French Fairy Tales Research Articles

French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach (review)

French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach (review)

French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach (review)

French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach (review)

The Queen's Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780-1900 (review)

As a result of their centuries-long dominance of public awareness as well as their being the recurring object of scholarly effort and cinematic adaptation, the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm have functioned as models of what the fairy tale was thought to be. In the late twentieth century, however, this dominance began to fade (at least within scholarly circles) as an alternative fairy-tale literature gained attention. As a major impulse in this redefinition of focus, Jack Zipes's anthology, Beauties, Beasts and Enchantments: Classic French Fairy Tales (1989), offered new English translations of French literary fairy tales, written primarily by women who were contemporaneous with or subsequent to Perrault. By incorporating the word "classic" into his subtitle, Zipes acknowledges these women's contributions to the fairy-tale canon.

The metamorphosis of Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast, King Kong

Traces two millennia of changes in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, the major inserted tale in Lucius Apuleus's second-century Latin novel 'Metamorphoses' (or the Golden Ass). While folklorists have tended to deprecate the tale's affiliation with the classic French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, it would resurface in the horror movie, King Kong, an epic retelling that is in many ways acually closer to Apuleius's original Latin. The Middle Platonic philosophic-religious allegorical interpretation of Cupid and Psyche is used to review the courses of the two later mutations.

The Mirror of Criticism

The Mirror of Criticism Roberta Seelinger Trites In the first chapter of Through the Looking Glass, Alice expresses concern that "if I don't make haste, I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass before I've seen what the rest of the house is like!" Her concern may well mirror the concern of many literary critics; critics often fear that if we do not look closely enough, we will not know what the rest of the literary house looks like. Indeed, the mirror functions as an interesting literary metaphor that ties together several of the essays that appear in this issue of the Quarterly. In "Rebellious Voices: The Unofficial Discourse of Cross-dressing in d'Aulnoy, de Murat, and Perrault," Lisa Brocklebank argues that authors who rely on literary trans-vestism in seventeenth-century fairy tales hold up a mirror of cultural critique that allows us to better understand political issues of the day. Brocklebank explores how instances of transgendering in several French fairy tales serve as a form of both social and political criticism. Fairy tales provided authors with a mask to wear while criticizing their king, but the fairy tales, nonetheless, mirror a level of social unrest in the culture from which they arose. Contextualizing these fairy tales as the products of the intellectual salonières that arose in protest of Louis XIV's political excesses, Brocklebank takes specific note of the importance of cross-dressing as a venue for criticizing the Sun King's impotence. While Brocklebank explores fairy tales as mirroring their culture, Fiona McCulloch defines a literary instance of narrative authority refusing to act as a straightforward mirror of cultural attitudes. She writes of R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island: the "text is not a mirror image of absolute authority, but is a shattered textual lens that self-consciously probes the verisimilitude of narrative within the realms of an escapist fiction layered with sailors' yarns." The narrative of The Coral Island, she writes, distorts contemporary ideologies rather than functioning mimetically. Mike Cadden also investigates the relationship between mirrors and narrative authority. Cadden asks us to interrogate the responsibility of the narrator (and the author) in revealing the use of irony within a text. Since irony can mask an author's intention, Cadden makes a case for authors to help their readers learn how to read the irony they create: "This help, I believe, would remove the need for the author to make evident the larger narrative irony of stepping out from behind the mirror." Cadden's use of narrative theory problematizes how first-person narrators function in young adult novels. Writing with an international focus, Louise Salstad explores the ideological implications of the Spanish Comisión Católica Española de la Infancia Prize for children's literature, which is an approximate parallel of the American Library Association's Newbery and Caldecott awards. The C.C.E.I. judges proclaim that "All that involves a worthy content in a rich literary form has its place" in their considerations. Salstad's article will serve as an introductory exploration into a part of the literary house—Spanish children's literature—that may be unfamiliar to many readers of the Quarterly. Mirrors have a rich tradition in children's literature. Not only Alice's looking glass, but also magical mirrors from the one that Snow White's mother consults to those at Harry Potter's school serve important functions in children's and adolescent literature. Mirrors reflect children's images back to themselves, both reinforcing notions of self and confirming for the child that s/he is separate from the mother, as Lacan would have it. But for literary critics, mirrors provide a metaphor for our need to recognize more—more about other cultures, more about when texts distort reality, and more about reading honestly. [End Page 127] Copyright © 2000 Children's Literature Association

