Fairytale History in Early Modern Europe and its Late Adaptation for a Child Audience

Patricia EICHEL-LOJKINE Le Mans University French Department

Tel Aviv University December 2011

My topic here is the genesis of fairy tales in Europe and their late specialization as tales for children (from the XVIIIth century on). I will deal with the French fairy tales whose development is related to Italian predecessors (Straparola, Basile) as well as to the folk tradition. The « fashion for fairies » (« la mode des fées ») that took place in the late XVIIth century Parisian « Salons » has been well studied (T. Di Scanno, E. Storer, R. Robert, A. Viala…). And lately, the Prefaces, Epistles, liminary or conclusive texts concerning the French fairy tales have been all published, so we can get a complete view of the contemporary theorical context. For instance, we happen to know how the taste for marvellous tales is articulated with the preceding fashion for historical short stories (« nouvelles historiques et galantes ») thanks to Catherine Bernard ; in « Ines de Cordoue », a short story including two fairy tales (« Le Prince Rosier » and « Riquet à la houppe »), a character gives the two rules of composing fairy tales : adventures must be against likelihood (« que les aventures fussent toujours contre la vraisemblance ») but the feelings must always be natural (« et les sentiments toujours naturels »), like in the successful short stories of the time (cf. Nouvelles galantes, ed. M. Escola, p. 393). For my part, I will focus on Perrault’s and on his niece’s (Mlle L’Héritier) discourses and I will discuss the meaning of the topics and of the stereotypes one can find in their dissertations on fairy tales, especially the topic of the oral tradition and the image of a nurse telling a story to a young person. 2

A) « The fashion for fairies » and Old Wives’Tales The word tale is used for different types of communication, some oral and some written. It is also used, although in a rather loose manner, to refer to a stock of narratives in variable form, that can be adapted according to circumstances or audiences. Finally those that use the word often associate it with childhood. All such preconceived ideas, that have developed gradually from the Renaissance to modern times, are in great need of clarification.

As an opening to his book, some twenty years ago, Yvan Loskoutoff stated in weighed terms that « It was nursery tales, oral tales, that gave birth to, or at least a pretext for, the fashion of fairy tales ». But the question remains of how the classical fairy tale is articulated upon the oral tale. What part is played by the mythic figure of the nurse, coupled with that of the child, in the intellectual construction of the genre ? What texts of the Renaissance evoke this figure from Apuleius, before Perrault makes the well-known use of it in his Preface of 1695, and what use do they make of it ? Are the old wives’tales a starting point or a pretext for Perrault ? What part does he, at the same time, assign to the written sources and how does he perceive their combination with the oral tales ? Does the question arise in the same terms for his Italian predecessors, Straparola and Basile ?

1. A break from and an articulation with the oral tradition Among the decisive factors for the genesis of fairy tales in France, we dispose of the large stock of oral tales for adults, the less extensive stock of oral tales for children, but also of mediaeval texts, of largely circulated printed texts such as chapbooks and the series of the Italian and French editions of Straparola’s collection. Yet Perrault and Mlle L’Héritier situate their tales only in the continuity of, in « a straight line » from, the nursery tales (for Perrault) or of the Gallic fables of the Provençal troubadours (for Mlle L’Héritier). And this has given birth to the fiction of an authentic oral literature in strict parallel to the written literature. For Mlle L’Héritier, « it is surprising that these tales, as incredible as they may be, were handed to us from age to age, without any one taking the trouble to write 3 them out » (il est étonnant que « ces contes, tout incroyables qu’ils sont, soient venus d’âge en âge jusqu’à nous, sans qu’on se soit donné le soin de les écrire »). Although Mme de Murat, Perrault, Mlle L’Héritier and others authors of the time knew very well Straparola’s collection of short stories and tales (translated by Louveau and Larivey in the XVIth century), they continued to convey the myth of French tales inspired by an authentic oral tradition – and some, like Mlle L’Héritier, added also an aristocratic contempt when judging this tradition in the name of « bienseance » (« Je vois que ces contes se sont remplis d’impureté en passant par la bouche du petit peuple, de même qu’une eau pure se charge toujours d’ordures en passant par un canal sale. Si les gens du peuple sont simples, ils sont grossiers aussi ; ils ne savent pas ce que c’est que la bienséance »). At the same time, because of the very nature of their productions, those valuable authors have made it impossible to consider the oral and the literary tale as equivalent, in spite of their own statements to the contrary. It is obvious that Perrault’s eight fairy tales in prose (1697) are far from the oral tradition (Sleeping Beauty ; (Little) Red Riding Hood ; Blue-beard ; Puss in Boots, or The Master Cat ; The Fairy ; Cinderilla, now Cinderella ; Riquet of the Tuft ; Hop o' My Thumb, or Little Thumb).

