THE (DIFFICULT) REHABILITATION OF THE FAIRY-TALE VILLAIN

Abstract

This article explores what happens – cognitively speaking – when readers are confronted with those rewritings of folktales that provide the villain with a roundness which was not present in the source text. The cases here analyzed – Donna Jo Napoli’s novels The Magic Circle and Zel and the Disney film Maleficent – concern one of the staple folktale villains – the witch – once it is reshaped in fractured folktales. The article argues that the newly characterized villains activate the readers’ subjective experience not simply due to a recognition of generic repertoires, but due to the involvement of their broader experiential background. This involvement takes the form of a deep cognitive reorganisation that depends on attributing and enacting consciousness and allows for a more rounded ethical engagement.