Claudia Schwabe

The Tale of Tales (Lo cunto de li cunti) is the first collection of fairy tales of the Western world (Naples, 1634–36). For all fairy tale fans, Basile’s book, made of fifty stories, is a fundamental point of reference, although these Italian tales couldn’t be more different from what we usually mean by “fairy tale.”

Claudia Schwabe is assistant professor of German at Utah State University and teaches courses in German language, literature, and culture, including fairy tales. She has published on varied subjects, such as East German fairy-tale films, magic realism, European literary fairy tales of the Romantic period, German Orientalism, televisual adaptations of classical tales, and fairy-tale pedagogy. Her work has appeared in Channeling Wonder, Marvels & Tales, Journal of Folklore Research, The German Quarterly, Cultural Analysis, Poetica Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her monograph Craving Supernatural Creatures: German Fairy-Tale Figures in American Pop Culture, which is under contract with Wayne State University Press's Series in Fairy-Tale Studies.