In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. InFairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.

Kate Koppy is assistant professor in the Department of Humanities at the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia.

Part I: Setting the Scene

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Once Upon a Time, There Was a Story

Chapter 3: What Are Fairy Tales, Anyway?

Part II: Cinderella Transformed in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter 4: Cinderellas Subtypes

Chapter 5: Cinderella Variants and Versions

Chapter 6: Cinderella as Shorthand

Part III. Old Wine in New Wine Skins: Contemporary Fairy-Tale Pastiche on Film

Chapter 7: Fairy-Tale Pastiche, a Rising Trend in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter 8: Manhattan Meets Andalasia, and Both Are Changed: Overt Fairy-Tale Pastiche in DisneysEnchanted

Chapter 9: Challenging the Patriarchy and Restoring Interpersonal Harmony: Covert Pastiche in Disney-Pixar'sBrave

Conclusion