The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

 
       
         
    STUDIA PHILOLOGIA - Issue no. 2 / 2022  
         
  Article:   BECOMING (NON)HUMAN. ANIMAL REPRESENTATIONS IN THE ATU 514 FAIRY TALE.

Authors:  KRISZTINA BIANKA KOCSIS.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  DOI: 10.24193/subbphilo.2022.2.04

Article history: Received: 15 February 2022; Revised: 10 May 2022; Accepted: 14 May 2022; Available online: 30 June 2022; Available print: 30 June 2022
pp. 69-88

VIEW PDF

FULL PDF

Abstract: Becoming (Non)Human. Animal Representations in the ATU 514 Fairy Tale. Within the rising ecocriticism in literary studies, a valuable resource for reconfiguring what it means to be (non)human is found in fairy tales, featuring animal agency, transspecies interactions, hybridities, and shapeshifting. With this in mind, the present paper tackles the nonhuman imaginary in the Romanian version of the ATU 514 tale type, i.e. shift of sex, which clearly deviates from the heroic pattern, since the protagonist is the emperor’s daughter, who is cross-dressed and then metamorphosed into Prince Charming. But does this relaxation of gender norms generate a similar disruption of the position of the animal in magical thinking? In a close reading of the fairy tale corpus, human-nonhuman animal relations are examined bidirectionally, focusing on the one hand, on the master initiator’s transbiology (the emperor disguised in animal form) and on the other hand, on two opposite anthropomorphic animals (the wise guide vs. the villain, the horse vs. the genie). Through a hybrid methodology, these transgressive possibilities are explored by combining ritualistic-anthropological, corporeal, and psycho-social aspects with current posthuman concerns. Overall, the analysis of such ontologically ambiguous narratives reveals one of the ways in which these old tales can still be read today to subvert traditional anthropocentric structures.

Keywords: animal studies, fairy tales, posthumanism, ATU 514 tale type, human-animal relations
 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page