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The aim of this paper is to develop a model for critical reading of traditional fairy tales, which will enable the understanding of their meanings in contemporary educational context from a gender perspective. We have posed the following research questions: Why is the fairy tale so important in education and how does it influence the reader? What kind of ideology do fairy tales present? Which fairy tales (traditional or non-traditional) should one read during education, and how should their critical reading be arranged? We have used the method of theoretical analysis, followed by the historical method, and finally, the morphological analysis of the selected fairy tale. The model of critical reading has been developed using the fairy tale titled Baš-čelik, published in Vuk Karadžić's collection in 1870, as a case study. It has been shown that texts tend to hyperbolically affirm the cult of heroism. Research indicates that such stories could be read in schools with the aim of understanding their semantic structure from a feminist perspective, while accentuating the construction of characters reduced to very few qualities that ideally conform to the heterosexual pattern. The model for critical reading of such stories, based on reader-response theory, has been developed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Ukrainian folkloric parallels to Viy, a character in the horror novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. It is a formidable chthonic, demonic creature whose eyelids cover the eyes and need to be lifted, and the gaze sees what is hidden from others. Although the writer claimed that this character, like the entire plot of the story, was taken from Ukrainian folklore, some modern researchers claim that Viy is the author's own invention. This is contradicted by folkloric data, primarily Ukrainian lore. Demonic characters with different names but with the same appearance and very similar functions as Viy appear in Ukrainian folk tales, legends and beliefs recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries. The plots have various degrees of closeness to the plot of Gogol's story, showing that Viy is an authentic figure from Ukrainian folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to indicate the cultural factors nexus terrorism in terms of Bourdieusian terminology's conceptual framework, which synthesizes social, economic, and cultural explanations and thus proves useful for studying political and religious radicalization, extremism, and recruitment to terrorism. This analysis can be used to comparatively assess the countries' cultural tendencies relevant to terrorism. In this study, Hofstede's culture scale, which is regarded as a paradigm and towering figure by most scholars was used. The research endeavors to illustrate the effects of Hofstede's cultural dimensions (widely known model of national culture) on Global Terrorism Index scores via a multiple linear regression model. Terrorists marginalized others and created their discourse to commit rhetoric narrated by fairy tales and protagonists. The findings expressed that whereas the power distance has an increasing effect on terrorism (while increasing terrorism), the long-term orientation has a mitigating effect (reduces terrorism). On the other hand, no significant results were obtained from the dimension of individualism versus collectivism, femininity versus masculinity, avoidance of uncertainty, and indulgence versus restraint. However; we evaluate that social media usage has a centralizing and affiliating effect between collectivism and individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning Irish YA writer who has been praised by several writers and folklore academics, such as Jack Zipes, for her fairy-tale revisions and her rewriting of the Irish legend “The Children of Lir”. Following the steps of contemporary feminist writers like Angela Carter or Emma Donoghue, Sullivan gives voice to minorities and deals with silenced topics such as sexual harassment. This interview focuses on her subversions of fairy tales and Irish mythology, especially in her collection Tangleweed and Brine (2017) and her revision of “The Children of Lir” in Savage Her Reply (2020). In this interview, Deirdre Sullivan talks about her interest in fairy tales and Irish folklore and how she became a writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores the story of Angelo, an Italian Second World War veteran who, after experiencing war and escaping captivity in Yugoslavia, finally reached Trieste in 1946, where he met his future wife. It took him nearly 15 years to heal from his harrowing wartime trauma. Between 2021 and 2023, while collecting oral testimonies, I interviewed his son Sergio and grandson Ruben. The central subject of those interviews was the war-time period and the fairy tales that Angelo used to tell his son (and later his grandson) in the evenings, inspired by his war experiences. By recounting his war experiences in a metaphorical and child-friendly manner, these tales were not only imaginative and captivating for the child, but also served a profound purpose: they were (1) a way to communicate his memories and experience to the following generations; (2) a means to cope with his experiences and past; (3) a tool to socialise and educate his son, transmitting moral norms, social memories and preparing him for life in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That fact that fairy tales and folktales are produced in a certain time and space and intended for a specific audience has, until now, often been neglected. In the past they performed specific