What lies behind the story? Analysing fairy tales

Andrea Modesto is a history and philosophy teacher and philosophical practitioner. For the last five years he has been working with the Institut de Pratiques Philosophiques (IPP) and with the Istituto di Pratiche Filosofiche (IPF) within which he gives training courses and philosophical workshops. He is the author of “Mini guida alla consulenza filosofica” (2016) and “I. A.M. un uomo a pezzi (2018). Andrea lives in Brescia.

Mathias Tistelgren is a philosophy and English teacher and a philosophical practitioner. For the last few years he has been working with the Institut de Pratiques Philosophiques (IPP) where he trains philosophical practitioners and gives reading courses. He is also a practising member of SSFP. Mathias lives in Göteborg.

A fairy tale is never just a fairy tale. It always says something about its author, its time and even its reader. In this respect the story is always new each time it is read and when we read it we also read ourselves. Besides, since we are not so unique it also tells us something about the human condition, what it means to be a person among other persons.

During this seminar, Andrea Modesto and Mathias Tistelgren will show how we can apply concepts in order to interpret fairy tales and in the process learn something about what it means to be human, a technique they applied in their newly published book “Behind the Tale – A Philosophical Analysis of H. C. Andersen Stories”.