ABSTRACT
Formalism combined with fairy-tale culture and media evokes the ongoing specter and implications of twentieth-century literary theory. This involves early twentieth-century Russian and Slavic literary scholars, folklorists, and linguists; inklings of structuralism and New Criticism; and semiotics and narratology. Purist approaches strictly focus on the artistic work, eliding issues of history, production, reception, and meaning. Still, the study of form lends itself, by extension, to textures, contexts, expressivity, and interpretations as an artistic work persists recognizably over time and conveys knowledge. A vernacular formalism begins with speech acquisition and scribbles, with early investigations of word play, rhyme, rhythm, line, color, pattern, repetition, and framing—in our particular purview, with “Once upon a time.” Formalism offers a practical, applicable toolbox for critically approaching fairy-tale cultures and media because it acknowledges how fairy tale sheds pivotal light on artistic making and creative imaginings. Tracing the merit of formalism and related critical movements with fairy-tale scholarship, this chapter also posits ways that fairy-tale cultures and media attain formalist impulses, and it concludes by considering how fairy-tale form draws attention while indexing narrative, and sociocultural, ultimacy. Fairy-tale form affords cognitive and affective wonder and delight, perhaps even happiness, while the familiar frame relates the contingency of “once” with the ultimacy of “ever after.”
