Università Degli Studi Dell'Aquila

Department Member, Dipartimento di Culture Comparate

PhD Student

About

My research project discusses The Retelling of Fairy Tales in Postmodernist Literature, with particular emphasis on the transformation and mutilation of the female body.

In the introduction, the history of fairy tales is considered. These are revealed to be a hybrid genre suitable for changeable values in society. In the main section, the research project analyzes the relationship between fairy tales and Postmodernism, a period that prefers subjects which, like fairy tales, are well-known but also amenable to further retelling.

Postmodernism tends to study, analyze, contaminate and reverse the past. Myth and fairy tales are susceptible to this treatment, since they are pliable and moldable, having originated from a continuous transmission that includes both persistent elements and transformations typical of the oral tradition.

Postmodern writers who choose to rewrite or re-invent fairy tales often use the lesser-known versions which come directly from the oral tradition and which pre-date Grimm and Perrault.

This leads to an inverted journey in the attempt to recover the tale's original function for an adult audience, as a genre representing the community's values and fears.

This choice of retelling well-known fairy tales also provides the starting point for a discourse on women's role in society and the way in which their bodies are perceived, since the female body is often described as suffering a mutilation or transformation.

Various fairy tales will be analyzed according to the type of mutilation or transformation undergone by the female body, and the new meanings which Postmodernism attributes to them.

The research will be comparative, with texts coming from different regions, genres and languages, stressing the persistence of certain themes in various cultures.

The retold versions of fairy tales include: Bluebeard, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Donkeyskin, Little Red Riding Hood, The Armless Maiden and the Scheherazade figure  in A Thousand and One Nights.