To scholars the myth of a purely oral transmission of the tales until the printed collections of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries has appeared less and less plausible as new studies kept appearing on prefigurations of the tales in mediaeval literature and on the written sources for Perrault’s and even Grimm’s marvellous tales. As R. Schenda aptly reminds us, many motifs of the European literary tales come from the inexhaustible mine of mediaeval epics, of hagiographical legends and of exempla, of Renaissance short stories, of humanistic compilations, of baroque preaching, of almanacs and common booklets. And he adds that we have read far too little of that huge mass of literature to have any certainty that any « oral » tradition (that may have been recently collected) was not already printed, read or recited and transmitted through written texts in the past. E. Yassif comes to a similar conclusion in the field of the Jewish folktale, and warns us that it would be a mistake to postulate the existence of an « authentic » folk literature that would be strictly oral. 4

The literary marvellous tale is therefore born of a break from and an analogy with the folk tale. As the first modern authors of such tales, particularly Basile and Perrault, play upon a confusion between these two forms, it will be necessary to start with a clarification of a few misunderstandings. In an oral context, adventures that seem worthy of being saved from oblivion eventually form the matter of a story (an epic, a devotional or a legendary tale) that is taken hold of by a mouth, not by a narrative voice that issues from a text. A bard or a story-teller produces a ritualized performance, in a predetermined space, using the resources of both articulate and inarticulate language, as well as bodily gestures, according to his needs. As far as the oral tale is more specifically concerned, in the course of those performances, the narrative proper is encased within brief introductory and conclusive formulae, coming from a limited traditional stock, that are specific of the oral tale. They are for the most part unchanging formulae, common to various areas, that are artifices of presentation preparing the audience to receive the tale or pointing out the necessity to return to everyday preoccupations, at the end of the performance. Of course those formulae are not the responsibility of a first-person narrator, even when they include the pronoun « I » (as in « I know of a tale »). At this level, such introductory formulae as « much is truth and much is lies » or « I know of a tale »…, even though they have a different meaning, still have a similar function; and of course the delectable conclusive formula « I throw my cap over the mills » that one finds in Mme de Sévigné does not figure any personal off-handedness of the narrator but is a ready-made sentence « that was commonly used to close the tales that were told to children, and that means I don’t know how to finish the tale » (M. Valière). Within the tale the story unfolds itself as if it were the events themselves that spoke : « Once upon a time there were a prince and a princess who had an only daughter ; and it came to pass that the princess died… ». This excludes any possible intervention of a critical narrative voice, whether wondering or indignant, whatever the nature of the reported events – even when it is a king asking for the hand of his beautiful daughter (in Peau d’Ane : The Maid in an Ass's Coat, Donkey Skin). The narrative unfolds at a brisk pace, alternating pure narration and dialogues which may be given quite an important place. 5

When it is transposed into the realm of fiction, in Boccaccio’s time, this oral situation becomes codified stageing. One character from the framing narrative, the « king » or « queen » of the day, tells a diverting story belonging either to the register of truth-to-life or to that of the fabulous. In that story the characters are known by a name, a nickname, such as « Pietro Pazzo », or by an attribute, as for « the Little Red Riding-Hood », or even only by their function, « lord », « vassal », « king’s daughter »… At the level of the framing story, the character that is « king » or « queen » of the day is assigned a greater or a lesser presence, a more or a less distinctive voice. He or she addresses a fictive audience, that may eventually be invited to join in comments upon the story. In other words this device opens up a space of enunciation for speech exchanges between the internal narrator and narratees at the meta-narrative level. The voice that takes the « fable » (the narrative content) in charge, is the sweet voice of noble damsels drawn by lots in Straparola ; or the harsh voice of old women that the narrator-author lends his spirits and exuberance to, in Basile ; or again the slightly ironical, amused, voice of a drawing- room story-teller, which quotes vulgar material without taking itself seriously, in Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy. A further distinction appears at this level between a tale and a short story. Unlike the short story, the tale traces back the origin of the story it tells to an external, distant, anonymous, legendary source. At the back of the « king» or « queen » of the day’s voice is pointed an unknown, far-away source which is by all means distinct from the narrator-author. Thus it is that in Perrault particularly, « the technique of a double narrator » becomes « the secret behind the tone of the Tales », as R. Zuber notes. This technique produces a delightful splitting up between the nurse’s rough voice and the narrator-author’s gallant, well-behaved, mocking voice.

Therefore to venture in the territory of the literary marvellous tale presupposes that one first examines the initial break from the folktale, which eventually makes it possible to consider the articulation between them. The act of writing definitely assigns to another dimension the plurality of performances that had till then given life to the oral tale and that still gives it life in its own parallel world. But the articulation of this new genre with the tradition of the folktale, however artificial it 6 may seem, in fact springs from an ideological necessity, at a time when the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns was most rife. There was a need to ground oneself upon a properly French tradition, distinct from the classical heritage. Both Perrault and Mlle L’Héritier confess to a taste for folk stories, which is manifested, in Mother Goose’s Tales, by a prose of a « simplicity » that contrasts with the style of contemporary authors. Yet both of them belong to a cultural sphere in which the language of the common people has no right of place, in which ordinary language can be admitted only once it has been filtered and purified. Faithful to this policy of « retrenchment » (Y. Delègue), the Dictionary of the Academy (1694) prides itself in having fixed a language « retrenched from the common language », a decent modern language intelligible to everyone ( meaning the gentility). Given this context, Perrault’s attitude to his sources from folktales is necessarily ambivalent. The two antithetical poles of the academic language and the language of the common people must somehow come to a draw in order to produce such a formula as « Pull the latch and the bobbin will fall » (« tire la chevillette et la bobinette cherra » = even at that time, cherra was an archaic form, the verb choir was archaic in the future tense). The phrase is at the same time a bold inclusion when faced with the academic norm and a stylization of the so-called « authentic » language used by the old wives.

2. The building of an archetype a) The old wife and the child, from The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods to Perrault’s Preface : An ambivalent feeling towards the « Old Wives’tales » can be felt in Perrault’s first Preface. And this could very well come from Boccaccio who had devoted the XIVth book of his latin treatise on The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods to a defence and illustration of Fables. Indeed the two texts allude to a famous episode from Apuleius’romance, the episode of the old woman comforting Carithea, a young girl that had been abducted by brigands, by telling her the story of Eros and Psyche. Yet, in the very same pages, in the course of his reflexion on the four types of fable, Boccaccio evinced an undecisive attitude towards the old wives’tales. 7

At first it seems, he considers that a fable of the fourth type « contains no truth, either superficial or profound » ; « it is a delirious of old women’s invention » that has no interest whatever, from an aesthetic or a moral point of view. The old wives’tales would therefore stand outside the field of the fable, in which truth eventually finds its way through the thinner or thicker cloak of fiction. About the folktales he considers it impossible to say, as one does for fables, that they are « of such importance that from the very first line the ignorant take pleasure in them and the minds of the learned are on the look-out for hidden meanings ; one and the same reading provides both pleasure and profit. » Yet, in the next chapter, the tales find themselves reintegrated within the field of the meaningful fabulous, in terms that seem to have left their trace in Perrault :

Let me add that there is not a little old wife, however foolish she may be, that does not know, when, at a winter evening’s wake by a homely fireside, she imagines and tells the fables of Orcus, the fairies, the lamias etc. (for of such are their inventions often made), there is not one of them, I say, that does not know that what she is telling is a pretext for some significance in proportion to the modest strength of her intelligence, and there is nothing to be laughed at in all that. Thanks to the which she tries to frighten the little ones, to give pleasure to the young maidens, to divert the old, and by all means to show the power of Fortune.

(« Disons plus : il n’est pas de petite vieille, si folle soit-elle, qui, lorsque autour du foyer domestique dans les veillées d’hiver elle imagine et raconte les fables d’Orcus, des Fées, des Lamies etc. (c’est ce dont souvent sont faites leurs inventions), il n’en est pas une qui ne sache que ce qu’elle raconte est prétexte à quelque signification proportionnée aux forces modestes de son intelligence, et il n’y a rien là qui prête à rire. Grâce à quoi elle cherche à faire peur aux tout petits, à donner du plaisir aux fillettes, à distraire les vieillards, à montrer en tout cas la puissance de Fortune », trans. Y. Delègue)

