There are no fairy tales in the anthology, Fairy Tales Framed. The primary material consists of comments on the nature, purpose, or value of fictional or fantastic narrative. It comes from Italy (that is, from the area that corresponds to modern Italy) from 1350 (Boccaccio) through 1780, and from France from Perrault (1695) through Galland (1712), and is newly translated. Many of the favorable comments come from prefaces to books with fairy tales in them; others, particularly the unfavorable comments, come from other publications and letters. Each selection has an introduction that explains something about its author and its importance. Each set of material, from Italy and from France, has a general introduction, and so does the whole book. Thus, the reader has the opportunity to meet twenty-two historical literary figures who were writers of, or who were otherwise interested in, fairy tales, to learn something about them, and to hear directly what they had to say. The purpose of this anthology is to compensate for the fact that modern translations of these early fairy tales do not include such metacontent.
Boccaccio never wrote fairy tales, but his works—for tales, the Decameron in particular—were hugely influential. Later writers including Straparola and Basile (as well as Chaucer) copied the format of entertaining tales narrated by characters during a realistic occasion. In the excerpt here, from his Genealogy of Pagan Gods, Boccaccio described four types of fiction defined according to their various relationships to truth (fables, poetry, epic, and “the fourth type”). He ascribed to each of them a value in accord with the various reputations of their authors (i.e. Aesop; Ovid; Virgil and Homer; and “crazy old women,” 16-17). This strikes a keynote for the rest of the book and for fairy tale studies in general: how can a lie be valuable? Is it enough that fictions provoke delight, or should they also reflect some underlying truths or lessons?
Prefaces to the Pleasant Nights of Straparola urged the original readers to “disregard the author’s humble and lowly style” and not to blame him for his lack of invention (44). A letter from Andrea Calmo invited a friend on a fishing excursion, with games and stories for extra entertainment. A fictional conversation written by Girolamo Bargagli referred to a similar occasion, and further characterized a novella (in contrast to a favola) as having an “uncommon verisimilitude,” relating an improbable but possible event (59). The rest of the excerpts in the Italian section refer to various editions of Basile’s Pentamerone; they either defended the merits of its tales or castigated it for their indecencies.
In France, debates about the value of tales that stray from realism, and the differences among genres (fable, récit, conte, romance), continued. Excerpts from D’Aulnoy’s works consist of two novellas in the course of each of which several fairy tales are recounted (the fairy tales are represented here by their titles only). Several writers made interesting comments on their sources and their intentions and on the responses they expected from their audience or readers. Lhéritier said she was retelling a tale from the troubadours (135), and Murat envisioned her colleagues as modern fairies themselves, counterparts of the beneficent ancient fairies (203-4). The Abbé de Villiers, in contrast, had a low opinion of tales because they lack wit, are unoriginal, and do not instruct. Finally, Galland recommended the tales in the Thousand and One Nights because they not only “astonish and hold attention” but also inform Westerners about foreign customs and habits (226).
The debate about genre terminology, which can easily become tedious and is usually unproductive, is still, of course, going on. The denomination “fairy tale studies,” which implies that its practitioners are not as interested in other sorts of tales, stimulates repeated attempts at definitions. Undoubtedly, the French contes des fées are fairy tales, but, elsewhere and in both earlier and later time periods, seemingly similar tales turn out to be different in so many respects that the phrase quickly becomes meaningless. Indeed, the Anglophone notion of fairy tales seems to be defined by sentiment rather than by criteria and thus is extraordinarily subjective. Apart from the problematic nature of this phrase, the whole title, Fairy Tales Framed, is ambiguous: are the fairy tales art displayed inside a frame, or have they been, if not quite unjustly incriminated, perhaps slandered, distorted, or unfairly denounced?
