![]() ![]() Divested of specifics like time, place, and individual personalities, this incipit is the formula for a typical fairy tale. “The Story of the Eldest Princess” begins with the quintessential fairy-tale opening sentence: “Once upon a time, in a kingdom between the sea and the mountains, between the forest and the desert, there lived a King and a Queen with three daughters” (41). With “Dragons’ Breath” and “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” this collection takes a post-Victorian and occasionally postmodern look at the fairy tale. Two other stories in the same collection, “Gode’s Story” and “The Glass Coffin,” first appeared in Byatt’s Booker Prize–winning novel, Possession (1990). ![]() One of the consequences of this subversion is self-refl exivity another is a feminist rewriting of the conventions of the genre. It is an ostensible fairy tale that in fact subverts the assumptions of the genre in sometimes explicit, sometimes subtle ways. Byatt’s collection The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994). “The Story of the Eldest Princess” is one of the five stories that appeared in A. ![]()
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