The fairy tale: recent interpretations, female characters and contemporary rewriting. Considerations about an “irresistible” genre

Abstract

Since the ancient times, the fairy tale manages to catch the imagination of human beings everywhere in the world. Its appeal comes to us even thanks to reinterpretations, constant contaminations from different media, from the oral writing, from cinema to theatre, from advertising to animation. This article will highlight the key features of a very much analysed genre, after the most recent studies and will follow it also by referring to the new routes that it has embarked on in our time. Special attention is then paid on the woman presence and on her origin and evolution that she, in her most varied personifications – innocent girl persecuted by the fairy and by the witch – has suffered up to the latest rewriting of the fairy tales.

Keywords

• fairy tale
• studies about the fairy tale
• literature for children
• female figure