Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words

16. Charles Perrault, Tales of My Mother Goose (1695)

125 16 Charles Perrault, Tales of My Mother Goose (1695) The opening pages of Perrault’s 1695 manuscript Contes de ma Mère L’Oye (Tales of My Mother Goose) consisted of a dedicatory letter to Mademoiselle, Élisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans (1676–1744). There Perrault wrote that “a Child took pleasure in composing the Tales in this collection.” This statement may be construed in several ways. One could see it as a reference to puerescantia, a seventeenth-century notion concerning the maintenance of the childlike innocence beyond childhood itself. Another might be that a real child, namely, Perrault’s son, the eighteen-year-old Pierre Darmancour, had composed the tale collection, a view supported by the fact that the subsequent license to print Histoires, ou Contes du Temps passé had been issued to “Sir P. Darmancour” who had in turn transferred the license to Perrault’s printer-publisher, Claude Barbin. Little else supports Pierre Darmancour’s authorship, however. Perrault’s further declaration that all of the tales “contain a very wise Lesson” stressed the importance of a positive moral lesson, a fundamental part of Perrault’s position in the Debate between the Ancients and the Moderns. In the dedicatory letter, Perrault referred to the tales that followed as Contes, Récits, or bagatelles,1 using the term Histoires to denote the kinds of stories that humble parents make up to instruct their children in the social practices and beliefs they needed to live in this world. 1. In the French original, Perrault capitalized Histoire, Conte, Nature, Lessons, and Heaven. It can be no accident that Perrault left bagatelles uncapitalized, thus indicating its minor nature. 126 / Fairy Tales Framed Dedicatory Letter to Mademoiselle (1695)2 Mademoiselle, No-one will find it odd that a child took pleasure in composing the tales (contes) in this collection, but you might wonder that he dared to send them to you. Yet, Mademoiselle, whatever difference there may be between the childish simplicity of these stories (récits) and the extraordinary constellations of knowledge that nature and education have brought together in you, I am not as worthy of blame as I may at first appear if you consider that these tales almost always contain a very wise lesson, which becomes more or less apparent according to the sharpness of the listener’s perception. And, in any case, nothing indicates the vast expanse of an intellect better than the ability to raise itself to the greatest things and lower itself to the simplest. It is also true that these tales (contes) take us inside the most humble households of ordinary people where the worthy desire to teach children inspires the invention of nonsensical stories (histoires) appropriate for these children who have not yet developed the capacity to reason. But who better to understand how commoners live than those chosen by heaven to lead them? The desire for this knowledge has driven heroes, and heroes of your race, as far as huts and cabins to see firsthand what nobles and monarchs must understand to be well educated. In any case, Mademoiselle, could I have chosen a better person to make sense of fairy tale nonsense (ce que la Fable a d’incroyable)? Never did a fairy of past time give a young creature more gifts, and gifts more sublime, than you got from nature. I remain with profound respect, Mademoiselle, of Your Royal Highness, the most humble and very devoted servant, P.P.3 2. The 1695 dedication appears in Charles Perrault, Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose: The Dedication Manuscript of 1695 Reproduced in Collotype Facsimile with Introduction and Critical Text, Vol. 2., ed. and intro. Jacques Barchilon (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1956). The 1697 dedicatory letter was unpaged, printed on leaves á ij(r) -[á vi](v) of the 1697 edition. It maintains most, but not all of the wording of the 1695 dedicatory letter in the manuscript presentation copy to “Mademoiselle” and is reproduced in Contes merveilleux: Perrault, Fénelon, Mailly, Préchac, Choisy et anonymes, ed. Tony Gheeraert (Paris: Champion, 2005), 183–184. 3. The initials “P. P.” stand for Pierre Perrault. By 1697 he had adopted the surname Darmancour. ...