Fairy Tales in the Postmodern World: No Tales for Children

In what way can we look today at the fairy tale and its tradition? The fairy tale, born as an oral process based upon formulaic repetitions, becomes in contemporary writers a typically literary process founded upon the play with tradition and the recovering of formulas in an experimental sense. The user of a fairy tale makes personal use of it, resorting to manipulations and re-writings helpful for his particular needs. The expansion of the fairy tale shows its endless literary evolution thanks to the monumentalisation of the written word. The classic fairy tale needs to die in order to be reborn as literary play. In fact the writing of the tale of wonder absorbs its oral antecedents and reconstitutes original human consciousness.