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“Archive” comes from the Ancient Greek ἀρχεῖον, “house of the ruler”: inside, we find what corresponds to the normative framework; outside, everything that dissents and is not conform. This occurs for the heteropatriarchal archive of intimate partner violence, as it is explored by Carmen Maria Machado in In the Dream House (2019), and for the archive of folklore, ruled by each (re-)teller’s framework. What if we regain the oral dimension of the tale tradition in a diffractive perspective? What if the reader entangles with the text, co-creating a new meaning? In this paper, I propose to shed a light on the possibilities of diffracting the folkloric archive, to shift the archival-ruled narratives in the direction of self-representation and empoderamiento for the subjectivities expelled from the archival narratives. Two are the paths proposed: firstly, situated literary retellings, with a focus on Machado’s memoir; and secondly, wild pedagogy and slow scholarship methodologies and practices, enabling the experience of the reader to entangle with and diffract the tales’ narratives.

The Night Pieces (Nachtstücke) by E.T.A. Hoffmann have been read under many, different interpretative lenses. The most relevant is probably the freudian-psychoanalytic interpretation, but other readers, such as Luca Crescenzi, insist on the historical and political undertext of the tales: according to Crescenzi, the Pieces deal with the crisis of the relationship between man and technology in modern age, a man haunted by demiurgical ambitions. Neither of the two interpretations, however, reaches the deep meanings at the roots of the literary text, which are indeed of mythological nature: Crescenzi is right about the crisis of the demiurge, represented by the antagonist characters of the Pieces, but his anti-technicist critic doesn't show the myths that seem to be Hoffmann's obsession in the writing process of the Nachtstücke. The following article therefore means to investigate the myth of the 'bad demiurge' - the devil as a smith, a well known mytheme that often occurs in fairytales and legends - upon which the Night Pieces are apparently based on. More importantly, the devil depicted by Hoffmann doesn't correspond to the 'titanist' (as in Titanism, the aesthetics of the romantic hero) characterization of Satan, but is 'titanic' (as in Titan, like Prometheus, trickster of the Olympian Gods)and therefore faithful to the original mythology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous female characters in fairy tales who do not smile. In their stories we can recognize variations of the myth of Demeter, in which laughter and obscenity are productive of life and fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to examine the fairytail Weihnachtsmärchen - that is the Fiaba per il Natale, in Italian translation -, written in 1907 by Lou Andreas von Salomé, one of the most effervescent and libertarian intellectual figures in late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century in Europe. Through the codes of the imaginary and the fantastic typical of the fairy tale, Salomé constitutes an ontology and a poetics of childhood in which delicacy, enchantment and wonder preserve the mystery of life, which, in the metaphor of Christmas remembered in the story, sustains the existence of the child in his thoughtful walk in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the book Symbolism of the Summer Solstice: Comparative Readings, Iosefina Blazsani-Batto approaches, through a comparative perspective, a theme with wide resonances in Romanian folkloric mythology, but also in the universal one, taken up by many historians of religions, exegetes and, last but not least, writers. The wide area of research reflects the author's desire to document as well as possible the scholarly approach to the theme and to give secondary importance to field sources, as well as to imaginative elaborations of them. The research, especially through its various hermeneutic possibilities, is a meritorious achievement which, complemented by the author's constant preoccupation with this field, offers a textually illustrated field of analysis of the subject, both in terms of theory (ethnography) and folklore and literature.

