French Tales

Love is a key ingredient in the stereotypical fairy-tale ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. This romantic formula continues to influence contemporary ideas about love and marriage, but it ignores the history of love as an emotion that shapes and is shaped by hierarchies of power including gender, class, education, and social status. This interdisciplinary study questions the idealization of love as the ultimate happy ending by showing how the conteuses, the women writers who dominated the first French fairy-tale vogue in the 1690s, used the fairy-tale genre to critique the power dynamics of courtship and marriage. Their tales do not sit comfortably in the fairy-tale canon as they explore the good, the bad, and the ugly effects of love and marriage on the lives of their heroines. Bronwyn Reddan argues that the conteuses' scripts for love emphasize the importance of gender in determining the "right" way to love in seventeenth-century France. Their version of fairy-tale love is historical and contingent rather than universal and timeless. This conversation about love compels revision of the happily-ever-after narrative and offers incisive commentary on the gendered scripts for the performance of love in courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century France.

French Tales is a collection of twenty-two translated stories associated with the twenty-two regions of France. The book, which includes both well-known and little-known writers, for example Prosper Mérimée in the nineteenth century and Anne-Marie Garat in the twenty-first, affords readers a panoramic view of French society and culture, reflecting, as it does, its variety and diversity from Brittany to Corsica. Writers include among others Maupassant, Zola, Annie Saumont, Marcel Aymé, Didier Daeninckx and Stephane Émond. The subject-matter ranges from stories about marriage, the First World War and homelessness to house-buying, childhood and honour-killing. Following the model of Paris Tales, also translated by Helen Constantine, each story is illustrated with a striking photograph and there is a map indicating the position of the French regions. There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of Further Reading. The book will appeal to people who love travelling or are armchair travellers, as much as to those who love France and things French.

This 1920 collection includes five timeless French fairy tales written by Comtesse De Segur and illustrated by the 19 year old Virginia Sterrett.

French Fairy Tales: Essays on a Major Literary Tradition provides a unique opportunity to revisit and deepen our appreciation and understanding of French fairy tales, many of which we can recall with a sense of wonder from childhood. These carefully selected essays, written by a variety of distinguished scholars, introduce and analyze the original versions of many French fairy tales published in France between 1691 and 1715. These range from the works of Charles Perrault (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty), to Madame Leprince de Beaumont (Beauty and the Beast), to the radically different tales of Madame d'Aulnoy (The Blue Bird, The White Cat). This anthology includes essays that analyze the complexities and importance of these tales, as well as a bibliography and filmography that give readers a chance to explore the genre further. The English translations of several French fairy tales by Jack Zipes serve as an excellent teaching tool. Readers of French Fairy Tales will enjoy the stories and be challenged by the recent and provocative scholarship on this major literary tradition that continues to influence literature and film today.

Includes the tales, with commentary and discussion on the variants of each tale.

Especially for grown-ups, this is a selection of subversive, satirical, and sophisticated fairy tales full of polished wit and prose.

This book presents the best folk tales of France, which have never appeared in this printed translation before. What makes them especially valuable as folk work is that they were recorded as narrated by French families, the way they have been told from generation to generation. The tales in this book do not have one common author--these are French folk stories composed by French people over many centuries. The book includes more than 100 illustrations. This book contains the following 47 French folk tales:1. The Small People. 2. The Soup Whip.3. The Clever Girl.4. Léon the Dog and Praline the Cat.5. The Straw and the Tar.6. The Giant Frog.7. Where's the Second Turkey?8. Jean and Jacques Catch the Moon.9. The Old Man and the Tree.10. Sea of Tulips.11. How Many Legs Does the Goose Have?12. Pierre and His Dog.13. The Dragon from Tarascon.14. The King's Lace.15. Ball of Wool.16. Why the Rabbit Does Not Talk.17. The Large Stove.18. The Lost Compote.19. Three Artful Sons.20. The Careless Wife.21. The Cherry Tree.22. Two Old Soldiers.23. Bernique! Bernaque!24. How the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun.25. The Boys of Mayenne.26. The Dog and the Moon.27. An Incident in the Bois de Boulogne.28. The Bird Named It's Mine.29. The Little Bird.30. The Eagle and the Cock.31. The Maid and the Princess.32. The Mean Joker.33. The Poor Widow, Her Son, and Cabécou the Goat.34. The Pilot from Boulogne.35. Life before Birth.36. Captain La Ramée's Adventures.37. How Sheep Crossed the River.38. Vivienne and the Sun.39. Jean the Fool.40. The Beautiful Princess, the Brave Kitten, and the Dragon.41. The King's Counsellor.42. How the Caterpillar Turned into a Butterfly.43. The Bear and the Fox.44. The Fox and the Tit.45. The Hedgehog and the Chestnut Shell.46. Biron.47. Jean the Thumbling, the Wolf, and the Robbers.