ABSTRACT
In 1989, ALAN DUNDES, the renowned folklorist, published Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook with ten different essays exemplifying different approaches to the folk narrative that gave rise to the literary tale of Little Red Riding Hood. His concluding essay, "Interpreting 'Little Red Riding Hood' Psychoanalytically," 1 is a masterful summary of the immense scholarship that has sought to explain why we continually retell the adventures of Little Red Riding Hood, and it is also a powerful argument for using psychoanalysis in folklore research. However, since Dundes is concerned primarily with opening the eyes of folklorists to the multi-faceted aspects of the tale and its underlying sexual meanings, he sets a frame for understanding the tale that still needs modification, if we are going to grasp how an oral tale of the 17th century was transformed into a literary tale of rape and violence.
