The Literary Fairy Tale as a Genre: Contextual Reading

Abstract

The article explores the genesis and evolution of the literary fairy tale as a complex synthetic genre that integrates fairy-tale conventionality with profound philosophical, social, and psychological subtexts. The relevance of the study stems from the need to revise traditional approaches to the author's fairy tale and to introduce the method of contextual reading, which allows for the examination of a text in its inseparable connection with the historical and cultural background, the author's biography, and the literary tradition of the era.

The aim of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the functional strategies of the literary fairy tale of the 19th–21st centuries through the prism of various contexts. The methodological framework is based on the works of Ukrainian (T. Kachak, V. Kyzylova, N. Tykholoz) and foreign (J. Zipes, A. Roes) scholars. The study employs comparative-typological and hermeneutic methods, as well as the principles of philosophical anthropology.

Using the works by I. Franko (Painted Fox) as an example, it is demonstrated that the fairy tale serves as a tool for political allegory and national self-awareness. The analysis of H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales through the lens of “Christian humanism” and the works of E. Weitzman revealed existential anxiety and the religious foundations of his imagery. A. de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince is examined as a philosophical parable that encapsulates the experience of 20th-century global cataclysms. Particular attention is paid to the cordocentric dimensions of the modern Ukrainian fairy tale: in V. Shevchuk’s cycle The Flower Lady, a genetic link with P. Yurkevych’s philosophy of the heart and Baroque aesthetics is identified. Z. Menzatiuk’s work is analyzed through the prism of urban magic and the spiritualization of national space (the topos of Kyiv), while C. Nöstlinger’s Konrad, or the Child out of a Tin Can is viewed as an instrument of social criticism and dystopia.

The author proved that the literary fairy tale is a dynamic system capable of intellectualization and transformation. The common denominator of the studied works is a humanistic pathos, where the victory of good occurs through the internal transformation of the hero. The modern fairy tale emerges as an artistic embodiment of P. Yurkevych’s thesis regarding the priority of “knowledge of the heart” over the “light of cold reason”, ensuring its vitality in the contemporary socio-cultural space.