Even though those words and themes are to be found everywhere under the humanists’pens, we are still left wondering about the similarities between Boccaccio’s and Perrault’s texts. The reader enters Perrault’s Preface through the metaphor of the fable as enfolding a moral truth, which leads to the notion of pleasure-and-profit, and he will eventually return to the dual image of the « solid truths » that are easily swallowed when « enfolded (cloaked) in pleasant stories » at the end of his disquisition. Boccaccio’s text said no other. And, as one proceeds with 8 one’s reading, one comes across the reference to « the Fable of Psyche », « an old wife’s tale /…/ that Apuleius makes an old woman tell a young one that had been abducted by highwaymen », which once more takes us back to Boccaccio. One then finds the themes of the all-powerfulness of Providence and of the fickleness of Fortune, which are central themes for tales in Perrault, as well as they are for Boccaccio. Then again, the old wives’inventions for small children, young girls and old people (according to Boccaccio’s triad) are re-focussed on the very young and become with Perrault the « tales that our forefathers have invented for their Children », that loving Fathers and Mothers try to endear to their Children by making them « proportionate » — not any longer to the narrating nurse’s powers — but « to the weakness of their age ». Finally, the image of winter wakes when old women were in charge of entertaining young girls reappears in Mlle L’Héritier’s imagined memory, which is quoted at the end of the Preface : /…/ when by the fire my Nurse or my Good old Friend/ Would keep/…/ my mind enchanted » (« quand auprès du feu ma Nourrice ou ma Mie / Tenaient […] mon esprit enchanté »). From this parallel with Boccaccio’s discourse – whether there was contamination or not – one can draw a double observation. On the one hand, Perrault pursues in a critical way the humanist reflexion on the fables and their teaching vertues. On the other hand, he operates a strategic refocussing upon childhood that will have heavy consequences upon the genre.

b) Looking back upon a humanist malaise : In his pedagogical fight against the influence of the nurses, Erasmus had contrasted the fables of the ancient poets and moralists (that were to be spread without moderation) with the folk stories that came from ignorant old dotards. Such a distinctive hierarchy is patent in the following passage, with its positive appreciation of Aesop’s fables that are judged to be both agreable and useful and its negative opinion of the « foolish songs », « old dotards’fables » and « women’s frivolous mottoes » (in italics) :

Is there anything more joyful than the fables of the poets, the which by their will to please, offer such blandishment to children’s ears that they are of great usefulness even to those more advanced in age ? /…/ What will a child more willingly hear 9

than the apologues and fables of Aesop, the which offer the sovereign precepts of philosophy through laughter and joyfulness /…/ ? What great degree and advancement of learning would we have achieved if, in stead of those storks’ tales, that are not only frivolous but also noxious, we had without delay learned those things that we have presently recited ?

(« Qu’est-il plus joyeux que les fables des poètes, lesquelles par un attrait de volonté, blandissent tellement aux oreilles des enfants que même aux âgés, elles apportent grande utilité ? […] Qu’ouïra plus volontiers l’enfant que les apologues et fables d’Esope, lesquelles baillent par ris et joyeusetés les souverains préceptes de philosophie […] ? Quel grand degré et avancement eussions-nous fait en savoir si, en lieu de ces contes de cigogne, non seulement frivoles mais aussi nuisants, nous eussions incontinent appris les choses que nous avons maintenant récitées ? ». Trans. Pierre Saliat)

Just in proportion as Aesop’s philosophical fables are appreciated together with the use of parables and animal symbolism in the oriental sapiential tradition, so are the nurses’tales considered to be without head or tail and despised by the humanists and the educated. However one also understands, as one reads this passage, that it is for the most part merely wishful thinking for the humanist pedagogues. In real life, the children are allowed to hear nursery tales, while Aesop’s fables, even when they have been translated from the Greek into Latin in order to reach larger audiences, still sagely repose in closed books. When one proceeds further into the XVIth century, the distribution of the fabulous stories between useful apologues and frivolous tales remains unchanged, but the first group is broadened so as to admit the oriental tales in addition to Aesop. A good example of that is the adaptation of the first book of the Kalila and Dimna saga by Firenzuola, in his Discorsi degli animali. Larivey gave a translation of it into French in 1577 (Deux livres de filosofie fabuleuse / Two Books of Fabulous Philosophy). The French edition is prefaced with a liminary sonnet by Guillaume Lebreton who takes great care to situate the text within the antique and noble tradition of the Phrygian poet. These oriental fables that make animals speak use a method that is similar to Aesop’s. Their aim is instruction and wisdom, like his, and they are for all ages (from the hot-headed young man to the staid old man) ; One 10 should beware of confusing them with frivolous nursery tales that may also make animals speak (in italics) :

A sonnet to the Lord Larivey, about his apologues from the Italian

To give animals not endowed with reason The use of reason, sense and speech Is not of an idle man and a foolish T o tell children by the fire the invention ; The staid old man, grey-headed and cold And the hot-headed youth in the whig of a fool Would learn a deal, did they go to school With Aesop that was revered of old.

(« Donner aux animaux despourveuz de raison L’usage de raison, le sens et la parolle, N’est pas d’un homme oisif l’invention frivole Pour conter aux enfans pres du fumeux tison : Le vieillard plus rassis desja froid et grison Et l’age plus bouillant à la perruque fole Peuvent beaucoup apprendre en frequentant l’escole D’Esope reveré dés l’antique saison »)

Comparatively, Boccaccio’s position towards the Old Wives’tales appeared to be more sober, less extreme. The fables in Aesop’s manner belonged to the first kind of fables, in which « the rind » that covers a kernel of truth « is itself totally devoid of truth». These fictions with an examplary value had a recognized usefulness, which was to awake a child’s mind. The tales told by old crones by the fireside seemed more despicable, but they were not entirely devoid of meaning if they conveyed an undercurrent of reference to human frailty and to the presence of superior forces escaping our control and conducting the course of things. Thus does Perrault somehow deepen the double gesture of rupture and articulation with the Old Wives’tales initiated by Boccaccio. This allows him to revisit with a critical eye the Erasmian gesture of drastic division between the fables of Aesop or his followers and tales of the Stork (« contes de cigogne »). 11

c) Old crones amusing little children, an archetype used as part of a strategy : In Basile’s Tale of Tales, subtitled The Entertainment of Little Children, the ten deformed storytellers assembled by Prince Tadeo in order to satisfy the pressing desire for stories of his pregnant wife are also old crones (Zeza, Cecca, Menaca …). Their task is to « tell her a tale apiece day after day, of those tales that old crones usually tell for the entertainment of small children. » When Zeza’s turn comes to speak, to open the Second Day’s performance, she first alludes to the stories that one of her own grand-dams used to tell her when she was a child : « I did no more than overturn the old trunks of my brain and search the remotest corners of my memory, in order to choose, from the tales that this good lady Chiarella Vusciolo, my uncle’s grand-dam, loved to tell, /…/ those that have seemed the aptest to be distilled day after day. » Why should a book that was clearly meant for literary-minded adults take such care to reproduce the image of old crones addressing children, at the level of the narrative frame ? The same question arises with Perrault when, in his Preface, he refers to the folk tale of « The Maid in an Ass’s Cloak /which/is told every day to children by their governesses and by their grand dams » and, in the Epistle to Mademoiselle, to « the laudable impatience to instruct children /which/ makes one imagine Stories that possess no reason at all, to accomodate with those very children that have not yet acquired any ». Indeed a large number of critical works throw light upon the intellectual changes that have made such statements possible. Let us keep in mind that Philippe Ariès has described « fondling » (« mignotage ») as a new attitude towards children that appeared in the course of the XVIth century, on the part of women, mothers or nurses, moved by « little ones » no longer seen as miniature adults or as beings whose life expectation was too insecure to warrant a rational attachment. Within his own specific perspective, which establishes a parallel between the surge of spiritual aspiration and the spectacular increase of interest for children in fairy tales by the end of the XVIIth century, Y. Loskoutoff underlines the fact that the child, that had so far been considered as incarnating the lowest state of being, the most antithetic to the divine in Berulle’s eyes for instance, has now become the center of all attentions. In this change of attitude he sees the secularized echo of a 12 sacred devotion, of a fondling a lo divino that had been spreading in the late XVIIth century. The answer to the question : « Why did the Saviour choose to be incarnated in a child ? » is no longer exclusively that of Berulle : « For the sake of humility », because childhood is the lowest, the most abject state of being ; it is also suggested, with Mme Guyon, that there is a kinship between spirituality and a form of regression towards « childish simplicity ». There is a propensity to play on the words pueri and puri, that are so close in sound, that it seems to suggest that childhood is the sweetest and purest state of being. R. Zuber also mentions this new form of sensibility among the aristocratic circles of the time by relating it to the « childish epidemic » that he thinks had been spreading in Versailles in the years 1688-1689, around Mme de Maintenon and the Abbé de Fénelon, who was the preceptor of the king’s grandson, the Duke of Burgundy (Duc de Bourgogne). As far as tales are concerned, such a context leads to a « childish stageing », which is make-believe, mere posturing : « Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy wrote neither for children nor for adults as such, but for adults that pretended to be (played at being) children ». Perrault even goes further, by actually stageing a « childish trinity » in which an audience of children witnesses the adventures of a child-hero written by a childish author. As a starting point, the child is represented as the addressee of the tales, in the prefaces as well as in the frontispice of the book in conformity with a model from the Antiquity, Apuleius, eventually revisited by the representations of the sacre conversazione depicting a mother facing a divine child. Then, as if the paternal figure of the writer taking in hand the education of his children was not enough, Perrault makes of young Pierre Perrault Darmancour himself the author of The Tales of Mother Goose in the Epistle to Mademoiselle : « It will not be deemed strange that a child should have taken pleasure in composing the Tales in this Book ». If the female authors of tales, who were more numerous than the male at the turn of the century, do not make use of this artifice as narrative framework for their own collections, it is presumably because they are deemed to be naturally closer to the childish voice. They can therefore be content, like Mme d’Aulnoy, with giving expression to this generalized fondling by certain stylistic choices, such as repetition and anaphora, childish or even silly words and titles based on nicknames, and also by such narrative 13 devices as the stageing of diminutive heroes or animal-children, like Babiole or Prince Baby Boar (in the tales « Babiole » and « Le Prince Marcassin »). But in order for this childish posture, so far limited to liminary statements and a few specific semantic contents, to become a real reorientation of the genre towards children, other factors will still be necessary, such as the development of pedagogy that will ensure an educative future for the genre. At the time however, the first consequence of this childish posture was to marginalize, in the discourse upon tales, any reference to written sources and notably to chapbooks.

