Fairy Tales in the Postmodern World

In what ways do we look at the fairy tale and its tradition today? Originally an oral narrative based on formulaic repetitions, the fairy tale allows the contemporary writer to be at play with tradition, through a recovering of the canons and formulas of the classical tales that is experimental and ever changing. Fairy-tale readers make personal use of it, resorting for manipulations and rewritings that serve their own specific needs. The expansion of the fairy tale shows its endless literary evolution thanks to the monumentalisation of the written word, hence the necessity for the literary fairy tale to die, in order to be reborn as literary play. By absorbing its oral antecedents, the rewriting of the tale of wonder establishes itself as a renovated narrative that continually proves effective in the reconstitution and reaffirmation of human consciousness.