MEDIOEVO DELLE FIABE, MEDIOEVO NELLE FIABE

This essay examines the historical and cultural processes that established the Middle Ages as the privileged time and space of fairy-tale narrative in Western culture, taking as its starting point the scholarly and literary legacy of Chiara Frugoni. Drawing on the nineteenth-century nation-building role of the Brothers Grimm's folk-tale collections, the Gothic Revival, and the fantasy writing and academic influence of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the essay argues that medievalism has functioned — and continues to function — as a primary vehicle for transmitting identity models and universal values across generations through the imagined landscapes of fairy tale and fantasy literature.