The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures

This comprehensive guide offers a panoramic view of fairy-tale studies across contemporary media landscapes, tracing narrative threads from ancient folklore to modern comic conventions and digital adaptations. It provides a rigorous academic framework for understanding how these enduring stories function within cultural studies, examining their complex intersections with ideology, colonialism, and audience reception. The book moves beyond traditional literary analysis to explore how fairy tales are remediated through film, television, social media, and fan cultures, creating a dynamic map of this evolving field.

What distinguishes this volume is its methodological depth and interdisciplinary scope, making it an essential resource for scholars and advanced students navigating the complex terrain where media theory meets folk narrative. The companion doesn't just catalog fairy-tale adaptations but critically examines how these stories shape and are shaped by cultural power dynamics across different platforms and communities. Readers will emerge with a sophisticated understanding of how seemingly simple tales carry profound social significance as they travel between media forms and cultural contexts, forever transforming while retaining their core narrative DNA.