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Writing Baba Yaga into the Tasmanian Bush
Citation
Wood, D, Writing Baba Yaga into the Tasmanian Bush, Marvels and Tales, 33, (1) pp. 157-164. ISSN 1521-4281 (2019) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Published and copyright by Wayne State University Press.
DOI: doi:10.13110/marvelstales.33.1.0157
Abstract
Works of fiction come into being through mysterious routes of knowing. It’s not at all unusual to hear a writer report that a story ‘came to them,’ as if stories were not things invented by writers, but pre-existing entities floating in the ether. Elizabeth Gilbert is far from alone in her insistence that "ideas are a disembodied, energetic life form," and that they "spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners" (35).
A few years ago, I was visited in this mysterious way by the idea that I should write about a woman who lived in the Tasmanian bush in a small, timber hut, high on a hillside. It seemed that instantly I knew the following things: the woman rescued and nurtured marsupial creatures that were orphaned when their mothers were killed on the roads; there lived beneath the floorboards of her home a Tasmanian devil; the woman was ageing, or perhaps ageless; and that she was a literary relative to Baba Yaga, the Slavic witch-crone of European fairy tale tradition. This last piece of knowledge might have meant that I was being invited to perform a fairy-tale retelling, but because Baba Yaga (unlike most other fairy tale characters) appears in a number of different tales, it was perhaps less of an invitation to retell a tale, than to relocate a character and see what she would do in new surroundings.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | fairy tales, Baba Yaga, Tasmanian devil, literature of Tasmania |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Literary studies |
Research Field: | Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | Literature |
UTAS Author: | Wood, D (Dr Danielle Wood) |
ID Code: | 135011 |
Year Published: | 2019 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 1 |
Deposited By: | Office of the School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2019-09-19 |
Last Modified: | 2020-07-27 |
Downloads: | 14 View Download Statistics |
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