Williams, Christy. Mapping Fairy-Tale Space: Pastiche and Metafiction in Borderless Tales. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2021

Abstract

Christy Williams explores fairy-tale structures in an innovative way by using a geographic metaphor to trace the history and interconnections of the fairy-tale genre. The map and web concepts are effective for explaining how these stories intersect across time and space and for decentering the European fairy-tale tradition by expanding beyond that canon. The main focus of Williams’s book is to use the notion of mapping to analyze twenty-first century fairy tales, and she does so by organizing her study into two parts with two chapters in each that cover a range of examples from both television and written texts. At the core of this analysis lies an exploration of the ways in which familiar, well-known fairy tales are reconfigured and made relevant for modern audiences.