The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

Winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award

"A charming book about enchantment, a profound book about fairy tales."—John Updike, The New York Times Book Review
 
Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development.

Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sindbad to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in our greatest human task, that of finding meaning for one’s life.

• Russian Fairy Tales (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)
• Russian Folk Belief
• Morphology of the Folktale
• The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories: 75th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
• The Interpretation of Fairy Tales
• The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm All-New Third Edition
• Russian Fairy Tales (Illustrated)
• The Classic Fairy Tales (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
• The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (Norton Critical Editions)
• Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale