Pied Piper
So I've been thinking a lot about the pied piper today because of finding those gems on youtube yesterday. And I realised that not only do I not have any paper copies of the story, which is sad because it was one of my favorites when I was a kid, but I also don't think I've ever read any theoretical writings about it. There's nothing in the fairy tale theory books I've either bought or borrowed and the only useful things an Internet search came up with was a wikipedia page and several different retellings
The only book I could find: The Pied Piper:A handbook is really expensive. It just seems..odd, there is so much material in the tale and both psychoanalytical and Cultural materialist analysis just jump out at me immediately and I could probably pull together others if I though about it for any length of time.
It's not as if its an unknown tale, it like many other fairy tales has become part of the fabric of our consciousness, we talk about paying the piper we say he who pays the piper calls the tune
To me the obvious reading is about plague, about children dying from plague, about plague decimating the city. And even if a rat catcher got rid of all the rats the infected fleas would still infect people and children would have been more vulnerable than adults.
And then although from a modern reading there is something dandyish and camp about the pied piper, he is playing a pipe I mean really, how phallic is that?
The only book I could find: The Pied Piper:A handbook is really expensive. It just seems..odd, there is so much material in the tale and both psychoanalytical and Cultural materialist analysis just jump out at me immediately and I could probably pull together others if I though about it for any length of time.
It's not as if its an unknown tale, it like many other fairy tales has become part of the fabric of our consciousness, we talk about paying the piper we say he who pays the piper calls the tune
To me the obvious reading is about plague, about children dying from plague, about plague decimating the city. And even if a rat catcher got rid of all the rats the infected fleas would still infect people and children would have been more vulnerable than adults.
And then although from a modern reading there is something dandyish and camp about the pied piper, he is playing a pipe I mean really, how phallic is that?