An important stylistic feature of the fairy tale is its tendency toneutralize tropes by animating them. Distinctive fairy tale devices, transformations, for instance, appear at the expense of the intentional enlivening of the worn semantics of some hackneyed tropes. Neutralized tropes should be interpreted literally. In case of alternative, i.e. metaphoric interpretation, the succeeding narrative stretch will be under threat of logical and semantic collapse. A very similar phenomenon was observed by Zvetan Todorov in the fantastic fiction. As a rule, the oral fairy tale does not show the rhetorical figure and its extension in the same textual cut. The hackneyed trope is mostly absent. It is true; it can be easily restored owing to the fact that it is a phrase the listeners/readers are well aware of. Doubtless, we are far from claiming that any transformation in a fairy tale appears as a consequence of a rhetorical operation.