The bond between fairies and nature is as old as the world. Based on this assumption, this study aims to re" ect on the relationship between fairy faith and respect for nature through the work of the Irish storyteller and activist Eddie Lenihan. After a brief introduction to the art of storytelling in the Emerald Isle, the first part of the article will revolve around the seanchaí and his commitment to preserving the Irish cultural heritage. The second part will then centre on Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland (2003), an anthology of what I call "(ever)green" stories collected by Lenihan since the 1970s in southwest Ireland. Specifically, I will focus on some fairy tales emblematic of the close connection between the natural world and the Good People of Éire, in particular on stories that function as a warning to those who intend to interfere with nature in order to pursue their interests often in the name of a supposed technological progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Russian children’s literature in Italy in the last 30 years. The first part provides a brief historical overview of Russian children’s literature in Italy starting from the 20th century. The aim is to identify the best-known authors and the first research dedicated to them in the field of Slavistics and pedagogy. The second part focuses on the presence of Russian children’s literature in Italy since the 1990s. The article accounts for both the critical studies on Russian children’s literature and the corpus of texts that have arrived in Italy in the form of translation, adaptation, or rewriting. Some constants are identified, but also important novelties are underlined: the short-lived fortune of certain genres, such as science fiction, and the appearance on the market of authors who are in between adult and children’s literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a story entitled “Le chevalier double” and published in 1840, Théophile Gautier stages the duel between a medieval knight and his double, who represents a part of himself, a diabolical part whose origin lies in a mysterious adultery. Hovering between the fairy tale and the fantastic, this story is contemporary to Poe’s “William Wilson”, and echoes some earlier works, by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Washington Irving in particular, but also draws on a more distant tradition which dates back to seventeenth-century Spain. Poe and Gautier gave different results and meanings to the duels of their characters: this paper proposes a reflection on this difference, and more generally on the theme of the duel with the double. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from orality to writing and from analogue to digital has had deep consequences on the traditional oral heritage. Even though fairy tales have suffered from this impact much more than other genres, they have shown a high degree of adaptability to the most diverse media. This work aims to verify the repercussions digital and virtual systems have had on fairy tales in order to explore possible future scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this study is to explore if, and if so, how Rabih Alameddine, Kim Addonizio, and Kellie Wells have managed to sustain, replicate, disregard, or redefine the patriarchal ideology customarily associated to gender issues within the fairy-tale tradition. What is really striking is that, several decades after the revisionist project undertaken by the "Angela Carter generation", these new voices experimenting with the field of fairy tales still feel the need to revisit the same mythemes and fight against the same ideology and values that pervaded twentieth century retellings of fairy tales. The subversive potential of the fairy tale retellings seems to have been surpassed by the powerful agenda of a patriarchal social system, which, despite the social, psychological and political changes, still retains its status quo.

Taking back to the cultural context of the German Neuhumanismus the work realized by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the search and arrangement of fairy tales coming from the tradition of Germanic popular poetry, the article focuses in particular on the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel, considering its narrative structure and the pedagogical meanings enclosed, aimed at both the world of children and adults.

The terms "fairytale" and "fabulous" can be associated with Calvino's work from the very beginning and the aspect that brings him closer to the fairytale than any other is that of having as the task of his own narration/narration, humanity, personal identity: many fairytales in fact have as their protagonist a young man, or even a child, and it is precisely from a child, from the Pin from Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, the entire calvinian narration will start. Moreover, the writer highlights the educational peculiarity of the fairy tale, which cannot be found in its content, or rather, not only in the fact of hearing and telling them. The fairytale is perhaps the genre that remains dominant, even within the different genres traversed by Calvino: it arouses his interest both for the correspondence with his fantastic vein that is evident from the Sentiero, and for the studies of structuralists, Propp and Greimas in particular. The article thus aims to reread the figure of Calvino through these two components, fabulous on the one hand and structuralism on the other, trying to highlight how the immersion in the territories of the fabulous, with the publication of Fiabe italiane, have somehow "contaminated" his subsequent writing, feeding that fantastic vein that has always characterized it, up to those works markedly linked to the participation to structuralism and semiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses how the author exploits mockery on the convention of fairy tales and children’s literature in the narrative thread set in the Green Valley. This storyline resembles a fairy tale, but its characters are a grotesque parody of the figures usually present in tales, intended both as folkloric narration and as a genre of children’s literature. Other elements of Polish Borderland folklore are strewn everywhere in the Valley. All fairy-tale elements are shown in a slanted or degraded form. The blend of fantasy and Borderland scenery places this territory on the same ontological level as the marvellous.

