Fiabe criminali. Violenza, omicidio, malvagità nella letteratura «per l’infanzia»

Violence, murder and evil in children’s literatureYears of studies by philologists, literature and religion historians have shown that fairy tales are a complex universe, an anthropological and psychoanalytic laboratory of extraordinary interest in which issues related to linguistics, the origin and dissemination of myths, and narrative processes developed in the transition between orality and writing are intertwined. But a peculiarity of fairy tales concerns the presence of themes which are paradoxically unsuitable for children and with very violent facets in their plots: murder, rape, pedophilia, dismemberment, violent deaths, anthropophagy, etc. In this book, the reader will unveil hidden aspects which are very common in what isrefferred to as “children’s literature”.