The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”

“The Shift of Sex” is a folktale type that begins with a young woman dressing in men’s clothes to have an adventure, and ends when the protagonist is magically transformed into a man, marries a woman, and lives happily ever after. My goal in this project is to analyze the 26 variants as a group in o...

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Autor principal:	Ready Psyche Z.
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	De Gruyter 2021
Materias:	fairy tale folktale folklore Social sciences (General) H1-99
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/e74927e65f79409792c6c15bfb01fd01
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:e74927e65f79409792c6c15bfb01fd012021-12-05T14:10:45ZThe Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”2451-347410.1515/culture-2020-0133https://doaj.org/article/e74927e65f79409792c6c15bfb01fd012021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0133https://doaj.org/toc/2451-3474“The Shift of Sex” is a folktale type that begins with a young woman dressing in men’s clothes to have an adventure, and ends when the protagonist is magically transformed into a man, marries a woman, and lives happily ever after. My goal in this project is to analyze the 26 variants as a group in order to illuminate what they communicate about gender and transgender. ATU 514 has been treated as an aberration or anomaly, a tale that defies categorization. Several feminist scholars have argued that the climactic change of gender reinforces heteronormativity and sexist, patriarchal gender roles. More recent scholarship notes the tale’s transgender possibility, scholarship I build on in this project. My analysis identified two significant patterns in the tales: first, every variant has a happy ending for the protagonist, representing a narrative reward for a character who could variously be read as transgender or gender transgressive. Second, the tales are encoded with details, characters, and events that tell a “secondary narrative” that describes the threat of the patriarchy. I argue that the protagonist of ATU 514 is a transgressive character with transgender capacity and that the tale approves and rewards these transgressions through the concluding happily-ever-after.Ready Psyche Z.De Gruyterarticlefairy talefolktalefolkloreSocial sciences (General)H1-99ENOpen Cultural Studies, Vol 5, Iss 1, Pp 221-234 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	fairy tale folktale folklore Social sciences (General) H1-99
spellingShingle	fairy tale folktale folklore Social sciences (General) H1-99 Ready Psyche Z. The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
description	“The Shift of Sex” is a folktale type that begins with a young woman dressing in men’s clothes to have an adventure, and ends when the protagonist is magically transformed into a man, marries a woman, and lives happily ever after. My goal in this project is to analyze the 26 variants as a group in order to illuminate what they communicate about gender and transgender. ATU 514 has been treated as an aberration or anomaly, a tale that defies categorization. Several feminist scholars have argued that the climactic change of gender reinforces heteronormativity and sexist, patriarchal gender roles. More recent scholarship notes the tale’s transgender possibility, scholarship I build on in this project. My analysis identified two significant patterns in the tales: first, every variant has a happy ending for the protagonist, representing a narrative reward for a character who could variously be read as transgender or gender transgressive. Second, the tales are encoded with details, characters, and events that tell a “secondary narrative” that describes the threat of the patriarchy. I argue that the protagonist of ATU 514 is a transgressive character with transgender capacity and that the tale approves and rewards these transgressions through the concluding happily-ever-after.
format	article
author	Ready Psyche Z.
author_facet	Ready Psyche Z.
author_sort	Ready Psyche Z.
title	The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
title_short	The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
title_full	The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
title_fullStr	The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
title_full_unstemmed	The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”
title_sort	transgender imagination in folk narratives: the case of atu 514, “the shift of sex”
publisher	De Gruyter
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/e74927e65f79409792c6c15bfb01fd01
work_keys_str_mv	AT readypsychez thetransgenderimaginationinfolknarrativesthecaseofatu514theshiftofsex AT readypsychez transgenderimaginationinfolknarrativesthecaseofatu514theshiftofsex
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The Transgender Imagination in Folk Narratives: The Case of ATU 514, “The Shift of Sex”

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