Illustrating Classical French Fairy Tales*

MEDIEVALISM AND MAGIC: ILLUSTRATING CLASSICAL FRENCH FAIRY TALES* Daphne M. Hoogenboezem ‘Once upon a time’: the emblematic opening phrase immediately places fairy tales in a distant but indefinite past. Judging from numer- ous modern illustrated editions for children, however, fairy tales seem to be set against a medieval background. Motifs that are associated with fairy tale books as well as medieval times include Gothic cas- tles with drawbridges, jousting knights and princesses locked up in towers. The setting seems relevant for some well-known tales, which, according to Jan Ziolkowski’s recent study, go back to the medieval period.1 Romantic authors in particular reevaluated popular culture and the Middle Ages. This would explain the medieval setting used in many nineteenth-century tales, including several tales from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales, 1812–1815). The connection between the classical French tales and the medieval is conveyed not only in the text, but also in the illustrations of Romantic artists like Gustave Doré and George Cruik- shank, who managed to impress the medievalist fairy tale setting firmly on our minds through their monumental fairy tale editions packed with crenellated towers and arched windows. However, these nineteenth-century illustrators did not start the medievalist fairy tale imagery, and their chiefly medieval visual interpreta- tion corresponds only partly to the text of the French tales, in which a historical setting is described that is far more ambiguous. Like many fairy tale authors of his day, Charles Perrault gave his fairy tales a medi - eval touch by referring to old towers, tournaments and knights. The fairy tale authors thus contributed, according to Jean-Paul Sermain, * Fairy tale pictures tell tales of their own, but I could not have begun to put them into words without the help and encouragement of Els C.S. Jongeneel (University of Groningen) and Paul J. Smith (University of Leiden). Many thanks to both of them. 1 Ziolkowski J., Fairy Tales from Before the Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonder- ful Lies (Michigan: 2007). 250 daphne m. hoogenboezem to spreading a favourable image of the ‘Gothic period’.2 Many tales, though, also contain intertextual references to Antiquity and seventeenth-century France. We find mythological characters such as Cupid and Psyche, for example, in the tales of the female author Marie-Cath- erine d’Aulnoy. References to the seventeenth century include names of Parisian stores3 and allusions to figures such as the Sun King. At the start of the French fairy tale vogue, in the seventeenth century, illustrations were an uncommon element in fairy tale books, and it is significant that Perrault added them to his manuscript. These illustrations are the starting point for three centuries of fairy tale imagery. Although illustration is sometimes used to raise the literary status of a genre, Perrault’s deliberately naïve images seem to underline the connection with oral popular culture. They contrast with the prevail- ing classicist doctrine as they sometimes challenge the classical rule of unity and contain medievalist aspects, some of which seem to imi- tate medieval imagery that had continued to be used in chapbooks. Perrault’s contemporaries rarely added illustrations to their tales, but D’Aulnoy did. Although Perrault’s and D’Aulnoy’s tales were both illustrated with copper engravings by Antoine Clouzier, a comparison of the illustrations used in the books of these two famous representa- tives of the French fairy tale vogue will reveal striking differences in style and composition that seem to reflect their different opinions on the definition of the new genre. When compared with English and Dutch editions, it turns out that the use of medievalist aspects varied, depending not only on the author but on the country and period as well. I will start, though, with a brief introduction dealing with the first editions of Perrault’s and D’Aulnoy’s fairy tales in France. 2 Sermain J.-P., “Le conte de fées classique et le Moyen Age (1690–1712)”, in Damian-Grint P. (ed.), Medievalism and ‘manière gothique’ in Enlightenment France (Oxford: 2006) 84. 3 Barchilon J., Le conte merveilleux français (1690–1790) (Paris: 1975) 46, indicates references to the jewellery shop Dautel (in “Le Prince Lutin”), to the confectioner Lecoq (in “La Princesse Printanière”) and to the butcher’s shop Guerbois (in “Le Mouton”), which existed both in the fairyland D’Aulnoy described in her tales and in Paris, according to Le livre commode des adresses de Paris pour l’année 1692. Perrault’s tales contain such references too. J.-P. Collinet, in Perrault C., Contes (Paris: 1981) 337 (note 14), mentions Cinderella’s sisters who buy their ‘mouches’ (artificial beauty spots aristocratic ladies used to wear to emphasize their fair complexion) at “La bonne faiseuse”, a shop located in the Rue Saint Denis..

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