Era uma vez... a metamorfose das personagens femininas nos contos contemporâneos

Abstract

The valorization of Literature for children and youth, as a form of conscience within the cultural life of societies, is very recent. The formative character of children's literature for youth has been linked, since its origin, to pedagogical objectives, thereby generating a tension between knowledge about the world of reading and the ideal of pedagogy. It was this concern that silenced issues related to sexuality, racism, the segregation of women and other ills of society and its games of power. Over the years, fairy tales have become increasingly sophisticated, and have come to speak simultaneously at all levels of human personality, communicating in a way that reaches the child's mind as well as that of an adult. With regard to the role of the protagonists of this genre, the traditional ones always put them in a role of submission, which brought us to question this work. The following questions guided this research: How was the feminine self represented in the early days of children's literature in the West? How does the feminine self behave in traditional fairy tales? What is the role of female characters in contemporary fairy tales: One, two, three princesses, by Ana Maria Machado; The weaver girl, by Marina Colasanti; and The nettle tunics, by Helena Gomes? Within this perspective, the present study aims to research the beginning of juvenile children's literature in the west, analyzing three contemporary tales, specifically seeking to investigate the role of the female self in fairy tales recognizing the importance of re-signifying the social role played by the maidens drawing a parallel between the protagonists of the chosen works and the princesses of traditional fairy tales. The work was carried out from a bibliographic research, whose objective is to review literature on the subject in question based on the ideas of authors such as: Coelho (2000), Clomer (2017), Cunha (2006), Goés (2010 ), Gregorin Filho (2009), Mendes (2000), Propp (2010), Zilberman (2003), among many others, which configures the exploratory character of the study. The present work is thus justified by exploring, through contemporary fairy tales, the social resignification of the role of princesses in which the imaginary, the dreamlike, the fantastic cease to be seen as pure fantasy to be treated as doors that open to certain human truths.