Enchanted Eloquence : Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-century French Women Writers

Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011. In late seventeenth-century France, the conte de fées, or fairy tale, became a fashionable new genre. Although literary history has privileged Charles Perrault's Mother Goose Tales, it was sophisticated and ironic women who not only inaugurated the vogue but also produced sixty-eight of the one hundred and twelve tales published from 1690 to 1709. These conteuses experimented with various forms of fiction and celebrated women's writing, all the while criticizing the oppression of marriage and the social strictures placed upon women. This collection presents eight fairy tales (most never before translated into English) by the most prominent women authors: Catherine Bernard, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, Charlotte-Rose de La Force, Marie-Jeanne L'Hériter de Villandon, and Henriette-Julie de Murat. Also included are two critical texts: one praising the conte de fées and the other denouncing it.