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Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales: How Applying New Methods Generates New Meanings. Edited by Anna Kérchy. Foreword by Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.
My first thought upon receiving Anna Kérchy's Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales in the mail was what an ugly green brick of a book it is. Like the princess in the Grimms' "Frog King," readers are unlikely to be charmed by the look of the thick, bright green hardcover with its no-frills textual layout. Will the read make up for this? Not every frog turns into a prince, and not every article in this volume is worth one's while, but overall Anna Kérchy's collection does a commendable job of representing the richness of contemporary fairy tales and the plurality of methods in current fairy-tale studies.
With no less than twenty-six contributions, Kérchy structures the volume into six sections: (1) "New Media Literacy," (2) "Emerging Genres," (3) "Rewriting Myth," (4) "Re-Imaging the Body," (5) "Creating Fictional Realities," and (6) "Narratological Novelties." From the tapestry of entries, which are also each given a short title in relation to their section, three centers of gravity emerge: feminist perspectives, the new contexts of the fairy tale, and the new contexts of the body. To give an impression of the academic contribution of the volume within the confines of this review, 1 address each of these sections through one exemplary article.
Angela Carter looms large in Postmodern Reinterpretations, not only because she is probably the most popular author of postmodern fairy tales but also because many of the contributions hail from the conference "The Fairy Tale After Angela Carter," held...