Except for those from Boccaccio and perhaps Perrault, most of the excerpts come from figures that, at least until recently, have been considered minor. Nevertheless, people of high importance have also addressed the question of the value of fictional and fantastic narratives (e.g., myths and fables). The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860, another anthology, is in many ways a grander version of Fairy Tales Framed. The earlier volume has an identical format but it is much larger. Many of the authors excerpted are major philosophers, and the ancient myths they confronted had considerable cultural significance in ancient times as well as during the years from 1680 to 1860.
Nine of the writers featured in Fairy Tales Framed appear again in The Teller’s Tale, which contains compact accounts of the lives of fourteen writers, from Straparola to Hans Christian Andersen, written by different contributors. Tale in the title evidently means biography, not the tales the tellers told (or rather, wrote). Three chapters describe times and places that were particularly important for the recent literary tradition of fairy tales in Europe: Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, France in the seventeenth century, and Germany in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
Ruth Bottigheimer begins with a description of “Europe’s first fairy tales” and their author, Straparola. Readers familiar with her book, Fairy Godfather, will recognize the ingenious strategy of using generalities and even the absence of evidence to provide fascinating but hypothetical details pertaining to his life (even his name, which means “garrulous,” is fictional). In the next chapter, Nancy Canepa’s account of Basile’s life is, in contrast, based on historical evidence.
The best known of the French writers in the years around 1700 is Perrault (biography here by Yvette Saupé and Jean-Pierre Collinet). In his role as public relations man for Louis XIV, he set off the “quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns” in which people took sides on the issue of the relative merits of the past and the present. While Perrault credited some of his tales to Mother Goose, the conteuses—D’Aulnoy (by Nadine Jasmin), Bernard, Lhéritier, and De la Force (these three by Lewis Seifert), and Murat (by Genevieve Patard)—called their tales fairy tales. Of the women, De la Force and Murat were involved in infamous scandals, and D’Aulnoy conspired to murder her husband. There is relatively little historical evidence for the other two women. Chronologically, Galland (chapter by Manuel Couvreur) comes next, with his translation of the Thousand and One Nights, followed by another French woman, Leprince de Beaumont, a governess with a pedagogical bent whose accepted biography has been revised in the light of recently discovered evidence.
The focus then shifts to Germany, beginning with various women Romantic writers and Benedikte Naubert in particular (by Shawn Jarvis). That there is no equivalent section for males (e.g., Wieland, Musäus, Tieck, Hoffmann; see Fink 1966) is quite a glaring omission. Then, the Grimms’ academic orientation (chapter by Donald Hettinga) contrasts with the more journalistic, popular work of Bechstein (Ruth Bottigheimer). The final chapter is on Hans Christian Andersen (by Peer Soerensen).
Each biography is furnished with endnotes and bibliography including the subject’s works in original and modern editions, English translations, and secondary literature. This format is particularly useful to readers who wish to learn more. Given the presence of so many writers in these two books, it is disappointing not to find in either one a chapter on Carlo Gozzi, a great champion of fantasy, whose ten fairy-tale dramas from the 1760s were much appreciated by the German Romantics. These plays are still produced, some more or less as Gozzi wrote them and others in the form of operas (the most popular being Puccini’s Turandot).
The present interest in these fairy-tale writers is part of a trend in literary studies in which authors previously considered minor, and overlooked works in general, are being unearthed and examined, along with historical details of common life and of the lives of particular people in historical periods. This trend will surely contribute to our understanding of the historical development of traditional tales—mostly minor works, many of them anonymous. American academic fairy tale studies, which began in the 1980s, originally focused on the Grimms (whose Märchen are by no means all fairy tales in any strict sense) and then worked its way back in time. Soon it will probably embrace the Middle Ages.
Works cited:
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. 2002. Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Feldman, Burton, and Robert D. Richardson. 1972. The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.
Fink, Gonthier-Louis. 1966. Naissance et Apogée du Conte Merveilleux en Allemagne, 1740-1800. (Annales Littéraires de l’Université de Besançon, volume 80.) Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
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[Review length: 1522 words • Review posted on August 29, 2013]