From Genealogy to Romance and Continuation in the Fabulous History of Partonopeu de Blois

From Genealogy to Romance and Continuation in the Fabulous History of Partonopeu de Blois Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner T HE PROTEAN CHARACTER OF ROMANCE as the genre which constantly reinvents itself through fission and fusion with other traditions and its own ever-renewable self is nowhere better exemplified than in the anonymous Partonopeu de Blois, probably writ­ ten toward the end of the twelfth century (ca. 1182-85). Little known today, even to medievalists, Partonopeu was a best-seller in the Middle Ages: it circulated in numerous manuscripts, was imitated, adapted, and translated into at least nine different European and Scandinavian lan­ guages.1 Anthime Fourrier has described Partonopeu as a kind of summa of twelfth-century forms and interests (440), the rich diversity of whose elements supplies a multiplicity of threads in Partonopeu's romance tapestry ingeniously entwined through more than 10,000 verses in the romance proper (and then prolonged for an additional 4,000 verses in a Continuation that may or may not be by the same author).21plan to focus here on the way Partonopeu moves from the unidirectional linear­ ity of the opening genealogy into the amiable and open-ended wander­ ings of romance and continuation—a transformation effected in part through the personal engagements of lyric. A quick summary of the romance will help situate the analysis of Par­ tonopeu, which I might facetiously subtitle “ Beauty and the Beast.” Its story belongs to the same type as that well-known French fairy tale,3but the title roles—more appropriately viewed from the variation of the Cupid and Psyche story—are reversed in terms of gender. Like the fairy mistresses of Celtic lais, Melior, the Empress of Byzantium, lures the 13-year-old nephew of the French king to Chef d’Oire, where she plans to keep him secretly until he can be knighted and presented to her barons as a suitable husband. While he remains invisible to all the inhabitants of Chef d’Oire, Partonopeu enjoys the pleasures of love with Melior each night, but only on condition that she remain invisible to him. After a year and a half (during which he twice returns to France), Partonopeu betrays the taboo imposed, in spite of Melior’s warnings. Once seen by her lover, Melior’s magic powers are destroyed and Partonopeu is banished. Seeking death in the Ardenne forest, Partonopeu is discovered Vol. XXXIII, No. 4 27 L ’E sprit C réateur by Melior’s sister Urraque, who persuades him with false news of Melior’s pardon to accompany her to Salence. There Partonopeu re­ covers his health and prepares for the three-day tournament arranged by Melior’s barons to choose her husband. Winner of the tournament, for both his prowess and beauty, Partonopeu is finally married to a for­ giving Melior (who throughout the second half of the romance has exchanged the role of powerful fairy mistress for that of haughty, but hesitating lyric domna). In an epilogue, the romancer promises to tell us more, if the lady for whom he is writing winks appropriately in his direc­ tion—which she does, according to the Continuation. The narrator’s desire to win the love of his lady is presented as motivation for the entire romance project and repeatedly explored in per­ sonal interventions that play on lyric models. The lyric persona of the narrator is one of the major innovations of the romance: it appears already in the springtime opening, elaborated in the Prologue as an incitement to write down a “ beautiful and good and marvelous” adven­ ture (71). The more typical romance narrator, trained in the arts of rhetoric, also appears in the Prologue: he knows about Greek and Latin books and can bring to a vernacular public a “ story of ancient times” (78). In the face of possible criticism from “ cil clerc” (77) who might accuse him of wasting his time, since he is not writing in Latin, he offers a defense taken from Saint Paul: everything written in books may be put to good use by those who know how to discern good and evil, following good examples and avoiding bad ones. Any moral problem which may arise then...

