The metatextual and metafictional fairy tale picturebook as reinvention of the Brothers Grimm’s Little Red Riding Hood

Abstract

It is the fairy tale's own to be illustrated, staged, reinvented, and adapted in a variety of ways, with emphasis on his verbal-visual recreations in the form of fairy-tale picture books. In the present work, we analyze the metatextual and metafictional work Caperucita Roja (tal y como se lo contaron a Jorge), by Luis María Pescetti and Alejandro O'Kif, in comparison with the Grimm Brothers' Little Red Riding Hood, to which it refers directly and reproduces in a translated and adapted manner. Like every metatextual and metafictional work, the textuality in question gives rise to innumerable questions about the reference work (the Grimm's tale), which it critically evaluates. We will see how, in Caperucita Roja, the formal structure of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, characterized by abstraction, flatness, intuitive logic and naturalized magic is thematized, as well as the Verwandlungsfähigkeit of the original narrative.