The Difficult Rehabilitation of the Fairy-Tale Villain

This article explores what happens – cognitively speaking – when Readers are confronted with those rewritings of folktales that provide the villain with a roundness which was not present in the source text. The cases here analyzed – Donna Jo Napoli’s novels "The Magic Circle" and "Zel" and the Disney film "Maleficent" – concern one of the staple folktale villains – the witch – once it is reshaped in fractured folktales. The article argues that the newly characterized villains activate the readers’ subjective experience not simply due to a recognition of generic repertoires, but due to the involvement of their broader experiential background. This involvement takes the form of a deep cognitive reorganisation that depends on atributing and enacting consciousness and allows for a more rounded ethical engagement.

This article explores what happens - cognitively speaking - when readers are confronted with those rewritings of folktales that provide the villain with a roundness which was not present in the source text. The cases here analyzed - Donna Jo Napoli's novels The Magic Circle and Zel and the Disney film Maleficent - concern one of the staple folktale villains - the witch - once it is reshaped in fractured folktales. The article argues that the newly characterized villains activate the readers' subjective experience not simply due to a recognition of generic repertoires, but due to the involvement of their broader experiential background. This involvement takes the form of a deep cognitive reorganisation that depends on attributing and enacting consciousness and allows for a more rounded ethical engagement.