In this episode we are lost in the dark woods, the enchanted forests, and we come upon the sleeping beauty.

How many times have we walked through a small grove or copse of trees and been startled from a rattle just off to our right? Was it a little bird, or maybe a squirrel? But when you looked, nothing else moved. Except the shadows; shadows don’t make any noise. Do they?

Angela Carter tells us how “The woods enclosed. Like a net, like a cage.” She says, “There is no way through the wood any more…Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again…”

And we see in our folktales that these woods hide secrets, we lose our sense of self, and our identities are hidden. There’s a different kind of beating heart deep in the woods, with a blood stream literal streams pumping life to the dark center. The lungs are high overhead, rattling a leafy canopy, and we know all around, the woods are alive.

Folktales, fairytales, myths, legends, medieval romances, plays, and even today in contemporary works of literature and movies, forests and woods and even just clumps of trees in the distance manifest as representations of…something…something big, something small, something dark, something needed.

Episode Notes

For more information on all of the stories and authors and themes
VARIATIONS of Sleeping Beauty tales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 410
translated and/or edited by D. L. Ashliman
Disney's, Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Lang's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (1891, The Blue Fairy Book)
The Grimms, Little Briar Rose
Charles Perrault's, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
Giambattista Basile's, The Sun, The Moon, and Talia

References Used

1. Angela Carter, "The Erl King", from The Bloody Chamber
2. Sara Maitland Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairy Tales
3. Amelia Starling, “Sleeping Beauty: The Meaning of Fate, Sleep, and Death” WILLOW WEB
4. “The Enchanted Forest of the Brothers Grimm”, Jack Zipes