COMP 216: Folk and Fairy Tales: Tracing the history of a tale

Use the library catalog to search for materials in the Williams libraries. Use Worldcat to find materials in other libraries. 

• Search by the Title of the tale 
• Sort results by date (oldest first) 
• Look at the material types 

Use the library catalog and Worldcat to find books about the history of folk or fairy tales. 

Do Subject Searches using the term Adaptation  combined with the title of your tale, or the general terms fairy tales or folk tales.  You can also use the term Influence  combined with the name of the tale's author (e.g. Influence and Grimm) 

These search strategies will retrieve books (fiction, poetry, etc.) derived from folk or fairy tales as well as books about the history and adaptions of folks or fairy tales.  Here are a few examples from the library catalog: 

• The poets' Grimm : 20th century poems from Grimm fairy tales
• Confession of an ugly step sister
• The sorcerer's apprentice : an anthology of magical tales
• Fairy tales transformed? : twenty-first-century adaptations and the politics of wonder
• Grimm Legacies
• Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition

Reviews and news/magazines articles can give you an interesting perspective on the presence a tale in books, plays, poetry, films, games, etc. You can find reviews in the following library databases: