1.) Transformation is an element that appears in many fairy tales. Whether through supernatural occurrences or through more natural means, characters undergo transformations that enchant readers. Discuss how transformation occurs in at least 3 texts from our course readings and how the point of transformation is important in the chosen narratives.
2.) Choose a motif (or motifs) from the fairy tales we have studied. Discuss how the motif functions in at least 3 texts from our course readings. Identify and analyze how changes in, or absence of, the motif(s) alter the narratives.
3.) Much critical attention to the fairy tale genre focuses on the narratives as agents of socialization. As we have noted in the course, much of the socialization is gender specific, and focused on proper behaviour for young women within a given time and culture. Discuss the gendered focus of the narratives and their associated moral lessons in at least 3 texts from our course readings with attention to the implications and responses such texts provoke.
4.) In many of the twentieth and twenty-first-century revisions of fairy tales we have encountered in the course, the author shifts the mode of narration to give the reader a different perspective on a familiar tale. Discuss how a shift in narrative voice offers the reader new possibilities for interpretation of well-known fairy tale narratives by analyzing narration in at least 3 texts from our course readings.
5.) Compare 3 variants of the same tale type through the cultural shifts we have discussed in the course. How does a modernist writer or a feminist writer of fairy tales convey their perspective of contemporary socio-historical issues through fairy tale narratives?