The Snake and the Firefly, folktale

There was once a firefly who liked to fly among the trees in a jungle.

One day, a snake came along and looked at the firefly flying around, working, eating, and shining with its great green light.

The snake didn’t have much to do, though, so he decided to chase the firefly around to eat him…

First just keeping a watchful eye, then slithering softly along and lastly chasing rapidly around.

The firefly flew, and flew, and flew as fast as those little wings could take him, but eventually grew tired and fell to the ground, where the snake was awaiting.

Before the snake could eat him, he pleaded to ask a few questions, to which the snake replied: “Hmm… I don’t usually give this privilege to my food, but go ahead”.

The firefly then asked “Am I in your food chain?”, and the snake answered “No…”.

“Are you hungry?” mumbled the defenceless little firefly. “Not really, no” said the vicious snake.

“Then why do you want to eat me?” whispered the firefly, to which the snake stated clearly

“Because I just can’t stand to see you shine!”

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Keep in mind that from time to time we find snakes.

Transgressive Tales - Queering the Grimms

The stories in the Grimm brothers' Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), first published in 1812 and 1815, have come to define academic and popular understandings of the fairy tale genre. Yet over a period of forty years, the brothers, especially Wilhelm, revised, edited, sanitized, and bowdlerized the tales, publishing the seventh and final edition in 1857 with many of the sexual implications removed. However, the contributors in Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms demonstrate that the Grimms and other collectors paid less attention to ridding the tales of non-heterosexual implications and that, in fact, the Grimms’ tales are rich with queer possibilities. 

Editors Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill introduce the volume with an overview of the tales’ literary and interpretive history, surveying their queerness in terms of not just sex, gender and sexuality, but also issues of marginalization, oddity, and not fitting into society. In three thematic sections, contributors then consider a range of tales and their queer themes. In Faux Femininities, essays explore female characters, and their relationships and feminine representation in the tales. Contributors to Revising Rewritings consider queer elements in rewritings of the Grimms’ tales, including Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Jeanette Winterson’s Twelve Dancing Princesses, and contemporary reinterpretations of both “Snow White” and “Snow White and Rose Red.” Contributors in the final section, Queering the Tales, consider queer elements in some of the Grimms’ original tales and explore intriguing issues of gender, biology, patriarchy, and transgression. 

With the variety of unique perspectives in Transgressive Tales, readers will find new appreciation for the lasting power of the fairy-tale genre. Scholars of fairy-tale studies and gender and sexuality studies will enjoy this thought-provoking volume. 

Contributors: Emilie Anderson-Grégoire, Cristina Bacchilega, Anita Best, Joy Brooke Fairfield, Andrew J. Friedenthal, Kevin Goldstein, Pauline Greenhill, Bettina Hutschek, Jeana Jorgensen, Kimberly J. Lau, Elliot Gordon Mercer, Margaret A. Mills, Jennifer Orme, Catherine Tosenberger, Kay Turner, Margaret R. Yocom 

Published by Wayne State University Press<