ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a new materialist lens to consider how the natural/material might be reimagined in fairy-tale revisions to reveal its own agency in shaping the world. It considers how contemporary authors have used the enlivened, wondrous depictions of nature, bodies and matter found in traditional European tales to reimagine existence as a processual and interconnected web of dynamic forces free from deterministic laws of nature. Dualistic hierarchies have been the primary target of the post-human, new materialisms emerging over the last two decades. The vital materialisms that emerge from the linguistic landscapes of post-modernity do not arise to contest language's ability to construct reality, matter and nature, but to demonstrate how materiality impacts discourse, constructing existence collaboratively in a series of dynamic interconnections. Considerations of nature in contemporary fairy-tale fiction and criticism have most often been aligned with the postmodern agenda that challenged deterministic depictions of 'naturalness' by highlighting their construction.
