Seekers of Wonder - by Elena Emma Sottilotta

About the Book

"This book reappraises women's contribution to the field of folklore and fairy-tale studies in Italy and Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by exploring their role as preservers of oral traditions and as crucial intermediaries between different cultural groups. The book begins by introducing the transnational dimension of the nineteenth-century European folk revivals and identifies key female writers, collectors, and compilers of folklore and fairy tales in Italy and Ireland. The author then focuses on four women writers and folklore collectors who worked in these countries: Laura Gonzenbach (1842-1878), author of Sicilianische Mèarchen (1870), a collection of Sicilian oral tales later translated into German and English; Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), whose Sardinian ethnographic sketches, legends, and fairy tales circulated in late nineteenth-century Italian and Sardinian journals; Lady Jane Wilde (1821-1896), who published Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (1887) and Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland (1890); and Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932), who collected traditional Irish narratives from County Mayo, County Galway, and the Aran Islands, and published collections including Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920). In the author's words, "this book is a three-fold act of recovery of the lives and works of nineteenth-century female collectors and compilers who undertook these efforts, of their forgotten informants, and of the tales and traditions they bequeathed to them, so that their voices can finally speak from the shadows and emerge from the invisibility they were relegated to.""--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

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.