Carlo Collodi As Translator: From Fairy Tale to Folk Tale

Carlo Collodi As Translator:From Fairy Tale to Folk Tale Ester Zago (bio) There is a general consensus among critics of Collodi in acknowledging the indebtedness, on the part of the author of Pinocchio, toward the French fairy tales. Few have explored the topic much further,1 and yet it seems to me that this important influence on Collodi's work deserves closer scrutiny. Collodi's translation method appears to have been by his own training as a journalist and by the interest in folklore studies that accompanied the rise in patriotic sentiment in Italy during the nineteenth century. My focus will be on Collodi's treatment of Peau d'Ane (Donkey-Skin), and shall also look at his handling of Perrault's prose tales. Finally I shall discuss Collodi's techniques in translating the six stories by Mme d'Aulnoy and Mme Leprince de Beaumont. First, however, it may be useful to trace a brief account of the circumstances, both personal and cultural, which led to Collodi's translation of the French fairy tales. I. In 1875 Sandro Paggi suggested to Carlo Lorenzini, better known under the pen name of Collodi,2 that he translate a collection of French fairy tales which included Perrault's Contes, four tales by Mme d' Aulnoy and two by Mme Leprince de Beaumont.3 According to several critics,4 Collodi was not familiar with Perrault's fairy tales or the Cabinet des Fées before receiving this commission. Sandro Paggi, together with his brother Felice, owned a bookstore in Via del Proconsolo in Florence, as well as a publishing house. The Paggi brothers had known Collodi for a long time when they entrusted him with the translation of the French fairy tales. They became the loyal publishers of all of Collodi's work. Collodi began his literary career in 1848. After participating as a volunteer in the first war for the independence of Italy, he came back to his native Florence, and for ten years he worked as a journalist for several Florentine magazines and newspapers. This experience was probably instrumental in developing the clarity of his style, the sharpness of his wit, and his shrewd understanding of what attracts and retains the reader's attention. But Collodi was also aware of the limitations inherent in the journalist's trade. He wrote that "one is born a poet, but there is no need to be born a journalist. In fact, once you become a journalist, you die a [End Page 61] journalist. . . . Journalism is like Nexus' shirt, once you have put it on, you cannot take it off."5 Like many Italian writers of his time, Collodi had an excellent knowledge of the French language; moreover, he demonstrated an early interest in problems of translation. In 1854 he stated in an article entitled "I traduttori e le traduzioni" that a good translator must have . . . a thorough and perfect knowledge of the two languages he is dealing with, and not only of words and phrases, but more importantly, of the nature, the physiognomy, the temperament of each language. . . . To translate does not mean to transpose a word from one language into another. . . . This is the task of the very modest compilers of pocket dictionaries. . . . (Bertacchini 177, my translation) In the same article he went on to say that it is not sufficient to know the language: the translation of a literary text poses different problems from the translation of a history text. It would seem that the translation of a fairy tale poses its own unique set of problems, as Collodi was to discover some 20 years later. When the Paggi brothers decided to publish the Italian version of the French fairy tales, they were demonstrating an astute recognition of the market's demand for a literary genre which could not only please but also instruct a public composed of children and adults. Concern for the imperatives of public education had considerably increased in Italy during the Risorgimento. Under the Cavour ministry, a law was passed which required two years of compulsory education for all citizens of Piedmont and Lombardy. The law was extended to Tuscany when the region was annexed to the dominions...

