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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 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]

"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]

In the paper, I investigate the use of folktales in the historical legitimization of a particular type of socio-political transformation: Yugoslav self-governing socialism. In this respect I address a less researched and complex topic, while the Yugoslav ideology of self-governance, compared to other 20th century political ideologies, was based on discontinuity - a break with tradition and the past. In order to sharpen the specific function of the narrative tradition in Yugoslav socialism and on the basis of the sociological theory of fairy tales and Walter Benjamin's insights into the role of the narrative tradition, which he reflected on as a transhistorical medium for the transmission of collective experiences - I have devised a research approach that differentiates the epistemic and ideological function of fairy tales. I test this approach via the example of the appropriation of folktales in the Third Reich and Soviet communist regime, and then turn to an analysis of these mechanisms in the context of Yugoslav self-government. On the basis of various theories and understanding of Yugoslav selfgovernance (E. Kardelj, J. Županov, P. Matvejević, D. Suvin, B. Jakovljević etc.), I put forward that the tradition in the latter was expressed in the prism of an alienation effects. I illustrate this with an extensive comparative and transhistorical analysis of the fairy-tale motif of The Gigantic Turnip, especially its unusual Slovenian version which can be perceived as a critical commentary of the socialist motto "together we are stronger". In the conclusion, I reflect upon the theoretical consequences of the Yugoslav self-governing project from the point of view of the theory of societal transformation, and connect this topic to the dilemmas concerning contemporary risks such as the climate crisis, which have no historical equi valent. [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]