Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale (review)
2009; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1536-1802
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoContemporary Fiction Fairy Tale. Edited by Stephen Benson. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008. 209 pp. Kevin Paul Smith opened his study Postmodern Fairytale (2007) by quoting A. S. Byatt: The novel in nineteenth twentieth centuries has always incorporated forms of myths fairy (On Histories Stories, 2001). Smith then relevantly noted that in last three decades fairy tale was no longer merely an underlying structure or a handy metaphor in novels but had become central to (1). Yet, since Cristina Bacchilega's seminal Postmodern Fairy Tales in 1997, which first dealt with transformations undergone by fairy tales when adopted adapted by postmodern culture, including literary texts, fairy tales have mostly been examined only in relation to a particular writer, text, or genre. But over last two years, a few books purporting to embrace large subject of fairy tales contemporary literature have been published. Whereas Smith's study about fairy tale as a constituent of postmodern fiction, Stephen Benson's collection of essays in Contemporary Fiction Fairy Tale stems from belief that fairy tales are not just a key influence on contemporary fiction but that relationship they have with fiction is vital in our understanding of contemporaneity of works in question (3). in title granted its full coordinative value, establishing reciprocity between two elements: essays included in collection are not about contemporary fairy-tale fiction but about how fiction fairy tale interact, inform, transform one another in works of a homogeneous selection of writers over past forty years. Most of authors under scrutiny form the fairy-tale (2), alternatively called Angela Carter generation (even though Benson elects Robert Coover's 1969 Pricksongs Descants as first contemporary response to fairy tale). Key writers are studied via a variety of approaches that reflect critics' interests. first five chapters are thus devoted individually to work (or part of work) of Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt. last two chapters involve attempts at theorizing topic while addressing younger writers (Jeanette Winterson NaIo Hopkinson). Giving Carter definite precedence, first essay on Bloody Chamber (1979). Sarah Gamble, a Carter scholar, bears in mind fact that Carter's book was highly controversial when first published refuses to underplay the genuinely unsettling aspects of these (21). Carter's particular combination of Gothic, pornographic, fairy-tale elements in her fiction Gamble's point of focus: she thus offers interesting developments on Carter's attempts via fairy tale to be what she herself defined as a moral pornographer (24), or stresses link between Sheridan LeFanu's vampire figure Carmilla; Carter's Bluebeard's bride, Cannula; girl narrator in The Bloody Chamber. Andrew Teverson, a Salman Rushdie scholar, engages with reasons for novelist's pervading interest in fairy tales. In this stimulating essay, Teverson shows that Rushdie aware of fairy tale as both a site a vehicle for social political thought. Teverson chooses to compare Rushdie's association between fairy tales cultural national identity with apparently similar views of past thinkers on same matter (first eighteenth-century German poet philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, then German scholar Max Muller). As hinted in essay's title, Migrant Fictions, [f]airy tales are fiction's natural migrants (54): Rushdie sees - makes his readers see - fairy tales as perfect embodiment of hybridization cultural exchange. A. S. Byatt has written texts that may be classified as fairy tales but - true to purpose of collection - rather than engaging directly with tales in Elementais (1998) Little Black Book of Stories (2003), Elizabeth Wanning Harries, author of Twice Upon a Time (2001), concentrates on significance of novelist's obsession with fairy tale for her overall conception of narrative her fictional strategies (75): Byatt's main interest in fairy tales lies indeed in their recurring patterns and narrative shapes that make these patterns visible (89) rather than in what they say. …
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