This stimulating and controversial book suggests an original approach to the study of traditional literature, focussing on medieval romance and on folktale [especially fairytale]. Although a number of new and striking interpretations of such stories are offered, the emphasis is on how they ‘work’ - how stories mean, rather than what individual stories mean.
Dr Wilson observes that such stories have survived for many centuries, though they are conspicuously lacking in everyday logic. She argues that since the story-telling experience is one of re-creation and creation on the part of both story-teller and audience, and since the process of following the story demands imaginative identification of teller and audience with hero or heroine, then it is possible to examine the story from the protagonist’s - and the audience’s - own exploratory dream. Dr Wilson then discusses the magical and pictorial structures and processes of such stories.
This is a literary study, relatively short, non-technical, highly condensed, richly suggestive. It concentrates on stories as artistic entities; psychological and psychoanalytical insights are subordinate to the literary aim. Although original, this book takes its place alongside much other work in related fields of literary, psychological, folklore, anthropological and sociological studies, which recognises the supreme imaginative significance of traditional stories and examines the multiple ways in which they convey meaning.