Taking back to the cultural context of the German Neuhumanismus the work realized by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the search and arrangement of fairy tales coming from the tradition of Germanic popular poetry, the article focuses in particular on the fairy tale Hänsel und Gretel, considering its narrative structure and the pedagogical meanings enclosed, aimed at both the world of children and adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to offer an in-depth analysis of Antonio Gramsci's contribution to the reflection on children's literature, whose non existence, in the years in which the intellectual writes the Quaderni from the fascist prison, leads to a "nexus of problems" concerning the lack of a national popular Italian literature. There are many suggestions that rose through the interest shown by Gramsci, on various fronts, towards children's literature: from the 'public' Gramsci of the Quaderni to the 'private' Gramsci of the Lettere, from the affirmation of the need for literary enjoyment of the people to the exemplary exercise of a 'living paternity', we not only grasp an example of method, but also a militant pedagogical commitment to the people/childhood world expressed with extraordinary clarity, rigor, sensitivity, yet to be investigated to rediscover its richness and actuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article are presented Slovenian women fairy tale writers who were included in the streams of fairy tale writing in the middle of the 19th century, when Josipina Turnograjska published the fairy tale “Rožmanova Lenčica” (Rožman’s Lenčica) in 1853. This is much later than the start of European women fairy tale writing, which has its roots in the late medieval period with the trobairitz, and continued in the 16th century. After that the new stream of women fairy tale writers developed with the preciosite in the 17th century. The author researches development of women fairy tale writing in Slovenia and classifies their creation of fairy tales in two main models: writing literary fairy tales and storytelling or performing folktales. Lately, among Slovenian women, writing contemporary fairy tales is also popular.

The article investigates the history of reception of Russian children's literature in Italy from 1900 until 2017. It includes a large corpus of volumes that represents a starting point for further research in this field. The analysis of the books, including their paratextual elements - such as book covers and frontispieces - gives the chance to put forward some considerations: first, Russian children's literature has continuously been translated in Italy throughout the XX and the beginning of XXI century, though it has been less relevant than other foreign children's literatures; indeed, a significant number of important Russian authors and works is still missing on the Italian bookshelves. Second, the two genres that have been mostly translated into Italian are: the fairy tales and the texts of classics - such as Pushkin, Chekhov or Tolstoy. Third, the Bibliography has shown that, despite the tight connection and the influence of Soviet Union on Italy during the post-war period until 1990s, no relevant ideological marks have been left on the selection of the texts to be translated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to scholars, Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen seems to have promoted patriarchal bourgeois values as part of the socialization process in the nineteenth century, modelling children’s gender identity and behaviour over time. Taking into account, under the hegemonic representations of gender, that female identity becomes associated with a set of values and behaviours, we intend to analyse comparatively portrayals of Grimm’s and contemporary Portuguese children’s literature princesses. Our aim is to find out in what ways those princesses’ images of the twenty-first century are substantially different from those conveyed by Grimm's fairy tales, analysing their emancipatory potential. Finally, we wish to apprehend which ideologies underpin those portrayals and to verify if they effectively lead to a new world vision by depicting women as real free human beings.

This article presents, with the help of comparative analysis, fairy tales included into Slovenian curriculum and textbooks of various publishers for upper level of primary school. The main part of the discussion represents all the texts with fairy-tale elements that are included in the analysed literary learning books from the genre and motif point of view. Each interpretation of the text includes didactic and literary instruments that present fairy tale elements to pupils.

Este artigo refere-se a um estudo inicial dos processos discursivos da língua brasileira de sinais (LIBRAS), no gênero contos de fadas, à luz da teoria enunciativa de Bakhtin. As análises realizadas, embora iniciais, apontaram alguns aspectos discursivos relevantes sobre a LIBRAS, principalmente no que se refere à dinâmica interdiscursiva que a constitui, ou seja, à compreensão de como as diferentes vozes presentes nos textos são construídas, como elas se diferenciam quanto aos aspectos composicionais, como assimilam o discurso do outro e como se inter-relacionam entre si e com o todo textual para o tratamento do tema.This article refers to an initial study of the discoursive processes of the Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) in the fairy tales genre under the light of the enunciative theory of Bakhtin. Current analysis data, although in its early stages, pointed out some relevant discoursive aspects about LIBRAS, mainly those related to the constitution of its interdiscursive dynamic. It refers to the understanding of how the different voices present in the text are built, how they differ in their compositional aspects, how they assimilate the discourse of other, and how they interrelate to each other and to the full context regarding the approach of the theme.

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