Slovenska Literatura (Dec 2017)
The Autonomy of the Meditative Fairy Tale as a Genre for Children
Abstract
The presented paper sets a goal to defend the concept of the meditative fairy tale amongst the other existing genres of the literary fairy tale. The introduction includes the description of the contemporary ununified genre classification of literary fairy tales at home and abroad. Its comparison with the genre of the philosophical fairy tale leads to reflecting on the meditative fairy tale as an autonomous genre in literature for children and youth and it points out its specific tendencies towards the „sacrum“ space. The paper makes an attempt to define these writings against a background of the ideas formulated by the Romanian religious studies scholar Mircea Eliade and the contemporary research in the field of literature for children (Andričíková, Kubeczková, Magalová and others). Reading meditative fairy tales is recommended to all age groups. It presents a literary text of an intimate atmosphere for readers of all ages, where every human emotion comes to life – including the serious, gloomy, cheerless ones, which are rarely employed in literature for children. In the conclusion, the paper suggests new possible ways of looking at the evolution of the literary fairy tale in Slovakia against a background of the research into the „archetypical“ genre of the literary fairy tale – the fairy tale featuring Christian and didactic tendencies.
