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Fairies

A Companion

by Lorna Piatti-Farnell (Volume editor) Simon Bacon (Volume editor)
Edited Collection XII, 324 Pages

Summary

Fairies: A Companion provides a unique and unparalleled view of the ubiquity of fairies and fairy culture across the world, in its many expressions and manifestations. As well as providing historical perspectives on our belief in the fae, the companion also uniquely traces their ongoing evolution and their importance to culture in the 21st century and beyond. Including original artworks, poems and flash fiction, this collection provides an invaluable resource for scholars and non-academics alike who want to understand the richness of our connection to fairies and what they say about our past, our present and even our tomorrows.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Halftitle Page
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • Introduction
  • Flash Fiction: The Blue Fairy
  • Part I: Beginnings and Evolutions
  • The Cottingley Fairies (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1920) – The Science of the Supernatural
  • Changing the Changeling Trope (Patrick Doyle, 1875(?)–1888)
  • “Don’t Call Me a Fairy” (Various, 1964–2006) – Folkloresque Metacommentary in Contemporary Fairy Fictions
  • A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001) – Electronic Parasites
  • Part II: Belonging and Otherness
  • Queene of Phayries (Various, 1590–1602) – Tudor Fairies
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clark, 2004) – Neo-19th-Century Fairies
  • “The New Daughter” (John Connolly, 2004) – Fairies and Fatherhood
  • Carnival Row (Travis Beacham and René Echevarria, 2019–Present) – Fairy Ecologies of Difference
  • Part III: Daughters, Mothers, and Godmothers
  • The Muses
  • Peter Pan (Clyde Geronimi, 1953) – The Rise of Tinker Bell
  • True Blood (Alan Ball, 2008–2014) – Sookie Stackhouse as a Plaything
  • The Daisy Chain (Aisling Walsh, 2008) – Changelings and Motherhood
  • A Cinderella Story (Mark Rosman, 2004) – Evolution of the Fairy Godmother
  • Part IV: By Any Other Name
  • Quink
  • The Elves (Terry Pratchett, 1992–2003) – The Fairy Folk of Discworld
  • Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (John Newland, 1973) – Mischievous Boggarts
  • Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch, 2011–Present) – Urban(ised) Fairies
  • Part V: Across Cultures
  • Poem: The Moonlight Meeting of Lord Ortho and Setareh
  • “The Otherworld” (Anon., c. 1200 BCE–Present) – Revenge of the Sídhe
  • Raja Ka Sapna [A King’s Dream] (Anon., n.d.) – Haryanvi Fairies
  • Onmyōji (Yumemakura Baku, 2003) – Female Shikigami as Japanese “Fairies”
  • Tecna (Iginio Straffi, 2004–Present) – Fairy of Modernity
  • Part VI: Across Media
  • Butterfly Magic
  • “The Sums That Came Right” (Edith Nesbit, 1901) – The Arithmetic Fairy
  • Changeling: The Lost (White Wolf, 2007) – Supernatural Alterity
  • Prikosnovénie (Frédéric Chaplain and Sabine Adélaïde, 1991–Present) – Dark Wave Fairies
  • The Fairy-Land of Science (Arabella Buckley, 1878) – Fairies and Science
  • Part VII: Environmental and Ecological
  • “Sir Orfeo” (Anon., Late 13th/Early 14th Century) – Medieval Fairies
  • The Call (Peader O’Guilin, 2016) – Contemporising the Irish Sídhe
  • Magic: The Gathering (Richard Garfield, 1993–Present) – Queen Oona, Environmental Protectress
  • FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Bill Kroyer, 1992) – Australian “Little People”
  • Fairy of the Forest
  • Bibliography
  • Notes on Contributors
  • Index

Acknowledgements

Books are strangely collective efforts and not just about those that are in the final manuscript, but all those that were part of it at the various stages, as well as those that listened to thoughts, that gave advice, or even just patiently listened to grumps and complaints when things didn’t quite happen as they should have. Without any of those people, all those tiny pushes, shoves, and reasons to carry on books just wouldn’t get over the line. So to all of you, many, many thanks.

Of course, there are those that more obviously helped to get the book completed and so huge thanks to everyone that managed to get their chapters written, their proofs corrected, and send it all in. With them, we would also like to thank Laurel and the team at Peter Lang who have helped make the final book the beautiful thing it is. And we’d also like to thank the reviewers, the often unsung heroes of academic publishing, whose input has helped shape our arguments and motivate us and make this the best book it could be. Lastly we’d like to thank our respective partners and families, who are the reason for doing anything important in this world, and we’d like to thank each other, as it wouldn’t have happened without either of us.

Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Simon Bacon

Introduction

Approaching Fairies: Taxonomy, Meanings, Evolutions

Stories about fairies and the fae have long populated the imagination of many cultures around the world. Shrouded in half-written chronicles and oral accounts, fairies are figures of mystery. Their definition, look, and practices shift and change from context to context. Fairies are often at the centre of tales of folklore across countries; they are entangled with narratives of magic and the supernatural, while also being intrinsically tied to the workings of the natural world. Indeed, while “fairies have not been proven to exist”, many people in several parts of the world “believe that they are real” (Bane 2013: 1). Various terms are often used to refer to these mysterious creatures and, on occasions, are used interchangeably – from fairy to fae, and beyond – while also suggestively maintaining characteristics that are notoriously difficult to define. At times, they are perceived to be tall, beautiful, and ethereal, capturing the mystical aspects of life just beyond human reach. Other times, they take on the form of pixies and are thought of as little tricksters, who are also forever ready to play pranks on unsuspecting humans. Fairies may display completely unique anatomies, which only vaguely recall the humanoid shape: as the proud owners of rounded and glittery eyes, webbed feet, and even wings, fairies push the boundaries of social, cultural, and even anatomical acceptability. When it comes to fairy origins, definitions, descriptions, geographies, and general countenance, no “single theory” is the most “plausible” (Keightley 2023: 7) and several co-exist via forms of assumption and deduction, continuing to prove the cultural evasiveness of fairies as a central part of their historical endurance and relevance. A taxonomy of fairies, in the broader sense, is as difficult as it is fascinating, and our shifting categorisations often speak to how we as humans respond to the world, known and unknown. Fairies commonly stand as an embodiment of the otherworld and inhabit – as far as the human imagination goes – locations that are often perceived to be as secretive and distant, such as forests and rivers. Equally, fairies can exist as hidden and undiscovered presences in our everyday contexts, from gardens to kitchens; the fairies’ elusive and capricious nature often speaks to their aloofness in relation to human matters. The “fairy world”, as both a physical and a metaphorical location, is constructed of legends and cultural whispers that often lie beyond the limits of the rational imagination, while also being profoundly intertwined with what humans consider as equally whimsical and frightening. Entangled as they are with matters of folklore, memory, and, importantly, humanity, it is not surprising to see that fairies have also occupied a central role in our storytelling practices. Indeed, the historical problem with taxonomy, and the difficulty in providing an overarching definition of fairies – inclusive of sub-categories and transnational nuances – also provides the promise of innovation, especially as far as the 21st century is concerned. Adaptable and easy to mould to different contexts, fairies provide the ideal intersectional metaphor for capturing the evolving social, cultural, and political preoccupations that blend, mingle, and merge in the folds of changing historical backdrops. This adaptability is the starting point for this companion, as the volume openly aims to engage with the taxonomical, evolutionary, and representational rebelliousness of fairies, and their ability to both reflect and challenge the cultural certainties of the era they inhabit, representing changing ideas of gender, race, and ethnicity, as well mutating discourses of memory, belonging, and power. As daringly claimed by fairy scholar Richard Bullivant, as belief systems change and the world embraces cultural cycles of modernity and post-modernity, one thing about fairies remains certain: “They just refuse to go away” (2017: 2).

Fairy Lore, Folklore Studies, and the Fairy Imagination

Fairies have emerged as a steady presence in literature across the transnational landscape. Tales of fairies have been re-told in numerous contexts, building on central ideas about where they live, what they look like, and how they interact – if ever – with our human consciousness. Some geographical contexts and cultures have provided particularly fertile ground for the emergence of fairy tales; here, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Germany are particularly worthy of note, and can be traced back centuries. For instance, some of the earliest written mentions of fairies in the English context occur in the “Anglo-Saxon charms against elf-shot”; equally, some of the “fairy ladies of medieval romances” may well have an “an origin as old”, with examples such as Morgan Le Fey of Arthurian legend being based on a “mingling of Celtic and classical tradition” (Briggs 2002: 4). Fairies famously appeared in well-known Shakespeare’s plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1596), cementing their presence as an imaginative device for narrative representation. Indeed, in the literary context, the “fairy tradition” remains a recurrent part of representation. As Katharine Mary Briggs argues, “as tenuous and fragile as it is”, that tradition is “still there” even in our contemporary moment, and “lingers on from generation to generation substantially unchanged” (2002: 3). Fairies and fairy-like forms commonly appear in classic fairy tales, written commonly between the 17th and 19th centuries, and which, perhaps as a result, became commonly remembered as both a folkloristic and literary genre that deals with all manner of magic, legends, and cautionary tales for children about conduct and behaviours. The 19th century proved particularly prolific in the production of fairy stories, which continued to explore the connections between literature and folklore. These narrative evocations were well suited to the Victorian fascination with the fairy world, situated as it was in the midst of cultural transformations, religious questioning, and a newly developing fascination with tales of the past (Silver 2000). This context provided a fruitful ground for the rediscovery of fairies as a storytelling presence and a much-debated topic of conversation – somewhat surprisingly – in historical, literary, and even scientific circles. In the late 1800s, acclaimed poet and scholar W. B. Yeats famously published a two-volume collection of Irish Fairy Tales and Folklore. Tales of fairies became entangled with discussions about both the natural world and our human impact, often mixing and mingling them with a preoccupation with the occult and the supernatural. The 19th-century fascination with fairies spread quickly from Europe to North America and beyond, soon incorporating long-standing tales of the fairy folk from different parts of the world, from Thailand to Japan. Overall, however, Europe remains the most prolific continent for fairy lore, comprising a veritable compendium of legends, traditions, rituals, performances, and tales (Fay and Manwaring 2021).

