Féeries: Études sur le conte merveilleux XVIIe–XIXe siècle 5, Le Rire des conteurs (review)

In studying the late seventeenth-century French fairy tale as both a literary and sociocultural phenomenon that lasted well into the eighteenth century, over the last some thirty years various scholars have suggested that the particular use of the marvelous reveals a certain irony on the part of the authors. If the French fairy-tale writers seem to have directed this irony especially at the marvelous, the genre's use of the invraisemblable (improbable), its frequently naïve tone, and its association with folklore were all subject to a great deal of irony.

Many authors of literary fairy tales indeed sought to distance themselves by means of irony from the ways peasant storytellers used supernatural features. The pretext that their tales merely served an educational and moral purpose also functioned ironically in that the authors both imitated and manipulated purportedly naïve folktales in order to promote their modernist conception of literature. It seems, at least in certain passages, as though some authors made fun of the marvelous features at play in their narratives, presumably composed and read in irony. In his study Mme d'Aulnoy et le rire des fées (Mme. d'Aulnoy and the Laughter of the Fairies) (Paris: Kimé, 2001), Jean Mainil was one of the first to analyze the narratives and the genre itself as ironic fairy-tale writing. Interestingly enough, several other scholars have recently also taken a keen interest in the tales' comic and ironic dimensions.

After publishing four previous issues on topics as varied as "The Collection" (1/2003), "The Oriental Tales" (2/2004–2005), "Politics of the Tale" (3/2006), and "The Tale [as] the Stage" (4/2006), the journal Féeries dedicated its 2008 issue to examining the "Laughter of the Storytellers." This issue comprises eight articles investigating the role that irony, humor, parody, satire, and comedy assumed in the writing and performing of tales.

In his article "Le sourire des fées" (The Smile of the Fairies), Jean Mainil shows how already in the first French literary fairy tale, L'île de la félicité (The Island of Happiness), published in 1690, Mme. d'Aulnoy endeavored to amuse her readers by referring to Cervantes's Don Quixote (a novel most of her readers probably knew, since it had been published earlier the same century) while making fun of the protagonists. The ways that Mme. d'Aulnoy makes calculated and ironic use of Cervantes's novel attest to the author's tendency to distance herself from her characters by means of irony.

Jean-Paul Sermain asks the question "Dans quel sens Les Mille et Une Nuits et les féeries classiques sont-elles comiques?" (In What Way Are the Arabian Nights and the Classical [i.e., seventeenth-century] Fairy Tales Comic?) In his article, Sermain relates the tales' comic features to the underlying narrative and semiotic logic of each story. In this context, he examines how the authors play on the discrepancies between realism and fantasy while associating the comic and ironic effects with the bizarre, unsettling, disquieting, or even fantastic elements at play in each tale.

Manuel Couvreur's article "Du Sourire à la Mosure: L'humour dans la traduction des Mille et une nuits par Antoine Galland" (From the Smile to the Bite: Humor in Antoine Galland's Translation of the Arabian Nights) deals with the humoristic features of both the original tale and the translation. Couvreur points out that, having only an incomplete manuscript at his disposal, Galland had to resort to his powers of invention to complete the last volumes. Couvreur's thorough analysis demonstrates how, while faithfully preserving the humoristic elements in translating the work's first part, Galland's translation even reinforces the humor in the second part of Arabian Nights.

In her article "Féeries à la foire" (Fairy Tales [on stage] at the Fair), Nathalie Rizzoni examines...