Roger Sale Puts in a Word for Children's Literature

Roger Sale Puts in a Word for Children's Literature K. Narayan Kutty (bio) A large majority of the writers of children's books in the world live and work in America. Consequently, no other country in the world has produced so much literature for children—not all of it is trash—as America. Yet few subjects have suffered so much from critical neglect in America as children's literature. Contempt for children's literature among critics and professors of literature in this country contrasts strikingly with scholarly interest in and fascination with it in Europe and in England.1 The first writer in the West to give children a book they could call their own was Charles Perrault who, in 1697, published Histoires ou contes du temps passé, the first ever collection of fairy tales to appear in print. And Perrault was a member of the French Academy. The Brothers Grimm, who spent a lifetime collecting, editing, and publishing German fairy tales, were literary scholars and philologists, not anthropologists. The critical and creative writings of G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien, to name only three scholars from England, contain ample evidence that they did not consider fascination with children's literature beneath the dignity of their profession or calling in life. Paul Hazard, who was the first European critic to write a full-length book on children's literature,2 did not believe that books for children are less important than books for adults. He, too, was a member of the French Academy. Walter Benjamin, one of the original German critics of our time, not only read and collected books for children, but also was deeply impressed with the wisdom of oral literature.3 Simone Weil, one of the most extraordinary human beings of this century, wrote a brilliant little essay on "The Six Swans," a Grimm's fairy tale.4 Michel Butor, the noted contemporary French novelist, has written a penetrating essay on the classic French fairy tales.5 Children's literature has fared well—has it not?—with eminent scholars and writers on the other side of the Atlantic. Here, in America, its critical fate has been dismal. It has met with only contempt and ridicule in scholarly circles. [End Page 208] American professors of literature and non-academic critics do not dabble in such plebeian subjects as children's literature.6 They will not, if they can help it. There are some, of course, who more than dabble in it; but being "guilty" of having betrayed the high and noble cause of LITERATURE, their literary sensibility becomes suspect and their intelligence dubious in the eyes of the academy. Most English Departments in the country scorn the subject openly; those that allow it to be taught tolerate it as an evil necessary to keep enrollments up. The foregoing facts make Roger Sale's Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E. B. White7 an unusual and courageous book. Sale is a professor of English (University of Washington) who has published critical essays in book form and in journals, such as The Hudson Review, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review. Undeterred by the mindless snobbery and small-mindedness of his profession and prompted by a fascination with children's literature, which he has kept alive through his childhood and youth, Sale has written a serious book about some of the outstanding and not so outstanding works of children's literature. There is no evidence that God has a Ph.D. in English or that he has taught English at an Ivy League school in America. So He will forgive Sale his sin. After all, hasn't His son said: "A little child shall lead them"? Fairy Tales and After (the subtitle is misleading; the book is no survey) is a collection of literary commentaries on certain features of fairy tales, animal tales, and of the works of Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter, L. Frank Baum, Kenneth Grahame, A. A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling, E. B. White, Jean de Brunhoff, Dr. Seuss, and some others. Sale's commentaries are useful. They shed light on some important...

Book Review: French Fairy Tales

Book Review: French Fairy Tales

The Sources of Wieland's "Don Sylvio"

Wieland once remarked, in conversation with B6ttiger, that he had never written anything for which he had not found the material in some old romance, legend, or fabliau.1 In the case of Don Sylvio borrowings from Cervantes were noted by contemporary reviewers,2 and the author himself frankly admitted a certain resemblance to Don Quixote.3 In our day the borrowings from Cervantes have been traced in detail by Stephan Tropsch4 and Tjard W. Berger ; Augustus Wood6 attributes Pedrillo's ludicrous slips of the tongue to the influence of Partridge in Tom Jones and of Slipslop in Joseph Andrews, whereas Karl Walter' shows the affinity in this respect between Pediillo and Launcelot Gobbo in the Merchant of Venice. Tropsch8 has also pointed out reminiscences from Lucian, while K. 0. Mayer' has traced back many of Wieland's motives to the French fairy tales of his time.