social or political functions, such as for instance, being a part of nation building, they were meant to discipline a certain population or educate. The author claims that fairy tales and folktales arise from social needs and tell of imagined societies. Their social and political functions can be analyzed through the relation between the structural features and the specificities of individual versions, considered in regard to social needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between fairy tales, sexuality, and national identity in socialist Slovenia. Theoretically, it builds on the canonical work by Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment. The main objective of the analysis is to interrogate the Freudian sexual script in relation to Slovene national identity formation. For this purpose, I study two fairy tales from the socialist period, France Bevk's Peter Klepec and Moj dežnik je lahko balon by Ela Peroci. The concepts of family romance and infantile citizenship are applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a theoretical-methodological analysis of the psychodrama method of group psychotherapy. It examines the aim, objectives, advantages, peculiarities and structure of classical psychodrama as a method of group psychotherapy. Also, the article attempts to define psychodrama as a group psychotherapy process. It studies the links between psychodrama and methods of various psychological approaches. Importantly, the article suggests a phenomenological approach to studying the interaction among the participants in psychodramatic psychotherapy groups to develop effective technologies for implementing psychodramatic techniques. It justifies the methodological and methodical essence of psychodramatic technologies in group psychotherapy, its main characteristics and goals. From the perspective of an integrative approach, psychodramatic technologies in group psychotherapy ensure the interrelation and interdependence of its psychodiagnostic and psychodevelopmental components. Meanwhile, the article considers the organizational, methodical and structural-dynamic features of using the interactive and role-playing method in group psychotherapy depending on the type of psychodrama. It shows how one can practically apply the "mirroring" psychotechnique in combination with the fairy tale metaphor (the method of enacting a fairy tale) in all types of psychodrama, along with an analysis of the advantages of its use and resourcefulness. Finally, the article discusses a methodical combination of psychodrama and transactional analysis within the "psychodramatic triangle" technique. It provides methodical recommendations for emotional disorder correction using the psychodrama method. The relevant indicators of the effectiveness and efficiency of the psychodrama method in group psychotherapy include catharsis, insight, expressions of trust and a sense of comfort in the space of group interaction and feedback, as an existing objective reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairytales have been told for as long as people have been telling stories. What started as folk tales passed on to each generation, became stories that are often associated with royalty, magic and far away lands. Popularized by the Grimm Brothers starting in 1812, and again by the Walt Disney Company and their animated films, fairytales are a staple in all media. With their simple narratives and stories that leave room for multiple interpretations, it is no wonder that authors use these fairytales as inspiration to tell a unique tale. From modern day settings, to taking the opportunity to create more stories for underrepresented groups such as the LGTBQ+ and BIPOC communities, fairytale retellings and their recent rise in the publishing world have endless opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent innovations in the field of cleanliness announce remarkable efficiency that influences the way work is organized, the way people interact, and transforms perceptions of social organization. Cleaning standards are increasingly higher as social contexts demand it. These new technologies that enter the world of dirty work promise transparency and safety for beneficiaries, cost efficiency, and the possibility of reducing physical activity for workers. Examining the role that innovations have in the field of cleanliness, providing a comprehensive perspective on the effects and perceptions of users, presents a beautiful fairy tale that brings the outcome of a context related to control, stress, and the fear of tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerned with the representations of fruits in Greco-Roman mythology and Genesis, this paper first explores the various meanings of charis and its conceptualization, and their embodiments. It then addresses object agency, before questioning the possible propriety of certain fruits in visual and textual narratives to emanate and/or appropriate charisma. To do so, the paper presents a discussion of the linguistic and conceptual mutability and malleability of the term 'charis' and its conceptualization into charisma, as well as its possible manifestations or translations in fruits, thus transforming the latter into (accidental) actors. Finally, this study provides an exploratory reflection on the ambiguity and metamorphic aspect of "charismatic" fruits in the context of myths and the Genesis narrative represented in the visual arts, and their translation into fairy tale narratives and modern advertising campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to present several fairy tales from Giuseppe Pitre's collection as a potentially interesting reading