Naissance du conte feminin: Mots et Merveilles: Les Contes de fees de Madame d'Aulnoy (1690-1698) (review)

At the outset of her book on Madame d'Aulnoy, Nadine Jasmin defines the object of her study to be an analysis of the "birth of a new literary genre," that of the literary fairy tale, out of the oral tale. In order to explain the emergence and establishment of this new genre, Jasmin takes as her point of departure the fairy-tale corpus of d'Aulnoy, the most prolific fairy-tale writer of late seventeenth-century France, whose tales indeed are more representative of the larger trend than those written by her contemporary, Charles Perrault. Jasmin's study is divided into three sections, the first of which treats the ways in which d'Aulnoy combines various sources—both folkloric and literary—to create a new, autonomous literary genre. Section 2 centers on the "matter" of the tales, or their sociocultural context. In Section 3 (there is also a Section 4 Jasmin does not mention in her general introduction, but which could be considered to be part of Section 3) Jasmin looks at the "manner" of the tales, the stylistic devices and narrative strategies d'Aulnoy employs to create her tales, not to mention her original imaginary worlds.

In my view, the first section of the book is the most successful one. Moving from the influence of myth, the pastoral novel, folkloric sources, and the heroic novel, Jasmin demonstrates how d'Aulnoy's conception of the fairy tale both borrows and emancipates itself from its sources. Part of her analysis is based on the opposition she sets up between Ancient genres like mythology and Modern genres like the novel and fairy tale. While I find this reading of the relation between myth and fairy tale intriguing, I would argue that the relation is in fact more complex than a simple binary opposition. Opera, for instance, often used mythological plots, but was considered—at least by Ancients like Boileau—to be a thoroughly "modern" genre. Jasmin cites as an example of how d'Aulnoy problematizes "ancient" sources like Ovid d'Aulnoy's tale "Le Serpentin Vert," in which the heroine Laideronette reads the story of Cupid and Psyche, only to follow the same disastrous path as her ancient sister. While I find this reading valid, it would have been useful for Jasmin to furthermore take into account Jean Mainil's argument in Madame d'Aulnoy et le rire des fées (2001) that d'Aulnoy generally problematizes the pedagogical function of her tales by inscribing characters who misread the moral lessons not only of Ancient sources, but also of particular fairy tales. Nevertheless, in this section Jasmin convincingly shows how d'Aulnoy successfully combines various types of sources to create a genre that ultimately stands on its own. Moreover, Jasmin argues that although d'Aulnoy never directly engaged in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, the fact that d'Aulnoy tended to privilege modern genres was an indirect way for her to situate herself within the camp of the moderns.

In the second section of the book, Jasmin provides a thematic treatment of class, monarchy, and gender in d'Aulnoy's tales. She concludes that the tales communicate an aristocratic and precious ideology that was critical of both monarchy and masculine power. I felt the section gave a somewhat superficial treatment of these issues and could have been enriched by engaging, for instance, Lewis Seifert's argument, put forth in Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France (1996), that the fairy-tale vogue of the 1690s emerged in part as a defense of mondain or aristocratic culture, which had come under attack in the latter part of the century. Also useful would have been a reference to Adrienne Zuerner's study of monarchy in d'Aulnoy's tales, which appeared in the collection...