tale to discuss, but instead writes about fairy tales and writing in general.

Here's an excerpt, and as always, click through to read it all:

A number of years ago, folklorist Alan Dundes coined the term “fakelore” to describe stories not from the folk canon but that sounded and tasted and felt like those stories but were invented whole cloth by writers. Lumping in, I suppose, Madame LePrince du Beaumont and Isak Dinesen with Hans Christian Andersen, Angela Carter, and (gulp) me.

Though of course the perceptive lover of such tales could have pointed out to him how often the best of those stories have already moved back into the folk corner, hiding there for a number of years until they have emerged as—ta!ta!—folk stories.

I don’t like Dundes’ dyad and actually make this distinction: the greatest stories I know whether folklore or fakelore touch on the sacred, that moment when head and heart and soul combine.

More books by Yolen, just a representation since I can't show all 300+: