Women's cultural and political engagement with oral tales and traditions in European peripheries
With Seekers of Wonder, Elena Sottilotta offers the first comparative study of women's manifold roles in the collection of Italian and Irish folklore and fairy tales between 1870 and 1920. Sottilotta views the often-overlooked work of these women from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering both the politics and poetics of seeking wonder. In so doing, she centers women's influence on the preservation and dissemination of oral traditions, bringing work that was once relegated to the margins into dialogue with work long regarded as canonical.
After mapping sidelined, marginalized, and forgotten women folklorists, Sottilotta narrows the focus onto four writers and collectors who were inspired by Italian and Irish insular contexts: Laura Gonzenbach, who collected Sicilian wonder tales; Grazia Deledda, who wrote Sardinian ethnographic sketches, legends, and fairy tales; Jane Wilde, who published anthologies of Irish folklore; and Augusta Gregory, who collected traditional narratives in the west of Ireland. Situated within an ongoing process of rediscovery of lesser-known collectors, tellers, and tales in the European tradition, Sottilotta relocates these figures within a broader transcultural framework.
Throughout, Sottilotta emphasizes the role of women as crucial intermediaries between different cultural groups-in particular, between the world of the "folk" and the world of scholarly folklore studies. Unearthing rare archival material and reading these writings from the perspective of gender, Sottilotta sheds light on the identity dynamics that animated the cultural phenomenon of collecting folk and fairy tales in this era. Elena Emma Sottilotta is research fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. A Fulbright alumna, she specializes in women's and gender studies, comparative literature, folklore, and fairy-tale studies. "This book, based on extensive archival research and fieldwork, is an excellent discussion of very different individuals with very different trajectories of collection and publication. The material about direct connections between collectors and folklorists in Italy and Ireland is especially interesting."-Pauline Greenhill, University of Winnipeg
"A brilliant scholarly contribution to folklore and gender studies! Sottilotta conducts herself as a most capable mediator between and across a range of scholarly discourses and perspectives. She enacts historical and critical recovery in ways that model forward-looking and truly intersectional work."-Cristina Bacchilega, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
"In this pioneering book, Sottilotta brings together four women who were groundbreaking folklorists at a time when very few women were 'allowed' or encouraged to participate in this profession. With superb and thorough research, Sottilotta demonstrates how her quartet (Gonzenbach, Deledda, Wilde, and Gregory) found ways to capture and promote the diverse tales and legends of women that reflected how women were exploited and also how women subtly developed critiques of patriarchal societies."-Jack Zipes, author of Buried Treasures: The Power of Political Fairy Tales "It's clear that this study has been a labour of love for the author and her passion shines through. As I suggested at the outset of this review, it's an academic achievement that will prove invaluable to others studying in this field."---Terry Potter, The Letterpress Project "This book asks questions about the power of wonder, the courage to seek for it, where and how it can be found. It examines how the very quest for wonder can be personally transformative and, on a larger spectrum, lead to societal and cultural shifts."---Olivia Armstrong, Fortean Times