In spite of the recurrent presence that fairies have maintained in our storytelling practices – including their evolution into recent media – academic interest in “fairy people” has been primarily sited in the field of folklore studies. Here, a large number of volumes have provided a critical overview of the place that many fairy incarnations – from pixies to the fae, and beyond – have occupied in our historical lore. Folklore and historical studies of the fairy world have been comprehensive and have often maintained a distinct encyclopaedic direction (Alexander 2014; Bane 2014; Cooper 2014; Daimler 2020; Guiley 2010; Hartland 2022; Henderson and Cowan 2001; Keightley 2023; Sugg 2018; Young and Houlbrook 2022). The focus in these studies has been primarily placed, somewhat unsurprisingly, on the European context, – with Ireland figuring prominently (Frost 2022; White 2005) – and has provided a picture of fairies as quasi-mythological creatures, sitting somewhere between oral tradition and religious beliefs. This is not to say, of course, that critical explorations of fairies around the world do not exist; indeed, Michelle Roehm McCann and Marianne Monson-Burton’s Finding Fairies (2001) is a compelling study of fairy lore from six continents, even if the tone of the volume is more light-hearted than strictly scholarly. Making a more scholarly contribution to studies on fairy representation, Regina Buccola’s volume Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith: In Early Modern British Drama and Culture (2006) is successful in showing how fairies have often functioned as veiled metaphors for the exploration of gender and class in the history of British theatre performances, and how these representations have both shaped and been shaped by cultural values.

It is perhaps unsurprising to see children’s literature as one of the biggest exponents in its engagement with fairies, especially from the 20th century onwards. In similar terms, the genre of fantasy has capitalised greatly on representing fairies. It is difficult to forget the impact of fairies in Terry Pratchett’s iconic Discworld series (1983–2015). Equally, it would not be too ambitious to identify the representation of Tinkerbell in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan novels and stage plays (1902–1911) as one of the most well-known embodiments within the literary fairy world. Tinkerbell herself continues to maintain a legacy that, of course, goes well beyond her roots in the literary medium. Keen observers and fans would notice her recurrent presence in the Disney world, spanning multiple animated movies – including Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure (2009) and The Pirate Fairy (2014), among others – and, of course, many lines of bestselling merchandise.

Indeed, fairies have also gained a noticeable importance in the 21st century, bringing with them an increased cultural focus on traditional beliefs and Indigenous identities. While the connection to the folkloristic and the literary remains strong – with the multiple reincarnations of Tinkerbell taking centre stage here – fairies have also found renewed life in modern and contemporary reimaginings. As Skye Alexander puts it, “it seems as if fairies are everywhere”: “we’re inundated with big-budget films, TV shows, and enough merchandise to fill every palace in fairyland” (2014: 7). Different interpretations of fairies – and more broadly, perhaps, the fae – have become a recurrent presence in popular culture. Film and television, as well as recent SVOD platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, have provided a fertile arena for fairies to grow in influence and representation, especially considering their continued centrality in the cross-century genres of paranormal romance and fantasy. Fairies famously appeared as highly sexualised creatures in the popular television series True Blood (2008–2014), where their exploits were suggestively entangled with matters of greed, possession, and magic, and fairies themselves served as an embodiment – in a not-so-unexpected twist – of the darkest human desires. The fairy world is explored amply in recent examples of serialised narratives such as Carnival Row (2019–2021), where ethnically diverse “breeds” of the fae – from winged fairies, to fawns, pixies and beyond – mix and mingle with humans in a fictional 19th-century world. Fairies populate tales across genres and readerships, from Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman (1989–present) to children’s animated stories such as Winx Club (2012–present) and continue to captivate: their representations and meanings grow and expand, mixing ideas of magic with the inescapable nature of our tangible human lives. From the gender-swap production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020) to the portrayal of Billy Porter as a gender-neutral Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (2021), these re-envisionings give the old tropes of classic fairy texts new life.

