From “Sleeping Beauty” to “Noisy Beauty”: about One Modern Version of the Classic Tale

Abstract

The popular plot of "Sleeping Beauty" continues to gain new interpretations in modern literature. The question "What if the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault happened in the 21st century?" precedes the introduction to the collection of "Inverted Fairy Tales" (2009) by Philippe Dumas and Boris Moissard and suggests an analysis of the fairy tales from the perspective of modern issues. The emergence of new themes within the archaic genre of fairy tales reflects the changes taking place in the modern society even if the more traditional questions for the genre related to the confrontation of good and evil are also present in the book, including in the tale "Noisy Beauty", a modern rewriting of Charles Perrault's tale "Sleeping Beauty". As the title of the collection shows, the principle of reversal, of inversion is important in its conception. The classic narrative patterns, the characters and their functions, as well as the representation of time and space are reversed and modernized in the tale in question, which leads to the creation of the transfictional game aimed not only at young readers but also at the adult audience.