Abstract
The self-conscious revisionism of the literary fairy tale is a mark of its resilience. Challenging a purism exemplified by “Frauds on the Fairies,” an essay in which Dickens imposes rigid sexual binaries on “Cendrillon,” this article explores the gender transpositions that link the experimentalism of MacDonald to Perrault, before connecting the innovative fictions of Brontë and Woolf, as well as of Alcott and Burnett, to the male and female representations of “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Conceived as a meditation on the vital endurance of “impure” literary forms and as a demonstration of seldom-made intertextual relations, this essay also introduces the offerings of the various contributors to this special issue.
Recommended Citation
Knoepflmacher, U C.. "Introduction: Literary Fairy Tales and the Value of Impurity." Marvels & Tales 17.1 (2003). Web. <https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol17/iss1/1>.
