(Roz)poznawane? Baśnie w odbiorze uczniów

The underlying issue of the reflection focused on in this presentation is how the generic transformations of fairy tales affect children’s receptive experience. This question encouraged the research which was conducted among primary school pupils and which aimed at learning about their cultural competence. The didactic experiment was carried out in reference to Hanna Krall’s fairy tale titled What Happened to Our Fairy Tale? [Co się stało z naszą bajką?]. This work abounds in toying with the genre convention, as well as in intertextual references to traditional fairy tales, and in metamathematical references. These properties of the text enabled us to find out to what extent the young audience is familiar with traditional fairy tales, and with popular motifs and generic features. On the other hand, the open, ambiguous ending furthered the recognition of independent reception and interpretative abilities. The achieved results were used not only to determine the cultural experience of the pupils, but also their aesthetic expectations, as well as the ethical and existential attitudes. The issue which comes into prominence in the background concerns the manner and the degree to which the contemporary fairy tale performs the world-modeling function.