ABSTRACT
Two main approaches have been employed in the study of fairy tales. The first approach sees them as a literary genre aimed at children, to be found in a special set of books, whose basic function is pedagogical, and whose main feature is supposedly to stage a world of fantasy which stands in stark contrast to daily life. The second approach sees the fairy tale as belonging to the traditions of folklore, hence not as a 'high' literary genre but as a product of popular poetic creation; it is claimed to be a belated, hence a 'positioned' historical commentary. Vladimir Propp was the first scholar to develop a theory of the fairy tale as an autonomous genre. Luthi studied the fairy tale as an autonomous literary genre, trying, to identify its specific style, and independently reaching similar conclusions. Paedophilic fantasies appearing in fairy tales may be schematically classified into either openly sexual or more or less oral fantasies of incorporation.
