Than All the Treasures

di Reneé Bibby @rmbibby

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This story was inspired by Lewis Buzbee's "Sunday, Tarzan in His Hammock"

While I chose to use updated language, I spent a lot of time more formal language of the original fairytale

This story required some research for small details, organized here in digital the Bear app

This story was accepted in 2016 by Worcester Review

Later that year, it was nominated by the journal for a Pushcart Prize

In my class, I make many references to fairytales and use them often as inspiration for my own writing. "Than All the Treasures" is my version Rumpelstiltskin in a modern world.

One source of inspiration was Lewis Buzbee's poem "Sunday, Tarzan in His Hammock." In it, Buzbee challenges the conventional perception of Tarzan, inviting the reader to find greater emotional and philosophical depths of a one-dimensional hero. (Read the full poem here: https://www.lewisbuzbee.com/bio.htm.) I used that same approach, interrogating the motives of a traditional villain. In the traditional fairytale, Rumeplstiltskin helps a woman in a serious jam. Why does he help? Why did he want to have her first-born child?

To understand what elements of the classic narrative would translate into the modern world, I spent a lot of time with original fairytale and various translations. This also meant researching the land and time of the original tale. I'm definitely analog, with all of my notebooks, but I keep track of my research on Bear. (The app: https://bear.app.)

The final story places Rumpelstiltskin in a modern situation, jumping back in time to explore the original narrative. The story was accepted by the Worcester Review and nominated for a Pushcart in 2016.