The Pastiched Tale: How the Bengali Fairy Tale Survived

This paper traces how the Bengali rupkatha diverged from the traditional fairy tale. Emerging in nineteenth-century Bengal under colonial education and exposure to European children’s literature, it initially borrowed from Western models but soon incorporated features from different other literary forms, including lyric, satire, political allegory, and ghost stories. Through this gradual expansion, the rupkatha moved beyond fixed fairy-tale structures and evolved into a pastiche—an experimental form where multiple genres coexisted—giving it a distinctive identity within modern Bengali literature.