Fairy Tales, Pt. 4 Madame d’Aulnoy Coins the Term “contés de fees”(fairy tales)
As best I can tell, Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness[1] d’Aulnoy (1652-1705) led a wild life.
At the age of 13, she was married to the Baron d’Aulnoy, who was a “freethinker,”[2] a gambler, and thirty years her senior. Three years and three children later, her husband was accused of treason. The accusations were proved to be false and his accusers were executed. There was speculation that she and her mother were involved in the plot against d’Aulnoy as a way of getting rid of a dissolute and possibly abusive husband.[3] A warrant was issued for their arrest. Madame d’Aulnoy escaped through a window and hid in a church. Her mother fled to England.
Madame d’Aulnoy spent the next twenty years traveling throughout Europe, occasionally making brief stops in Paris. Other than the fact that she had three more children, little is known of her life during this period. She later claimed she spent the time traveling in England, Holland, and Spain. Some believe she worked as a secret agent for King Louis XIV..
In 1685, Madame D’Aulnoy returned to Paris for good. Once re-established in Parisian society she enjoyed a successful career as an author, and hosted one of the most popular salons of the period. She published a popular novel and three pseudo-memoirs about her travels in England and Spain. But she was best known for her fairy tales, a term she invented. The tales were written for adults in a conversational style that reflected the salon culture of the day and featured strong female characters. (No waiting around to be rescued by a prince–for Madame d’Aulnoy or her heroines!) They don’t always end happily ever after
She often read her fairy tales at her salon before they were published. Her guests followed her lead, reciting fairy tales as part of the evening’s entertainment and occasionally coming in fairy tale costumes.
Altogether, she published twenty-five fairy tales in two collections, some of which were included by Andrew and Nora Lang in their popular fairy tale collections in the late nineteenth century.[4] Neither Madame d’Aulnoy nor her stories are remembered today, but she created a taste for fairy tales in the French court in which Charles Perrault and Antoine Galland could build. Perhaps making her the genre’s fairy godmother?
[1] Or perhaps comtesse. The records is not clear. We’ll just call her Madame d’Aulnoy going forward.
[2] A term that can be taken many ways. In this case, I assume it means not adhering to church doctrine. Or not.
[3] I could not find details about his eventual death in 1700.
[4] The Langs published twelve collections between 1889 and 1913, known as the Coloured Fairy Books. As happens all too often , Nora was not credited for the books on the cover or title page even though Andrew acknowledged in the preface of The Lilac Fairy Book, which appeared rather late in the series, that “The fairy books are almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who haas translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish Catalan and other languages.” Grrr.
Overwhelmed and Very Grateful
I keep looking for another vintage Thanksgiving postcard, but most of them have creepy children wielding axes and heading toward apprehensive turkeys.
As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel in Miami. I spent yesterday at the Miami Book Fair, where I spoke about Sigrid Schultz, signed books, attended a couple of panels, navigated crowds, and listened to some wonderful music. It’s been exciting, humbling, nerve-wracking, and exhausting.[1] In a couple of hours I will catch a plane back to Chicago, where I’ll have two days at home before My Own True Love and I head to the Missouri Ozarks for Thanksgiving with my family.
In some ways, this is emblematic of my last year: lots of travel, lots of chances to talk about The Dragon from Chicago (on line and in real life), lots of stepping outside my comfort zone. Even though I occasionally have to remind myself just how lucky I am, I am grateful for the opportunities. (And the fact that people have showed up at my events. Every author I know lives in fear of the event where no one comes.)
I say it every year, but I am also so very grateful for those of you who read History in the Margins, week after week. You send me comments and suggestions. You ask hard questions. You share my posts with your friends. Without you, I would be talking to myself.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all.Here’s to another year of exploring history together.
[1] I did not go to the parties on Friday and Saturday night, or take advantage of any of the other opportunities to meet and mingle with my fellow authors. Which would have been a good thing, but I just didn’t have the juice. This kind of thing is difficult for those of us who are very introverted and more than a little shy.
_______________________
Speaking of sending me ideas, I am currently issuing invitations to my annual Women’s History Month series of mini-interviews. I have some great people on board already, but I need more. If you “do” women’s history in any format, or know someone who does, or have an idea of someone you would love to see in the series, drop me a line. I’ve interviewed academics, biographers, podcasters, historical novelists, tour guides, poets, and even a textile artist, but would be happy to talk to people who explore women’s history through music, puppet shows, graphic novels, other visual arts, interpretive dance….
From the Archives: Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic (aka Fairy Tales, Pt. 3)
While I was checking the archives to be sure that I hadn’t previously written about Antoine Galland’s Thousand and One Nights, I ran across this review from 2012, which led me to pull Stranger Magic off the shelves and dive in.
***
I’m fascinated by the Arabian Nights. By the stories themselves and the way they fit together into their complicated frame story. By their transformation from Arabic street tales to a established position in the Western canon. By their echoes in Western culture, from the Romantic poets to Disney.
So I was delighted to get a chance to review historian and critic Marina Warner’s new work on the tales.
Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights is a multi-faceted study of the popular tales of wonder and magic known as the Arabian Nights.
Warner discusses the tales in the Arabian Nights with the interdisciplinary approach that she used to good effect in her earlier study of Western fairy tales, From the Beast to the Blonde. She examines them through the lenses of literary criticism, history, folklore studies, feminist theory and popular culture. She pays particular attention to the history of the Arabian Nights in the west, from the reception of the first translation from the Arabic by Antoine Galland in the eighteenth century through its influence in works as distinct as Mozart’s operas and the Harry Potter books.
Not assuming that readers will have the same familiarity with “The Prince of the Black Islands” as they do with “Sleeping Beauty”, Warner retells fifteen tales before she unravels them into their constituent themes, symbols and assumptions. She moves easily from the Biblical story of King Solomon to magic carpets, from the reputation of Egypt as the home of ancient magic to Sir Isaac Newton’s alchemical experiments, and from the wealth of the Islamic world in the twelve century to post-Reformation anxiety about Catholic religious practices.
Warner succeeds once again in balancing entertainment with erudition. Like her earlier works, Stranger Magic is accessible enough for the general reader and rich enough to keep a specialist scribbling in the margins.