material for children. Since classical fairy tales in some cases depict traditional gender roles, they can present an obstacle to children's gender construction. Therefore, it is also important to read those stories which do not have a stereotypical gender discourse. We found such stories in Pitre's collection of folk fairy tales from the 19th century. In the paper we present the analysis of the structure of several folk fairy tales from Pitre's collection. The analysis has been performed according to Propp's structuralist method, while the task was to determine the morphology of those fairy tales dealing with female heroseekers. Such heroines correspond to the feminist perspective and they are convenient for reading in education for the purpose of children's constructions of gender not exclusively provided by normative canons. The model of critical reading, which we suggest for reading the analyzed fairy tales, has been founded on reader-response criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Hansel and Gretel" begins with the parents' decision to abandon their children. The author argues that the differences in how the children survive their exile reflect the changes in how modern societies conceptualized their organization. An early baroque tale speaks of a contracted civil society and legitimizes sovereign power, while later versions represent Enlightened social subjects capable of emerging from their minority. The motif of abandoned children reaches back to Roman antiquity, where it was linked to mimetic rivalry. The author shows in what ways mimetic rivalry appears in modern fairy tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the symbolic use of dragons in several works by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Golden Legend, a popular compilation of saints' lives by Jacobus de Voragine. In the medieval tradition, as recounted by Voragine, dragons serve as symbols of powerful evil through which the inherent weakness of postlapsarian ("after the Fall") humans can be emphasized. The sudden, miraculous defeat of dragons also illustrates what is possible through faith and the grace of God, anticipating Tolkien's notion of eucatastrophe, the unexpected reversal in fortune that characterizes the best fairy tales, which is now recognized as a key component of his own approach to mythopoeia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Front cover: Urashima Taro, the protagonist of a Japanese fairy tale, returned from his undersea utopia with his youth intact after hundreds of years, but as soon as he was exposed to the smoke from the souvenir Tamatebako (jeweled box), he turned into an old man. This painting depicts how the smoke causes Urashima Taro to lose not only his youth but also the Y chromosome in a part of his cells. Mosaic loss of chromosome Y (mLOY) is commonly observed in older men and has been linked to ageing and cancer, and has also been found to increase the risk of heart disease (Sano et al. (2022) Science 377: 292–297, DOI: 10.1126/science.abn3100). We referred to Fukami & Miyado (2022) Reprod. Med. Biol. 21: e12445, DOI: 10.1002/rmb2.12445 for the depiction of chromosomes. Designed by TRAIS Co., Ltd. (Kobe, Japan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to European folklore, popularized by a fairy tale, storks are responsible for bringing babies to new parents. This probably came from observation in certain European countries, such as Norway, Netherlands or Germany, that storks nesting on the roofs of households were believed to bring good luck, as the possibility of new births. People love stories, but correlation simply means that there is a relationship between two factors that tells nothing about the direction of said relationship, if any. Another possibility is simple coincidence. Let us say that it's possible that one factor causes another. It's also possible that the inverse occurs. And maybe both are being caused by a third. The main point is that there is a fundamental confusion between correlation and causality. A correlation doesn't prove a cause by itself. During these times of abundant fake news, it is necessary to warn folks of the fallacy of mistaking correlation for causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. How the concepts of colour and number in Bolu tales are perceived in the beliefs and lives of cultures has been examined in our study. We tried to find an answer to the importance of colour and number images in Turkish culture, to compare them with literary works in the literature, in what sense these images are used and whether there is a fundamental point in these areas of use. Methods. In this study, the method of literature review, which is one of the qualitative research techniques, was used. Various researches previously discussed on this subject were also used as auxiliary elements. Results. Since the scope of our study is within certain limits, common colours, and numbers, which are more common in Turkish culture, are discussed. The white, black, green, and yellow colours are detected in Bolu tales; the numbers three, seven and forty carry the meanings assigned to them in Turkish culture and Islam. Conclusion. This study, the use of colours and numbers in fairy tales was examined in Bolu tales and a generalisation was reached. As a result of the colours and numbers being images in the 88 fairy tales examined, the colours and numbers determined in the tales were handled from a historical, religious and cultural point of view; first of all, explanations were made about the meaning of the concepts of colour and number and how they existed, and it was determined in which context of meaning the explanations were