Metamorfozy baśni i baśniowe metamorfozy
Metamorphoses of Fairy Tales and Fairy-Tale Metamorphoses

Summary/Abstract: The review article is devoted to the monograph Baśni przeobrażone. Transformacje bajki i baśni w polskiej epice po 1989 roku [Fairy Tales Transformed: The Metamorphosis of Fairy Tales in Polish Literature after 1989] (2020). Its author, Magdalena Bednarek, shows the potential of the fairy tale (but also the animal tale, the folktale, etc.), consisting in the penetration of its various elements into diverse dimensions of a literary work and the specific organisation of its structure, and the construction of plots, meanings, and characters. Bednarek’s research material was, above all, realistic prose addressed to adult readers – functioning in various cultural circles – published in Poland over the last thirty years. The article reflects on the author’s way of selecting literary sources and the applied terminology (including bajka as a superior category for diverse genres, ‘anti-fairy tale,’ ‘retelling,’ ‘rewriting’). Three perspectives were also analysed from which Bednarek considered (largely in the context of feminist criticism) the forms of the presence of fairy tales in Polish realistic prose: (1) genre metamorphoses of fairy tales, (2) transformations of popular motifs, (3) transformations of characters (mainly heroines).

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