Parlare di violenza usando le fiabe: Barbablù, un gentleman dai mille volti emblema dell’uomo che da principe azzurro diventa un lupo cattivo

Talking about violence using fairy tales: Bluebeard, a gentleman with many faces, emblematic of the man who transforms from prince charming into a bad wolf

Abstract

Fairy tales open with simple, straightforward events, upon which a situation is set to be resolved until the happy ending in which the difficulties are overcome. Analysing the fairy tale Bluebeard, we dwelt on how its incipit represents a kind of inversion of Propp’s morphology. It is an unusual piece of writing, as it begins in the way a fairy tale usually ends: the marriage of the protagonist. George Steiner, in his essay In Bluebeard’s Castle, invites us to reflect on the theme of violence against women, who depend on the myth of the ‘rightous’ man, even when in reality he is not. Reading the text was also possible thanks to the guidance offered by the essay La sua barba non è così blu… by the late Angela Articoni, a careful scholar of Perrault’s fairy tale.