reflected imaginatively in Bolu tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article is devoted to the study of H. C. Andersen's fairy tale The Ugly Duckling. The main subject of the study is the fabulous transformation of the tale's protagonist from a loser into a winner. The research was performed within the archetypal paradigm originated by C. G. Jung (1875--1961). A simplified content analysis of the text was carried out using a set of archetypes composed of elements from the collections of C. Pearson and C. Myss. The study managed to a) identify the archetypal picture that accompanied the protagonist's sad journey, b) find the key archetypes responsible for his unrelenting motivation to survive and search for a better life, and c) identify the archetypal mechanism of the hero's transformation from a loser and an outcast into a winner. The results obtained allow us to conclude that Andersen's fairy tale The Ugly Duckling is valuable from a scientific point of view as a treasure trove of human knowledge and historical experience. This fairy tale has great potential when applied to psychotherapy of trauma and to education, concretely, for work with children who have special needs. Great prospects for its use open up in the workplace, including management and the role training of manufacturers. In our rapidly developing information society, it seems that demand for this fairy tale will only grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the metaphoric representation of childhood traumatic experiences through references to European fairy tales in the novel Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura, "an innovative and tender blend of social commentary and magical realism" as defined by Riyoko Shibe. The paper traces the different ways the author incorporates European fairy tales and introduces the fantastic to describe the traumatic experiences of the children who went through severe bullying at school. The article attempts to demonstrate that these references serve both as symbolic representations of these experiences and as an escape from them, as they provide a metaphorical means to deal with the psychological distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairy tales (and other narratives) are used as therapeutic tools in therapy. Stories about witches and magic, including spells, mobilize the emotions and the mind of the patient and help them providing patterns and suggesting solutions. This interview is a dialog between an anthropologist specialized in the anthropology of witchcraft and magic and a psychotherapist trained in family and individual therapy using fairy tale therapy in combination with other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his engaging volume on fairytales, George MacDonald wrote that the purpose of a fairytale is "not to give the reader things to think about, but to wake up things that are in him." By contrast, many works of art, including contemporary musical compositions, are accompanied by statements of "things to think about," such as didactic program notes by the composer on pet social justice issues. This essay explores what can be done in a piece of music to "wake up things" already in the listener. These include invoking something familiar in the musical style, using essential building blocks of beauty in constructing the music, and providing a teleology of purpose and narrative flow in the music, in contrast to modernist trends that eschew these things. The essay explores also how and why these "awakening things" can and should be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the fairy tale collection Croatian Tales of Long Ago by the Croatian author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, interpreting its social functions. Several important social functions are considered in fairy tales: national and supranational (Slavic) imaginary, Christian values, and patriarchal order. These social functions are analyzed in individual fairy tales, considering the thesis of Dutch scientist André Jolles that the primary social function of fairy tales is to express the community's idea of justice and injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Woman without a Shadow is both the title of an opera resulting from the collaboration between Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the composer Richard Strauss in the three years immediately preceding the outbreak of the First World War, and that of a fairy tale in which the writer, from 1912 to 1919, reworked the subject of the libretto. With a specific focus on the second version, this essay sets out to describe how, beyond the complex symbolism of the formal structure (which initially makes one think of an artistic product finely crafted, but completely unrelated to historical reality), Hofmannsthal's fairy tale is actually intimately connected to the cultural and 'social' project developed by the author during the years of the First World War. It was this project that gave rise to the veritable 'mythology of the social' that lies at the heart of this fairy tale, in which Hofmannsthal revisits the very cornerstones of Romantic aesthetics and gives them a modern twist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairy tales are fascinating fantasies, but they also gave people a better understanding of serious issues such as illness, injury, and even death. The results of the analysis of a large corpus of a total of 1512 published fairy tales, legends, and other documentary prose about Pohorje, most of which date back to the 19th and the first half of 20th centuries, and whose origins were in a time when diseases were ubiquitous and poorly understood, show