Le conte de fees litteraire en France de la fin du XVIIe a la fin du XVIIIe siecle (review)

Abstract

Published first in 1981, Professor Robert's book sparked serious research into the French literary fairy tale of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that has continued through the twenty-first century. Her massive and exhaustive study complemented and surpassed two fine studies, Mary-Elizabeth Storer's Un Épisode littéraire de la fin du XVIIe siècle. La mode des contes de fées (1685-1700) (1928) and Jacques Barchilon's Le conte merveilleux français de 1690 à 1790 (1975). Not only did Robert deal with the great production of the literary tales in greater depth than Storer and Barchilon, but she drew out the connections to the oral tradition of French folk tales and emphasized the [End Page 121] importance of dealing with popular literature and cultural vogues. Without understanding the social history of the French fairy tale, we cannot have a full grasp of French society of that period, nor can we appreciate how the literary fairy tale itself established itself as a genre.