ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FAIRY TALES: BEHIND THE SCENES RE-WRITING FAIRY TALES: NEW IDENTITIES, NEW TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FAIRY TALES: BEHIND THE SCENES RE-WRITING FAIRY TALES: NEW IDENTITIES, NEW TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Summary/Abstract: The primary aim of this paper is to show how important the aesthetics of the time is in the interpretation of fairy tales, in the way they are viewed, perceived, felt, assimilated. It is precisely the semiotic aesthetics of the post-war period (Morris and Langer) that manages to unveil the sign processes involved, for instance, in the passage from the poetics of modernism to postmodernism. In the early modern period and in the age of the Enlightenment, which is now perceived as canonical modernity, fairy tales were seen as the roots, the mirror of every people. They were thought by Herder, Goethe, Charles Perrault, or the British preromantics to nourish people’s spiritual hunger and complete their national identity, becoming thus a mark of identity. On the contrary, the historical changes leading to the onset of the postmodern period - the process of globalization, the massive migrations and the emergence of new political concepts, such as imaginary community (one bonded not by common past, racial features and origin but by allegiance to the Constitution and communal identitarian narratives), or political correctness, multicultural society, etc. - also brought about a different poetics in the treatment of the fairy tale as a generic form and as a carrier of ideology, the perception of the fairy tales as a provider and keeper of any kind of identity or unity is lost, they becoming only a pattern, a fragment, an excuse for something else, a stage on which other plays are performed, keeping up with change, with postmodernist ideas concerning their use and meanings. It is perhaps this very adaptability of fairy tales, due to their highly patterned structure that lets itself to narrative replotting and transformations, that also provides elasticity to the concept of Identity.

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