Of Ogres and Men In fairy-tale adaptations, anthropophagy plots can and have been used to talk about femininity and sexuality, monstrosity and alterity. Authors, and women authors in particular – notably Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, and Sarah Pinborough, among others –, have dealt with cannibalism in many ways, often metaphorical, but always showcasing the potential for subversion that fairy-tale narratives provide. I will examine a couple of examples of cannibalism in fairy tales and their adaptations, highlight- ing the links between past and present portrayals of anthropophagical plots and characters. Although the Sleeping Beauty tale and, to a lesser extent, the Little Red Riding Hood tale are used as representative cases, the analysis can equally be applied to other tales. 1 In approaching the subject of cannibalism in fairy tales and their retell- ings, reworkings and adaptations, we must understand the genre as ‘the domain of absolute otherness’ – a phrase borrowed from the celebrated ‘Fairy Godmother’ Angela Carter, which she uses to describe Robert Darnton’s views on the fairy-tale past. 2 This is a world where incest, sodomy, rape, bestiality and cannibalism are commonplace; Carter dubs it a Hobbesian world, ‘in which parents leave their children in the for- est to spare themselves the sight of them starving to death’. 3 Indeed, one of the best-known examples of fairy-tale cannibalism can be found in the tale of Hansel and Gretel. Briefly, the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel (1857) tells the story of two young siblings and a cannibal- istic witch who lives in a house made of sweet confectionery and other treats. 4 Little Hansel and his sister Gretel are lured into the notorious gingerbread house, but later escape by outwitting the witch who had planned to devour them. In Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697), we have a parallel story: Le Petit Poucet, also known as Little Thumb or Hop o’ My Thumb, where the villain is not a witch but an ogre. 5 In the tale, the lost siblings find themselves in the home of a woman married to an ogre; similarly to Hansel and Gretel, Petit Poucet outwits the ogre and escapes with his brothers. Whatever the 10 The Better to Eat You With The Anthropophagy Plots of Fairy Tales Silvia E. Storti 9780367432607_C010.indd 176 19-01-2021 10:52:17 AM