Gabriela Mistral's Poetic Retellings of Four Classic Fairy Tales (original) (raw)

Abstract As John Stephens asserts in “Retelling stories across time and cultures”, few retellings are a simple replica of the previous textual layer on which they rely. Shaped by well-known stories, her social and feminist preoccupations and her preferred textual mode, poetry, Mistral subverts four cautionary tales. In this article I engage in a comparative reading of Gabriela Mistral’s poetic retellings of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. These poetic appropriations were composed between 1924 and 1928, revealing Mistral’s avant guard understanding of children’s rights and, particularly, girls’ undermined position in society. I contend that far from a romanticized idea of childhood, Mistral’s poems reproach child labor, adult neglect, abuse and abandonment, revealing the poet’s ethics of care and radical understanding of children’s status, especially that of Latin American girls’ in early XXth century. Besides, by exposing previous layers of orality, by changing the narrative mode into poetry, by revealing the multilayered cultural compost on which these retellings depend, Mistral appropriates these tales to make them culturally relevant for Latin American girlhoods. Key Words: Fairy tales, Gabriela Mistral, retellings, picture book