Madame d’Aulnoy: Contes des Fées, suivis des Contes nouveaux ou Les Fées à la Mode, and: Contes: Mademoiselle Lhéritier, Mademoiselle Bernard, Mademoiselle de La Force, Madame Durand, and Madame d’Auneuil (review)

The two texts at the center of this review involve the recent Champion publications of Madame d’Aulnoy: Contes des Fées, suivis des Contes nouveaux ou Les Fées à la Mode and Contes: Mademoiselle Lhéritier, Mademoiselle Bernard, Mademoiselle de La Force, Madame Durand, and Madame d’Auneuil, edited by Nadine Jasmin and Raymonde Robert, respectively, in a new series, “La Bibliothèque des Génies et des Fées.” Before examining each text separately, an observation as to how these volumes are parallel is noteworthy. Both volumes provide an extensive introduction with sociocultural and bibliographical information about each conteuse followed by the tales themselves. In their introductions both texts attempt to demonstrate the veritable presence and role of the fairy-tale genre as it exists in literature, history, and within the milieu of the seventeenth-century French salon. These introductions set the stage for the presentation of the actual tales and prepare the reader for the manner in which he or she should read the tales. It is essential to note that before analyzing d’Aulnoy in particular, Jasmin presents a rationale for the series followed by a general sociohistorical context for the classical tale, placing it within the historic realm of the literary tale.

In the introduction to the first volume of the Bibliothèque des Génies et des Fées, Jasmin outlines the structure of the Bibliothèque series, which will eventually involve twenty volumes. After this short and concise presentation of the series, Robert provides an overview of the French tale, examining: (1) a century of marvelous tales; (2) the rediscovery of the marvelous tale in seventeenth-century France; (3) the birth of the fairy tale in the “Savante” culture; (4) the birth of the oriental tale in French literature; (5) the French and Oriental fairy tale; (6) parody and libertine tales; and (7) the “Golden Era of Fairy Tales.” The information supplied under these headings serves as a beneficial research tool for looking up rudimentary facts and ideas about the birth of the fairy tale, the position of the fairy tale and its different manifestations throughout different eras, as well as the social and economic milieu in which it emerged. Following these introductory discussions, Jasmin analyzes the “Birth of the Feminine Tale” and the history of Mme d’Aulnoy. She inundates the reader with information pertaining to Mme d’Aulnoy’s life and literary career. Specifically, Jasmin discusses d’Aulnoy’s Romanesque life, her success as a salon woman, her role in the birth of the French literary tale, as well as the poetics of her works and the relation of the tale to the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. One crucial element that Jasmin stresses nicely in this overview is the idea that fairy tales positively contributed to the cause of the Moderns. Although tales were adapted from tellers of the past, many authors like Mme d’Aulnoy took free license with them and thus used the tales innovatively, allowing them to deviate from past conteurs, such as the author of “Metamorphoses,” Apuleius. In other words, tales underwent changes (elimination of certain scenes or events in the story) according to the discretion of the conteur or conteuse. Hence, the tale was unlatching itself from the past, and all the author truly borrowed from the “ancient” conteurs was the skeletal structure of the story (in other words, the characters and essential theme). Jasmin also provides a literary and cultural background where she discusses the ideal of...