Into the Evolving World of the Fae: This Book

The connection between fairies and tales of the imagination – often with a fantasy stance – is indeed unarguable, and yet the scholarly literature currently in existence has not shown a consistent desire to explore fairies not just as creatures of lore, but as central figures in the workings of the imagination, from literature to film, games, television, animation, and the broader popular culture landscape. While some important examples exist – such as Briggs’ volume The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (2002) and Kristian Moen’s Film and Fairy Tales: The Birth of Modern Fantasy (2013), a gap still exists in the critical analysis of fairies as popular representation entities. In answer to this, our companion aims to provide a broader view of the place occupied by fairies as an important part of cultural practice as well as culturally inscribed notions of magic and spirituality. Merging old lore with contemporary socio-cultural and socio-historical politics, the newly re-vamped fairies operate as central figures in the evolution of identity politics. Alongside this lies an obvious connection to the environment, where fairies become representative and protectors of the ecosystem, though not just as preservers of the past but as augurs of a future where humanity and the planet can survive together. In their multiple incarnations, fairies prove how the magical can be returned into the everyday. And in approaching the “fairy realm” as part of our collective imagination, we remain attuned to the “changing nature” of these continuously appealing creatures (Sugg 2018: 2), and we enquire into their ability to shift, mutate, and adapt to our evolving media and cultural contexts.

The companion will be divided in seven parts that will trace the fae from the enchanted isle out across the world, as they have become increasingly adept at representing non-normative identities and gender fluidity as well as the dark side of magic and (non)human nature. To highlight the importance of evolution and change to the fairy in the popular imagination – indeed, they are as mutable and adaptable as that other chameleon of pop culture, the vampire – each section in this collection trades a different thread of fae evolution, as they not only change in aspect and characteristics but change across mediums, as well.

The collection begins with “Flash Fiction: The Blue Fairy” by Maria Giakaniki, which contains something of a dreamlike description of the fae as feminine and docile – not unlike a classical muse – but it ends with them being released, to be whatever they might become, and that launches us into what will follow. What does follow is Part I, “Beginnings and Evolutions”, which traces a more general sense of how fairies have been perceived, particularly in relation to technology and whether fairies have a place in the real world. The first chapter is “The Cottingley Fairies (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1920) – The Science of the Supernatural,” by Lesley McLean, which considers the unlikely connection between the writer of Sherlock Holmes and fairies that actually speaks to a very particular kind of late Victorian/early 20th-century connection between science and the supernatural that was willing to accept the factual reality of the fae. Next is “Changing the Changeling Trope (Patrick Doyle, 1875(?)–1888),” by Abigayle Farrier that continues this blurring of the borders between folktale and reality and discusses the continually problematic history of the changeling, which still accounts for cases of fillicide in small, traditional communities. “Don’t Call Me a Fairy” (Various, 1964–2006) – Folkloresque Metacommentary in Contemporary Fairies Fictions by Saga Bokne examines a modern updating of the fairies myth which uses the idea of the mockumentary, and so applies the conceit of reality to its main character who, not unlike a character of reality TV, is one who speaks its mind to purposely contradict traditional expectations. The final chapter in this section, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001) – Electronic Parasites” by Francesca Bihet, centres on a possible technological future where even artificial humans need to believe in real fairies as a manifestation of a world beyond what can be seen and that the future is always a place of hope.

Details

Pages
XII, 324
ISBN (PDF)
9781800799387
ISBN (ePUB)
9781800799394
ISBN (Softcover)
9781800799370
DOI
10.3726/b19901
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (July)
Keywords
Fairies Nature Ecology Environment Myth Fantasy Culture Futurity Magic Popular Culture
Published
Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2025. xii, 324 pp., 32 fig. col., 8 fig. b/w.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Lorna Piatti-Farnell (Volume editor) Simon Bacon (Volume editor)

Lorna Piatti-Farnell is Academic Dean at SAE Creative Media Institute in Auckland, New Zealand. She is the Director of the Australasian Horror Studies Network (AHSN) and an Adjunct Research Professor at Curtin University, Australia. Her research sits primarily in screen media and cinematic cultures, with a particular focus on transmedia storytelling, eco-narratives, digital technologies and popular iconographies, and a long-standing interest in Gothic horror and fantasy. She is the sole editor of the Routledge Advances in Popular Culture book series and co-editor of the Horror Studies book series for Lexington/Bloomsbury. Simon Bacon is a writer and film critic based in Poznań, Poland. He has written and edited over thirty books on various subjects including Horror: A Companion (2019), Eco-Vampires (2020), Nosferatu in the 21st Century (2023), Future Folk Horror (2023), The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (2024), and The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie (forthcoming). He is also the Series Editor for Genre Fiction and Film Companions and Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead with Peter Lang.

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