Cirrus@Austlit

'This chapter explores the shifts between historical and contemporary fairy tale writing and editing. In first considering colonial-era publications, the chapter describes the ways that narratives appropriated from Indigenous culture were framed within a colonial and Western European concept of fairy tale collecting, how experiences of migration were reflected in colonial-era fairy tales, and how early white storytellers attempted to use fairy tales to create an always-already-colonised history of the Australian continent. The chapter then explores how these early traditions have shifted in the (post)colonial context of contemporary writing and publishing, with a move away from editing and publishing Indigenous narratives within a fairy tale context, a more complex approach to using fairy tale characters and stories to explore experiences of migration, and a strong growth in feminist revisionist fairy tales. The chapter argues, finally, that while few works have taken up Donald Haase’s challenge to decolonise fairy tale studies and practice, those that have offer a vision of a uniquely and startlingly Australian mode of transcultural textual production.'

Source: Abstract