ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss the symbol of antiquity in fairy-tale poems. Demonstrating that poems with recognizable and definitive fairy-tale elements can be traced back to the earliest written human documents, I draw on the concept of sacred time to argue that nineteenth- to twenty-first-century fairy-tale poems reference the concept of antiquity in a double sense: overtly, by placing themselves within historical traditions of storytelling and storytelling for children, and covertly by depending on the ecology of the sacred—evoking exemplary acts that occurred (and may occur again) in an ahistorical, timeless realm, in illo tempore. By focusing primarily on post-1900 poems, I show how the symbolism of antiquity enables poetry to draw upon inherited values it otherwise repudiates, both in challenging historical readings and rejecting traditional poetic form. I conclude by demonstrating how some fairy-tale poems attempt to shift the burden of drawing meaning from the fairy tale onto the reader, whose engagement with poetic form, and, more broadly, with questions of aesthetics, re-actualizes the central challenge of the fairy tale.