3.Oral stories or stories in blue paper (in chapbooks) ? The development of chapbook literature in the early XVIIth century has been as significant a phenomenon as the telling of tales in the genesis of the French fairy tales. This development was prepared as early as the XVIth century by editors from Paris or Lyons who had turned their activity towards cheap editions. It is common knowledge that chapbook literature was born of a number of editors’ wish to recycle books that had been successful in the past as cheap books, editing them according to a threefold process : shortening the texts, reshaping them and submitting them to Christian censorship (R. Chartier). This process of adaptation, which had its equivalents in other European countries, takes into account the supposed competences and expectations of the greatest possible number of potential readers, but it also corresponds to a form of ideological hold, both educational and moral, upon them through strict control of the contents. Those books are either texts for the imagination (romances of chivalry, fairy tales, mythicized history) or normative texts of two kinds : books of devotion, for the most part, and practical treatises (advice on daily life, technical booklets or almanacs). In fact, the first « tale » by Perrault, « The Marchioness of Salusses or the Patience of Griselda, a Short Story » was first published as a separate brochure by J. B. Coignard in 1691, before it was gathered into a booklet bringing together three « tales » in verse and introduced by the Preface we have been referring to. This text is not at all the adaptation of a tale of indefinite origin, invented by our forefathers for their Children and told over again and again ever since by devoted Fathers and Mothers. It is not either a faithful translation of an Italian story of about 1350 (the 14 last story of the Decamerone), but a remake of a text published in the « Bibliothèque bleue » (Blue Library), « The Patience of Griseldis » . In his letter « To Monsieur*** on sending him Griseldis », Perrault explicitely states that he has lifted it from « its blue paper ». Thus a story that had been « abandoned by men of letters » and now lay « in the backpacks of pedlars » was being recycled in a « reverse » process, from the Blue Library to learned literature. The outcome of the process, an ample story in verse, is quite different from the « very dry and unsophisticated tale » circulated in its coat of blue paper. It is now addressed to the « Ladies of Paris », who have nothing in common with the readers of the chapbooks, a readership whose position was not unlike that of the simple shepherdess whom the Marquis de Saluces had married. All this meandering leads us to the dividing line between two types of books, the so-called learned books and the so-called common (unsophisticated) books, that are less different in content than in appearance, as well as in reception, appropriation or consumption. It does also invite us to re-consider Perrault’s Preface and appreciate the strategy consisting in quoting « Griseldis » as an example of « a short story », while masking its origin so as to by-pass the problems raised by the generalization of the archetype of the « tale » as a story « told everyday to Children by their Governesses ».

