Les Contes des Fées review Ï eBook or Kindle ePUB

> Les Contes des Fées review Ï eBook or Kindle ePUB

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Les Contes des Fées review Ï eBook or Kindle ePUB ¸ CONTENTS Gracieuse and Percinet Fair Goldilocks The Blue Bird Prince Ariel Princess Mayblossom Princess Rosette The Golden Branch The Bee and the Orange Tree The Good Little Mouse The Ram Finette Cendron Fortune Babiole The Yellow Dwarf Green Serpent Princess Carpillon The BenevBenevolent Frog The Hind in the Wood The White Cat Belle Belle The Pigeon and the Dove Princess Belle Etoile Prince Marcassin The Dolphin. This is it This is the single best fairy tale collection I've ever read The twenty four stories presented in this book are beautifully written with great imagery despite the lack of illustrations interesting characters and allusions to classical mythology This was also the very first fairy tale collection to bear the name fairy tales Madame d'Aulnoy's title for it was Contes de fees a term she coinedThe stories are not recognizable to most modern audiences Some people might remember The Blue Bird and The White Cat for their appearances in Tchaikovsky's ballet version of Sleeping Beauty but the others are obscure At one time these stories were commonplace in children's fairy tale collections but sadly few newer collections have them most of the ones that do are reprints of older collections And unlike most of today's fairy tales these stories actually DO feature fairiesI also praise this collection because it features several stories with active female protagonists My favorite fairy tale of all The Bee and the Orange Tree is one of those stories Surprisingly the literary fairy tales of France were mostly written by women and most of them are pretty female friendly People tend to think of fairy tales as a misogynistic genre written exclusively by men which this collection disproves It also gives a lot of insight to what fairy tales were like before the Brothers GrimmThis collection is definitely not appropriate for children as the stories are uite violent and two of them even feature unhappy endings I would recommend it for teenagers and adults as well as older kids who can handle the darker content I'd definitely recommend it to older girls who are fond of princesses but find Disney Princess and Barbie movies too childish The language is very complicated though definitely easier to read than Tolkien keep in mind that the stories were originally intended for an upper class audience d'Aulnoy was a baroness While French literary fairy tales are my favorite fairy tales most of them don't have the universal appeal that the Brothers Grimms' stories have In other words this collection probably isn't for everyoneActual copies of this book are kinda hard to find but the entire collection is available on SurLaLune Fairy Tales

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And the Orange Tree The Good Little Mouse The Ram Finette Cendron Fortune Babiole The Yellow Dwarf Green Serpent Princess Carpillon The. Read only Belle Belle available online at SurLaLune Long for an old tale but worth it A youngest daughter of an Earl disguises herself as a knight and serves her king bravely well until the wicked sister of the king has the knight exposed and well read it yourself to find out This tale also has the motif of being fairy gifted not only the knight but his companions have special talents for example being able to eat mountains of bread or drink lakes dryNow of course many of us know many of the Madame's other tales If you look for her name at SurLaLune or Project Gutenberg you may be surprised to learn what we actually owe her without necessarily realizing it I won't spoil the fun for you by listing titles though

Marie-Catherine dAulnoy ↠ 3 read

Les Contes des FéesCONTENTS Gracieuse and Percinet Fair Goldilocks The Blue Bird Prince Ariel Princess Mayblossom Princess Rosette The Golden Branch The Bee. This edition contains 22 literarysalon fairy tales by Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy other editions may have 3 for a total of 25 tales selected from the multi volume edition of her entire production that are out in French The length of these stories varies some are short story length and others as long as a novelette and a novella and the introduction explains that all of them are the most famous ones some of which were already published in individual editions in English illustrations included but at least a couple were never translated before that I'm aware of until this edition the translator of which is named as J R Planché the same who translated my unabridged English edition of Madame de Villeneuve's Beauty and the Beast and that I consider an excellent excellent translator after having originally read these tales d'Aulnoy's and Villeneuve's in the original French These tales are public domain and available online but not all are by this translator so I recommend you look out for Planché when searching a copy for yourself digital or printOf the fairy tales my favourites wereTHE RAMA Beauty and the Beast type of tale with an unexpected and shocking twist I'd already read this one before but it was nice to revisit itFINETTE CENDRONThis was a curious rendition of Cinderella the Perrault version this one came a few years afterwards with a significant chunk of Hänsel and Gretel mixed in Probably my favourite version of this taleTHE YELLOW DWARFIt gave some Rumpelstiltskin vibes but it's not the same plot nor similar beyond the vague similarity at the start This was also the tale that taught me that for all her glittering worlds ultra beautiful and ultra handsome happy forever and ever tales Madame d'Aulnoy doesn't hesitate to punch you in the guts out of nowhereTHE GREEN SERPENTThis one I'd already read before as well and still keeps up well It's the Countess' retelling of Cupid Psyche with a bit of a Sleeping Beauty in the Wood flavour I'm sensing Madame must've loved Perrault's tales a lot she takes a fair bit of inspiration from him at the beginning and a twist involving the heroine that differentiates it significantly from the Greek myth This is also probably the only one in which the protagonist doesn't have a highly flattering name like in all the other tales because she's called Laidronette from laide ugly in FrenchTHE HIND IN THE WOODSomewhat similar thematically speaking to Brother and Sister with a wee sprinkling of The Singing Springing Lark not the plot itself just one element You could also spot the Diana Actaeon myth if you make an effort to see the connection though it's not exactly obvious It's the simplest of my favourites and sweetTHE WHITE CATMaybe the most subtly sultry of the tales which is to be expected given that cats are the stars This one's also a Beauty and the Beast type of tale which I'm also beginning to suspect might've been one of the Countess' favourite themes if not the favourite seeing how recurrent it is in all her stories BELLE BELLE OR THE CHEVALIER FORTUNÉBy far the most original tale in this book in my opinion It reminds me strongly of Hans Christian Andersen's The Three Wishes because of the theme but it's an entirely new plot of Aulnoy's own making It has a knight errant as protagonist who happens to be a true knight without being a knight You'll have to read to know I'm not spoiling itI'd award these seven stories 5 stars each and 45 stars overall for the entire anthology This should be your pick if you want to be introduced to salon fairy tales from 17th and 18th century Europe that aren't by Perrault or the Grimms; Madame d'Aulnoy can be melodramatic at times but she's a much better storyteller than the Countess of Ségur and other précieuses