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Article: Innocent Initiations: Female Agency in Eroticized Fairy Tales
- Article from:
- Marvels & Tales
- Article date:
- January 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Wayne State University Press 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Obscene and bawdy folklore has suffered a long history of neglect and censorship. In 1965 Gershon Legman lamented the "prudery-ridden" reception of Aleksandr Afanas'ev's Russian Secret Tales - a collection of bawdy Russian folktales with a troubled publication and translation history (xi). In 1998 Alan Dundes, in his foreword to Afanas'ev's tales, echoed Legman's frustration with "narrow-minded censorship" (n.p.). He states: "bawdy folklore is badly underrepresented in the totality of folklore publication. It is the exception rather than the rule when a sampling of bawdy folktales finds its way into print" (n.p.). Bawdy folktales, like fabliaux and toasts, are difficult to study because of ...