B) Pleasure and instruction : how to make the reader laugh « without giving Mother, Spouse or Confessor grounds to feel offended » When one leaves a « monistic » system of values (Fr. Lavocat) in which legend and doctrine were thought of together (in a lump, so-to-speak), it becomes necessary to insist on the moral purport of amusement and it becomes unconceivable to found an apology of fables upon the only notion of pleasure. For the amusement offered by tales to be allowed, it must from then on be granted a form of truth, be it only a practical truth, such as giving lessons of good living. The dividing line between stories fraught with or devoid of an edifying purpose, of a « significance », is nothing new, but Perrault doubles it with a second new and ideological dividing line which he draws between Ancients and Moderns. Marie de France (XIIth Century) was also attached to the « significance » of stories. 15

But she saw no difficulty in finding one in the story of the Wife of Ephese which she uses in one of her fables or « isopets » (« La veuve qui fit pendre son mari » - « The wife who made her husband hung », n°25, ed. Fr. Morvan, Fables) — whereas the very name of Petronius is enough for Perrault to consider this ancient anecdote with suspicion (in his Preface, he considers this story of a desperate widow who falls in love with a soldier whereas she is wheeping for her husband as the very archetype of the immoral tales). This re-centering upon instruction distances the French fairy tales both from the tales and amusing stories of Straparola and from the romances (or novels) that were adapted for the chapbooks, in short from the stories that aimed to please rather than to give lessons. It is therefore now necessary to convince the reader that a « lively story » can enclose a « useful moral » (Preface). This new limitation of the field of the tale is not an easy matter. For instance, Perrault, in his Preface, admits that the new genre multiplies « frivolous and bizarre » inventions, laughable adventures and unexpected changes of fortune for the greatest pleasure of his readers, both young and old. A. Jolles saw a contradiction there between the axiological vocabulary that was used to assign a pedagogical function to the genre, and this insistance upon attractive and frivolous adventures. If those stories are frivolous, the critic wonders, how can they sow seeds of good into the hearts of the young ? That is the reason why Perrault finds it necessary to compensate by insisting upon the educational purport of his tales. He takes up and adapts for children a well- worn commonplace that one can for instance find in Louis Le Caron : « We see that doctors, when they wish to present a troublesome and difficult sick person with a sour potion, are wont to disguize it with some sweet liquor » (quoted by Teresa Chevrolet, in L’Idée de Fable). Thus precepts and lessons are compared with a salutary but sour medicine that must be sweetened with the honey of fables, especially for the unprepared minds of children. For if children can do without the guarantee of antiquity, they cannot do without the guarantee of morality. And indeed in that field, the classical authors have much to do, for the matter they are heirs to — whether it comes from folk tales, mediaeval stories or oriental legends — lies a long distance from the exemplarity of the sermon and the exempla. 16

This censorship by the educated has therefore contributed to give the tales a more aristocratic turn and to free them from eroticism. In return it has allowed them to be included in the repertory of books destined to the education of children when it was gradually constituted from the XVIIth century onward. As Zohar Shavit reminds us, the development of a production of books and games answering the specific needs of children is firmly geared upon the development of a system of education in Europe in the modern age. Tales do not escape the general rule. They are supposed to serve as text-books of good behaviour in society. They are expected to familiarize children with moral values that they ingest unthinkingly as they read stories of animals and marvellous fables. It is on that condition that this literary genre can find a place at the side of such books traditionnally approved by the pedagogues (from Erasmus to Locke) as Aesop’s fables. Finally, from the XIXth century onward, there has been a convergence of factors contributing to the specialization of the tale as a genre destined to children : the polishing process of the folk matter is now over ; the integration of fables and tales into an educational perspective has now long been an established fact ; and, to crown it all, the interest of the learned for folk traditions (in the wake of Grimm, Afanassiev and other European scholars) is now beginning to reintroduce « traditional » stories to common readership. But those « traditional » stories precisely set out the artificial, studied elegance of the language of the aristocratic writers of tales such as Mme d’Aulnoy, even though her tales still made the delight of Gustave Flaubert (as C. Velay-Vallantin reminds us). But nowadays, a thorough change of paradigm is sending back to olden times the taste for beautiful language and its rhetorical ornaments. As a consequence to this recent break, all of Mme d’Aulnoy’s tales, even the best known among them such as « The Golden-Haired Maiden », have disappeared from the calalogues of editors of books for children in France. Ever since the 1960ies and 70ies, these texts have ceased to be proposed to them and have been confined to the shelves reserved for learned critical editions.

