Baśniowe herstory
A fairy-tale herstory

Postmodern strategies of reinterpretation by Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, and Emma Donoghue

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article A fairy-tale herstory. Postmodern strategies of reinterpretation by Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, and Emma Donoghue is to analyze selected postmodern fairy tales written by Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, and Emma Donoghue. The most important literary strategy applied by all three authors consists in presenting fairy tales from a new, female perspective. As a result, this strategy reveals “facts”, contexts, and meanings that have so far been unnoticed, ignored, or omitted in the original story, turning it into a fairy-tale “herstory”. Postmodern fairy tales by Carter, Lee, and Donoghue are revisionist stories that critically engage the “canonical” material, i.e. fairy-tale pre-texts. The authors question traditional social values as well as petrified cultural “norms”, rules, hierarchies, and images. At the same time, they often suggest a new order and new values. Consequently, the genre of fairy tale is given back to women—the social group so far discriminated, according to feminist discourse. By challenging the traditional socio-cultural context and constructing the new one, Carter, Lee, and Donoghue change the meaning of fairy tales. Therefore, classic fairy-tale stories become the subject of a postmodern, intertextual play.

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