Między pierwowzorem a adaptacją. Analiza fabuł współczesnych wydań baśni Hansa Christiana Andersena – przekształcenia treści religijnych

Abstract

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, for years regarded as children’s literature classics, remain unknown even among the most committed readers. This is indicated by the results of a survey I conducted on the knowledge of the content of Andersen’s most popular works. The answers of the parents of preschool children have prompted me to analyze the latest publications including the writer’s stories. The article presents my conclusions drawn from the comparison of contemporary editions of fairy tales for children with their prototypes in terms of the occurrence of differences in the plot, especially the presence of the religious content, often overlooked today. The criterion for the selection of the sources, which include 32 Polish books by 14 different publishers, was the date of publication (after 2000) and the requirement to include at least one of the following stories: “The Snow Queen” (22 texts), “The Little Mermaid” (18 texts) or “The Wild Swans” (9 texts). The analysis has enabled indicating certain tendencies in the way changes were introduced to the stories in the editions of the fairy tales for 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds. It has also highlighted the problem of open paraphrasing. The second part of the article contains reflections on simplifying fairy tales for children’s use and methods of removing content considered too difficult and abstract or sad and traumatic. The article concludes with an evaluation of this phenomenon from a pedagogical-psychological and publishing perspective.