To conclude, I suggest that we briefly return to the stereotype of a child listening to an old woman, as it was established by Mlle L’Héritier among others (here in the 17

Moral lesson concluding « Marmoisan ») :

Many a time did my nurse and my dame By the embers tell and retell this beautiful tale No more did I of my own but embroider what was plain.

(« Cent fois ma nourrice et ma mie M’ont fait ce beau récit le soir près des tisons. Je n’y fais qu’ajouter un peu de broderie. »)

If our writers of tales are obviously likely to have heard tales when they were children, they must also have read a great many stories since then and made their honey out of them. As a consequence it is irrelevant to take such statements literally. Then what is their real function ? The stereotype of the grand dam telling stories to a child seems to bring together three different functions : 1.moralizing the narrative content, the figure of the grand dam answering for the morality of the stories ; 2.bypassing the person of the author : the nurse, the governess, the grand mother are not the authors of those stories ; they merely repeat them after others. The Italian story tellers (Straparola, Basile) who take their inspiration from them, together with the French writers of stories who come after them, do not vindicate the status of inventors, but merely that of scriptors ; 3.infantilizing the readers or listeners : the late XVIIth century adult reader or listener is invited to identify himself with the child that he was in the past and that the writer himself who is now addressing him also was. Indeed regression, moralization and education are the three determining factors that explain the progressive specialization of the tale as reading matter specifically destined for children.

English translation of the text and of the quotations by Monique Lojkine.

*** 18

Bibliography (selection)

* = English Titles

I-Texts *Apuleius, The Golden Ass, or Metamorphosis, at Project Gutenberg (on line). *Basile, Giambattista : Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of the Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones. Trans. and ed. by Nancy Canepa, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2007. *Boccaccio, Giovanni, Genealogy of the pagan gods, vol. I : Books I-V, ed. J. Solomon, Cambridge (Mass.)-London, Harvard University Press, 2011 (The I Tatti Renaissance library). *Erasmus, De Pueris… : A Declamation on the Subject of Early Liberal Education for Children, trans. Beert C. Verstraete, in Collected Works of Erasmus. Literary and Educational Writings 4, University of Toronto Press, 1985, vol. 26. Larivey, Pierre de (trans. of Firenzuola), Deux livres de filosophie fabuleuse, le premier prins des discours de M. Ange Firenzuola, Florentin…, Lyon, B. Rigaud, 1579. L’âge d’or du conte de fées…, Le Conte en débat, ed. J. Boch, Paris, Champion, 2007. Louveau, Jean & Larivey, Pierre de (trans. of Straparola) : Les Facetieuses Nuits de Straparole, traduites par Jean Louveau et Pierre de Larivey (ed. 1585), Paris, Paul Jannet, libraire à Paris, 1857 (Bibliothèque elzévirienne, 60), 2 vol. ; Milwood (N. Y.), Kraus reprint, 1982. Mlle L’Héritier et alii (Mlle Bernard, Mlle de La Force, Mme Durand, Mme d’Auneuil), Contes, ed. R. Robert, Paris, Champion, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, 2005. Mme d’Aulnoy, Contes des fées, ed. N. Jasmin, Paris, Champion Classiques, 2008 ; Contes nouveaux ou Les Fées à la mode, ed. N. Jasmin, Paris, Champion Classiques, 2008. Mme de Murat, Contes, ed. G. Patard, Paris, Champion, Bibliothèque des génies et des fées, 2006. 19

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Storer, Mary Elisabeth, Un épisode littéraire de la fin du XVIIe siècle. La mode des contes de fées (1685-1700), Paris, Champion, 1928. Valière, Michel, Le Conte populaire. Approche socio-anthropologique, Paris, A. Colin, 2006. Velay-Vallantin, Catherine, L’Histoire des contes, Paris, Fayard, 1992 ; « Le Conte », in Littératures, Encyclopædia Universalis, 1991, p. 318-319. Viala, Alain, La France galante, Paris, PUF, 2008. *Yassif, Eli, The Hebrew folktale : history, genre, meaning, trans. S. Teitelbaum, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999. *Ziolkowski, Jan M., Fairy Tales fron Before Fairy Tales : The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006.