ABSTRACT

This volume offers a comprehensive critical and theoretical introduction to the genre of the fairy tale. It:

  • explores the ways in which folklorists have defined the genre
  • assesses the various methodologies used in the analysis and interpretation of fairy tale
  • provides a detailed account of the historical development of the fairy tale as a literary form
  • engages with the major ideological controversies that have shaped critical and creative approaches to fairy tales in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
  • demonstrates that the fairy tale is a highly metamorphic genre that has flourished in diverse media, including oral tradition, literature, film, and the visual arts.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

chapter |28 pages

Definitions

chapter |23 pages

The Emergence of a Literary Genre

Early Modern Italy to the French Salon

chapter |22 pages

The Consolidation of a Genre

The Brothers Grimm to Hans Christian Andersen

chapter |26 pages

The Emergence of Fairy-Tale Theory

Plato to Propp

chapter |31 pages

Psychoanalysis, History and Ideology

Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Approaches to Fairy Tale