In Relentless Progress, Zipes looks at the surprising ways that stories have influenced people within contemporary culture and vice versa. Among the many topics explored here are the dumbing down of books for children, the marketing of childhood, the changing shape of feminist fairy tales, and why American and British children aren't exposed to more non-western fairy tales.

Jack Zipes is Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. An acclaimed translator and scholar of children's literature and culture, his most recent books include The Collected Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitré, Why Fairy Tales Stick, Hans Christian Andersen: The Misunderstood Storyteller, Beautiful Angiola, and The Robber with the Witch's Head, all published by Routledge.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1. The Reconfiguration of Children and Children's Literature in the Culture Industry

2. Misreading Children and the Fate of the Book

3. Why Fantasy Matters Too Much

4. The Multicultural Contradictions of International Children's Literature: Three Complaints and Three Wishes

5. What Makes a Repulsive Frog So Appealing: Applying Memetics to Folk and Fairy Tales

6. And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After: The Feminist Fairy Tale after Forty Years of Fighting for Survival

7. Storytelling as Spectacle in the Globalized World

Notes

Bibliography

Index