that the theme of health and disease rarely appear in these sources, however, when they do mention it, they refer specifically to the living conditions of people in the Pohorje Mountains, epidemics, social diseases, mental illnesses, congenital deformities, and ideas about the relationship between disease, the human body, and supernatural forces. One of the reasons for such explanations is the widespread absence of doctors in this hilly area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article the author examines how the matrix of the dragon killer appeared in different social contexts and its formation as a fairy tale matrix. She traces the genealogy of the dragon slayer matrix back to ancient mythologies, paying regard to Babylonian, Greek, Celtic, and Slavic mythologies, as well as to the Christian codes and appearances in (particularly Slovenian) folklore, and discusses the variations that occur with different uses of the matrix, in different historical moments and epistemes. Special attention is devoted to studying the social and political functions the tales about the dragon killer had in the contexts in which they appeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of fairy tale narratives operates under three Victorian conventions - a virtuepersonified beautiful hero, a heterosexual relation, and a happy ending. Working upon these basic assumptions, Vladimir Propp identifies an underlying schematic structure, common to every tale, of 31 functions in narratives. Propp divides an enchanted narrative into 31 short plots. These plots are general functions performed by Propp’s identified seven archetypical characters found at play in every narrative. Propp’s study is based on 102 Russian folk tales, a sub-category of fairy tales. Oscar Wilde subverts the three aforementioned Victorian conventions in Propp’s structural model as a conflict between Victorian idealism and stark reality. This study aims to unveil the subverted structural scheme of the Proppian 31-function model in Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The novel not only subverts the three fairy tale conventions in its content but also rearranges the Proppian linear scheme of functions in its form. Moreover, the study also explores the repetition and absence of some Proppian functions to delineate the Faust theme of selling one’s soul for worldly pleasures for a specific time period, the end of which marks a visceral degeneration of the protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a cognitive semiotic case study of the narrative potential of the statue Den lille Havfrue ('the little mermaid') by Edvard Eriksen in Copenhagen. On the basis of theoretical analysis and a survey in which 20 European and 19 Chinese participants replied to questions concerning this statue we argue that it, and similar statues, may be considered as products of intersemiotic translation, but only if we dispense with any requirements of "equivalence" between source and target, since statues are necessarily semiotically highly reduced. While the source narratives constitute cases of primary narrativity, with narrations providing the audiences with stories, statues may partake only of secondary narrativity, where a prior story is needed for the statue to be understood as narration. In our study, this was reflected by correlations between reported prior knowledge and narrative (and possibly even non-narrative) interpretations of Den lille Havfrue. Finally, we relate the discussion to present-day cultural and political "settings", where many statues, including Den lille Havfrue, have become part of a global anti-racism narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 1952 essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children", C. S. Lewis discusses three approaches to writing children's literature and defends "that particular type of children's story which is dearest to my own taste, the fantasy or fairy tale" from the charge that it is "childish". In this paper, I define Christian apologetics as "the art and science of persuasively communicating and advocating Christian spirituality across spiritualties, through the responsible use of rhetoric, as being objectively beautiful, good and true/reasonable" and see how Lewis' advice about the rhetoric of children's stories can be generalized and applied to the discipline of Christian apologetics. In particular, many atheists charge Christian Spirituality with being childish. For example, British atheist Richard Dawkins says that religious people "have their Bronze Age myths, medieval superstitions and childish wishful thinking" (Dawkins, Scientific American). Describing his own childhood, Dawkins says: "I think I did believe it up to the age of eight or nine, when preachers said if you really, really pray for something it can happen. Even moving mountains, I believed it could really happen... I grew up. I put away childish things." (Dawkins, "Claims Fairy Tales Are Harmful To Children") In this paper I explore how the dialectical moves made by Lewis in "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" can shape a rational response to such rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fly-agaric, with its characteristic red hat sprinkled with white spots, is the best known mushroom of Eurasian iconography, depicted countless times in children's fairy tales and Christmas themes. Endowed with intoxicating properties and used for millennia in Siberia as a visionary shamanic source, for several centuries Western culture has also attributed deadly properties to it. The cultural genesis of this "mortalization" process brought to the opposing values of "poisonous / intoxicating" and "negative / positive"; a semantic ambivalence that has also been present in Russian culture since pre-Soviet times. The mukhomor -- the Russian name for fly-agaric--was employed in the final years of Soviet power as a symbol of redemption by dissident underground movements, and its significant presence in contemporary Russian intellectual, literary and artistic production is presented on the basis of historical and ethnomycological considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the first story-book of the internationally renowned contemporary Hungarian storyteller, Csenge Virág Zalka. In the first section we investigate the differences between folktale and literary tale, storyteller and story writer, further-/retold heritage and own creation as well as how the boundaries between them destabilize if we note down the folktale originally living in the oral traditional form. Furthermore, we will be discussing the female horizon prevalent in the Zalkaian tale-variants as well as the all-time topicality of the stories by putting the contemporary social and psychological analogies and taboo-breaking procedures of the tales in the foreground. In the focus of our investigation the Ribizli a világ végén [Currant at the End of the World] stands as a literary creation, which although we (also) analyze with an approach coming from the relevant literature of folktales and remade fairy tales, we do this all the way through the analysis in light of the postmodern text-organizing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three new species in the genus Niambia are described from southern African caves: N. botswanaensis sp. nov. from Diviner’s Cave (Botswana), N. ghaubensis sp. nov. from Ghaub Cave and N. namibiaensis sp. nov. from Märchen Cave (Namibia). All these species show troglomorphic traits such as absence of body pigmentation and eyes. These are the first troglobitic species recorded in the genus. Most of the other species of Niambia are epigean and occur in semi-arid environments in the Afrotropical Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeing that the majority of folk tales feature a male protagonist, the "Ileana Sâmziana" fairy tale, collected by Petre Ispirescu, represents a deviation from this heroic archetype by focusing on the emperor's daughter, who would become Prince Charming. Circumscribed to the ATU 514 folk motif, i.e., change of sex, it depicts gender fluidity reminiscent of cross-dressing in pubertal rites of passage. Based on these premises, the present paper closely analyses the process of transsexual metamorphosis of the main character. Ultimately, it is aimed to expose any resemblance to traditional formative discourses on masculine social values and determine whether the emperor's daughter should be regarded as a true feminine and /or a heroic figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the relationship between the stereotype of the witch identified in the Saxon fairy tales of the nineteenth-century Transylvania, and the image of the accused in the witchcraft trials which occurred in early modern cities of Sibiu and Braşov (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). In order to highlight this perspective of analysis, I selected two types of sources which I consider particularly useful for my research. Firstly, I chose to rely on seven Saxon fairy tales which present the witch as a secondary character, identified in Joseph Haltrich's collection of fairy tales, entitled Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenbürgen, published in 1854. Secondly, I examined fifteen court records selected from the National Archives of Sibiu (Hermannstadt, Nagyszeben) and Braşov (Kronstadt, Brassó) from the years 1692-1785. By drawing a parallel between the two images, I want to outline the discrepancies between the stereotype and the historical reality, aiming, at the same time, to identify the factors which contributed to the portrait of the witch that has been perpetuated over time in fairy tales. Furthermore, such an analysis may allow one to observe to what extent literature can be considered a document. Taking into consideration that this direction of research did not receive the regional historians' attention, I consider the initiative favourable in covering a historiographical gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines revenge strategies in Margaret Atwood's novels that draw inspiration from Bluebeard-type fairy tales. This fairy tale type is named after Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard", and includes related tales such as the Grimms' "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird". Variations on this family of plots appear throughout Atwood's oeuvre, most prominently in The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and The Testaments. The key elements -- curiosity, the bloody chamber, the blood-stained key, the tell-tale egg, and the chopped-up bodies in a bowl of blood -- are invoked in new combinations with new associations to complicate the victim-oppressor hierarchy. This paper argues that in Atwood's revisions of Bluebeardian themes, she challenges traditional conceptions of the Bluebeardian predator. By rewriting fairy tales in a creative manner, Atwood explores not only the importance of surviving the violent attacks, but also the survivors' revenge strategies: from self-harm to bearing witness and making public accusations of the Bluebeardian oppressors. By sharing their stories, Atwood's protagonists can take control of their lives and resist aggressors' attempts to silence them or transfer guilt to them for their curiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]