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  • Entangled Paths: Post-Anthr...
    Murai, Mayako

    Green letters, 04/2021, Volume: 25, Issue: 2
    Journal Article

    In a number of popular adaptations of 'Little Red Riding Hood', the wolf is anthropomorphised and portrayed as a bad man in animal drag, rather than as a wild animal. However, this enduring fairy tale revolving around a human-wildlife encounter in the woods can also be interpreted as a story of multispecies entanglement. By examining how modern picturebook adaptations of 'Little Red Riding Hood' from different cultures use various visual strategies to foreground different species' voices and worldviews embedded in the tale, this essay argues that fairy-tale enchantment can serve as a means of what Kari Weil calls 'critical anthropomorphism', inviting both children and adults to imagine the needs, pleasures and pains of other-than-human species without erasing their differences, and to reconfigure human-animal relations in the real world.