Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Tales in Theory: The Role of the Folktale in the Development of Narratology -- 2. Theory in Tales: Cycles, Levels, and Frames -- 3. The Idea of the Folktale in Italo Calvino -- Italian Folktales: Text and Contexts -- First Idea: Tradition and Ideology -- Second Idea: Singular Fantasies -- Third Idea: A "Geometry of Story-Telling" -- 4. Narrative Turns -- John Barth, Author of the Arabian Nights -- "Familiarity Breeds Consent": Robert Coover and the Fairy Tale -- 5. Craftiness and Cruelty: A Reading of the Fairy Tale and Its Place in Recent Feminist Fictions -- "Curiosity . . . Is Insubordination in Its Purest Form" -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.