Don't do me like that

[davem]

I haven't read Tatar's 'Annotated Fairy tales, but from this interview it seems that she focusses on the value & relevance of Fairy stories to children:

Tatar gives much of the credit for her book to the students who have taken her Core course, which explores fairy tales as a point of departure for considering broader cultural issues of childhood.

In fact, exploring the 'broader cultural issues of childhood.' seems to be her concern - fairy stories, it seems, have no value in & of themselves as far as she is concerned, & they only have any relevance in the service of something else - ie to tell us something about children.

I doubt Tolkien would have given any credence to such an approach. In fact he dismisses the idea that fairy stories belong in the nursery, or are the especial province of children in OFS.

Just because some fairy stories involve children does not make them children's stories, & does not mean they tell us anything at all about 'broader cultural issues of childhood'. In fact, as the stories were not invented or written by children the most they could tell us is something about the broader cultural issues of adults. These tales were created & told by adults as entertainment first & foremost, & they were not aimed at any age group in particular. They weren't written, either, to conform to any particular 'philosophy' (which, for instance, the 'fairytales' of Angela Carter were).

I can only say that her final words in the interview:

"I have enough trouble with the real world, and suddenly there's this other world, where everything has a new name," she says of J.K. Rowling's wildly popular fantasy series. "I have trouble mastering the rules of soccer. I don't want to have to learn about Quidditch."

seem to me to perfectly sum up her irrelevance as far as the subject of fairytales is concerned.