Decolonizing Fairy-Tale Studies

This article focuses initially on new empirical research that deliberately utilizes folktales and fairy tales to make broader claims for the scientific method and to advocate for the application of evolutionary science to literature in general. After critiquing this work for its unquestioning reliance on the problematic nineteenth-century Romantic discourse that remains embedded in the study of folklore and hinders our ability to find a way between universalizing generalities and specific sociohistorical contexts, this article advocates a transcultural orientation that signals neither a turn to universalism nor a betrayal of the sociohistorical approach to understanding the specificity of fairy tales