Spinning New Tales from Traditional Texts: Donna Jo Napoli and the Rewriting of Fairy Tale

This article demonstrates how Donna Jo Napoli changes generic conventions and reworks discursive formations in order to retell traditional tales. Discussed are the narrative strategies she uses in telling her stories, her representation of male and female characters in regard to gender and gendered relationships, and the way she renegotiates ideologies and value systems encoded in the traditional tales. It is suggested that these three areas are useful in defining and discussing feminist fairy tales for youth.