ABOUT THIS BOOK

This is a superb book on all levels. The translations of the tales are excellent. The research is impeccable. The introduction and notes are highly informative. Most important, Lewis Seifert and Domna Stanton have focused on unusual fairy tales that have never been translated before and are seminal for understanding the development of the literary fairy tale as genre. French women writers played a central role in the institutionalization of a literary genre in the French civilizing process that had huge ramifications in opera, theater, vaudeville, music, and film. Moreover, their tales influenced other writers of fairy tales in Europe. This book does an honor to their creative efforts and provides the basis for further research on the development of European fairy tales.
—Jack Zipes
Professor of German, Emeritus, University of Minnesota

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Lewis C. Seifert is professor of French Studies at Brown University. A specialist of seventeenth–century French literature, he has also worked extensively on folk– and fairy tales. He is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (2009). He is currently pursuing projects on friendship in early modern France and on folktale traditions in the French–speaking Americas. Domna C. Stanton, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY, is the co–editor of the volume on Gabrielle Suchon for The Other Voice: Chicago series, and the author of Women Writ, Women Writing: Gendered Discourse and Differences in Seventeenth–Century France, forthcoming, 2011. Her next book, The Nation as its Others, examines nation building during the reign of Louis XIV. Stanton was the editor of PMLA 1992–1997 and President of the Modern Language Association in 2005.

REVIEWS

"Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth–Century French Women Writers is a superb book on all levels. The translations of the tales are excellent. The research is impeccable. The introduction and notes are highly informative. Most important, Lewis Seifert and Domna Stanton have focused on unusual fairy tales that have never been translated before and are seminal for understanding the development of the literary fairy tale as genre. French women writers played a central role in the institutionalization of a literary genre in the French civilizing process that had huge ramifications in opera, theater, vaudeville, music, and film. Moreover, their tales influenced other writers of fairy tales in Europe. This book does an honor to their creative efforts and provides the basis for further research on the development of European fairy tales."

— Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
List of Illustrations x
I. Volume Editors’ Introduction 1
II. Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century Conteuses
Catherine Bernard: Introduction 47
Prince Rosebush 51
Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon: Introduction 61
Marmoisan 66
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, baronne d’Aulnoy:
Introduction 97
Princess Little Carp 103
The Doe in the Woods 151
Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force: Introduction 189
The Enchanter 194
Green and Blue 213
Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat:
Introduction 231
Little Eel 236
Wasted Effort 270
III. Critical Texts on the Conte de fées
Introduction 281
Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon, Letter to
Madame D.G.*** (1695) 286
Pierre de Villiers, Conversations on Fairy Tales and Other
Contemporary Works, To Protect against Bad Taste (1699),
from the Second Conversation 294
Appendix 311
Bibliography 315
Index 337