The Meaning of Fairy Tale Within the Evolution of Culture
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The Meaning of Fairy Tale within the Evolution of Culture Jack Zipes Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011, pp. 221-243 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v025/25.2.zipes.html Access provided by Wayne State University (25 Feb 2014 15:04 GMT) 113282_02_221-243_r2ri.qxp:113282_02_221-243_r2ri 11/30/11 10:27 AM Page 221 J ACK Z IPES 1 2 3 4 5 The Meaning of Fairy Tale within 6 the Evolution of Culture 7 8 9 10 Fairy Tale signifies belief in the supernatural, not the suspension of belief. 11 We all believe in the extra-ordinary of Once Upon a Time. We need to be- 12 lieve. We breathe through our tales. 13 —Vincenzo di Kastiaux 14 15 16 17 Think of a gigantic whale soaring through the ocean and swallowing each and 18 every fish of any size that comes across its path. The marvelous and majestic 19 whale had once lived on land 54 million years ago and had been tiny. Part of 20 a group of marine mammals now known as cetaceans, the land whale eventu- 21 ally came to depend on other fish for its subsistence and to thrive on the boun- 22 tiful richness of the ocean. To grow and survive, it constantly adapted to its 23 changing environment. The fairy tale is no different. 24 The wondrous fairy tale emanated from a wide variety of tiny tales thou- 25 sands of years ago that were widespread throughout the world and continue to 26 exist in unique ways under different environmental conditions. The form and 27 contents of the fairy tale were not exactly what they are today, for as a simple, 28 imaginative oral tale that contained magical and miraculous elements and was 29 related to the belief systems, values, rites, and experiences of pagan peoples, the 30 fairy tale, also known as the wonder or magic tale, underwent numerous trans- 31 formations before the invention of print led to the production of fixed texts and 32 conventions of telling and reading. But even then the fairy tale refused to be 33 dominated by print and continued to be altered and diffused throughout the 34 world by word of mouth up to the present. That is, it shaped and was shaped 35 by the interaction of orality and print and other technological mediations and 36 innovations, such as painting, photography, radio, film, and so on. In particu- 37 lar, technological inventions enabled it to expand in various cultural domains, 38 39 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2011), pp. 221–243. Copyright © 2011 by 40 S Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. 41 R 221 1st Pass Pages 113282_02_221-243_r2ri.qxp:113282_02_221-243_r2ri 11/30/11 10:27 AM Page 222 JACK ZIPES 1 even on the Internet. Like the whale, the fairy tale adapted itself and was trans- 2 formed by common nonliterate people and by upper-class literate people from 3 a simple brief tale with vital information; it grew, became enormous, and dis- 4 seminated information that contributed to the cultural evolution of specific 5 groups. In fact, it continues to grow and embraces, if not swallows, all types of 6 genres, art forms, and cultural institutions; and it adjusts itself to new environ- 7 ments through the human disposition to re-create relevant narratives and 8 through technologies that make its diffusion easier and more effective. The only 9 difference between the whale and the fairy tale is that the tale is not alive and 10 does not propel itself. It needs humans—and yet at times it does seem as 11 though a vibrant fairy tale can attract listeners and readers and latch on to their 12 brains and become a living memetic force in cultural evolution. 13 Almost all endeavors by scholars to define the fairy tale as a genre have 14 failed. Their failure is predictable because the genre is so volatile and fluid. As 15 Donald Haase has remarked in one of the more cogent descriptions of the 16 struggle by intellectuals to pin down the fairy tale: 17 Despite its currency and apparent simplicity, the term “fairy tale” re- 18 sists a universally accepted or universally satisfying definition. For 19 some, the term denotes a specific narrative form with easily identified 20 characteristics, but for others it suggests not a singular genre but an 21 umbrella category under which a variety of other forms may be 22 grouped. Definitions of “fairy tale” often tend to include a litany of 23 characteristics to account for the fact the term has been applied to 24 stories as diverse as “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel 25 and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Lucky Hans,” “Bluebeard,” 26 and “Henny-Penny.” (1: 322) 27 28 The difficulty in defining the fairy tale stems from the fact that storytellers 29 and writers never used the term fairy tale until Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy 30 coined it in 1697 when she published her first collection of tales. She never 31 wrote a word about why she used the term. Yet it was and is highly significant 32 that she chose to call her stories contes de fées, literally “tales about fairies.”1 33 The very first English translation of d’Aulnoy’s collection Les contes des fées 34 (1697–1698) was published as Tales of the Fairies in 1707,2 but it was not until 35 1750 that the term fairy tale came into common English usage.3 Since this 36 term—fairy tale/conte de fées—has become so troublesome for scholars and 37 does not do justice in English to the “revolutionary” implications of its inven- 38 tor, d’Aulnoy, in this essay I explore its historical significance in greater depth 39 by discussing the role of the fairies in d’Aulnoy’s works, especially in “The Isle S 40 of Happiness,” “The Ram,” and “The Green Serpent.” In the process I also dis- R 41 cuss how fairies were part of a long oral and literary tradition in French culture 222 1st Pass Pages 113282_02_221-243_r2ri.qxp:113282_02_221-243_r2ri 11/30/11 10:27 AM Page 223 FAIRY TALE AND THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE and how d’Aulnoy’s employment of fairies in her tales owes a debt to Greek 1 and Roman myths, the opera, theatrical spectacles, debates about the role of 2 women in French society, and French folklore. At the conclusion of the essay I 3 explore how a cultural evolutionary approach to the rise of French fairy tales 4 may help us understand how and why the elusive term fairy tale has spread as 5 a meme and become so whale-like. 6 7 8 How the Term Conte de Fées Became Viral 9 The most striking feature of the most important foundational period of the lit- 10 erary fairy tale in Europe, 1690 to 1710, was the domination of fairies in the 11 French texts. Up until this point, the literary fairy tale was not considered a 12 genre and did not have a name. It was simply a conte, cunto, cuento, skazka, 13 story, märchen, and so on. No writer labeled his or her tale a fairy tale in print 14 until d’Aulnoy created the term. If we recall, the title of Giovan Francesco 15 Straparola’s collection of stories, which contained a few fairy tales, was Pleasant 16 Nights or Le piacevoli notti (1550/1553), and Giambattista Basile called his 17 book, written in Neapolitan dialect, The Tale of Tales or Lo cunto de li cunti 18 (1634). The Italians were among the early writers of vernacular fairy tales in 19 print, and there were some fairies or fate in the Italian tales, but they were not 20 singled out for attention and did not play the prominent role that they were 21 assigned by the French seventeenth-century women writers, also known as 22 conteuses and salonnières. 23 When Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy included the fairy tale “The Isle of Happi- 24 ness” in her novel Histoire d’Hippolyte, comte de Duglas in 1690, she was not 25 aware that she was about to set a trend in France that became epidemic among 26 her acquaintances and other readers of her class. Though the nymphs in this 27 tale were not called fairies, their resemblance was clear. Moreover, the princess 28 whom they served was definitely a fairy, and the paradisiacal island represented 29 an ideal fairy realm or utopia. (It should be noted that after Adolph, the protag- 30 onist, foolishly abandons this island, he is murdered by Father Time and hap- 31 piness is lost forever. D’Aulnoy’s tales thereafter mark what is lacking in the 32 mundane world and depict how fairies must intervene to compensate for 33 human foibles.) Within six years after the publication of “The Isle of Happi- 34 ness,” the literary fairy tale, which heretofore had been a simple oral folktale or 35 a printed conte or cunto, became the talk of the literary salons, or what had been 36 the talk in these salons now came to print. Orality was, as numerous French 37 critics have recently demonstrated, inseparable from print fairy tales and de- 38 fined them in many diverse ways.4 D’Aulnoy promoted the cause of fairy tales 39 in the Parisian salons, where she recited them. Storytelling, riddles, and other 40 S parlor and salon games had been common in Italy, Spain, England, and France 41 R 223 1st Pass Pages 113282_02_221-243_r2ri.qxp:113282_02_221-243_r2ri 11/30/11 10:27 AM Page 224 JACK ZIPES 1 since the sixteenth century.5 D’Aulnoy’s tales were part of a creative explosion 2 that became contagious and featured powerful and precocious fairies in Marie- 3 Jeanne Lhéritier’s Oeuvres meslées (1696); Catherine Bernard’s Inès de Cordoue 4 (1696), a novel that includes “Les enchantements de l’eloquence” and “Riquet à 5 la houppe”; Charlotte Rose Caumont de La Force’s Les contes des contes (1698); 6 Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697); Mme d’Aulnoy’s Les 7 contes des fées, 4 vols.