,,Baśń miejska, czyli o tym, jak przestrzeń miasta zmieniła baśń

The paper is devoted to the urban fairy tale, which is supposed to be a new type of fairy tale, mainly characterized by an urban scenery: the usual countryside is therefore replaced by a city. As the urban fairy tale is based on a geographical change in the fairytale landscape, we seek to examine the representation of the city and its evolution in the fairy tale in order to question the relevance of this genre. Indeed, although most folk tales take place in the countryside or in a natural place, some of them are partly connected with a city. Moreover, the presence of a city does not contradict the indefiniteness of space and time, which is typical for the fairy tale. Beside it, we have to pay attention to the evolution of the fairy tale itself, namely as a literary work, because writers are willing to transgress the spatial indetermination to describe realistic cities in fairy tales. It seems that the fairy tale has changed in such a way since the end of the 19th century that the city – even its evil version – has turned into a normal component of literary fairy tale, which has become more and more urban. Thus, although we can find urban marks in fairy tales ever since, the city has grown also according to the evolution of the fairy tale on the one hand, and the transformation of society on the other. Therefore, as the urban dimension of the fairy tale is due to its natural change, it is not necessary to create a separate category called “urban fairy tale”.