An examination of the writers of the late 20th - early 21st centuries whose re-inventions of the literary fairy tale mirror the social, political, and cultural climate of the age. It includes 16 essays that apply a variety of theoretical perspectives, including postmodernism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, queer theory and gender studies.

Table of Contents Acknowledgments      Foreword: The Affect of Fairy Tales KATE BERNHEIMER      Introduction: Authentic Voices in Contemporary Fairy Tales SUSAN REDINGTON BOBBY      Redefining Gender and Sexuality Queering the Fairy Tale Canon: Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch MARTINE HENNARD DUTHEIL DE LA ROCHÈRE      Contemporary Women Poets and the Fairy Tale CHRISTA MASTRANGELO JOYCE      Struggling Sisters and Failing Spells: Re-engendering Fairy Tale Heroism in Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans BETHANY JOY BEAR      Found Girls: J.M. Barrie’s Peter & Wendy and Jane Yolen’s “Lost Girls” JOANNE CAMPBELL TIDWELL      Inventions and Transformations: Imagining New Worlds in the Stories of Neil Gaiman MATHILDA SLABBERT      Rewriting Narrative Forms “And the Princess, Telling the Story”: A.S. Byatt’s Self-Reflexive Fairy Stories JEFFREY K. GIBSON      Between Wake and Sleep: Robert Coover’s Briar Rose, A Playful Reawakening of The Sleeping Beauty MARIE C. BOUCHET      Winterson’s Wonderland: The PowerBook as a Postmodern Re-Vision of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books MAUREEN TORPEY      “I Think You Are Not Telling Me All of This Story”: Storytelling, Fate, and Self-Determination in Robin McKinley’s Folktale Revisions AMIE A. DOUGHTY      Remembering Trauma and Dystopia The Complete Tales of Kate Bernheimer: Postmodern Fairytales in a Dystopian World HELEN PILINOVSKY      The Fairy Tale as Allegory for the Holocaust: Representing the Unrepresentable in Yolen’s Briar Rose and Murphy’s Hansel and Gretel MARGARETE J. LANDWEHR      “This Gospel of My Hell”: The Narration of Violence in Gaétan Soucy’s The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches LAUREN CHOPLIN      Revolutionizing Culture and Politics Negotiating Wartime Masculinity in Bill Willingham’s Fables MARK C. HILL      Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat! and the Fairy-Tale Retelling as Instrument of Social Criticism VANESSA JOOSEN      The Wicked Witch of the West: Terrorist? Rewriting Evil in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked CHRISTOPHER ROMAN      Embracing Equality: Class Reversals and Social Reform in Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl and Princess Academy SUSAN REDINGTON BOBBY      Comprehensive Bibliography      About the Contributors      Index     

“a brilliant collection of essays.... These essays urge you to go reread every fairy tale you have ever read, then to go read the new renditions, and then see them all in an entirely new light.... It is easy to lose yourself in these essays”—Mythlore; “this is the type of book students are always seeking when they are researching their own papers...helps to fill the large gap...most impressed with the wide range of topics...strong scholarship”—surlalunefairytales.blogspot.com; “interesting insights and intriguing readings of fairy-tale authors old and new”—Journal of Folklore Research; “about fairy tales as elements in contemporary fiction...perfectly lucid and informative”—Critical Mass.