Fairy tales started with the Grimms...I think not!
Most of you would have heard of the Grimms, or Hans Christian Anderson and would mistakenly believe them to be the creators of fairy tales, and, rightly, they have made a significant contribution to
fairy tales which influence us, still today. But the more I delve into the research and following the trails of the origins of fairy tales, the closer I get to some amazing people who pre-dated them by hundreds of years.
Stories change. They change with the audience, with the context, with the time. In modern times they are changing gender, changing point of view, and including voices who have been long absent in our stories. That’s awesome. We need that. But this blog isn’t about that. That’s not my place.
But what this IS about is finding the origins of stories - both folk and fairy tale and some myths and legends and exploring where they came from, their authors and how they were originally intended. I am currently studying my MA at Deakin University in Australia with a thesis exploring the works of French author Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force. You may have heard about her in Kate Forsyth’s historical fiction, Bitter Greens. But my interest lies in her collection of fairy tales Les Contes des Contes which was published first in 1697, then again in 1707 (four stories) and the final collection of eight stories after her death in 1725:
My interest began after working on Salonline: Webseries of the French Salonnières and book with the Australian Fairy Tale Society, which you can see on the links above. The project took about 18 months and in that time I became fascinated by this woman and her peers and their ability to create a space for intelligent women to discuss ideas without being under scrutiny by the king, Louis XIV. But it tapped into something deeper in me, a longing for knowledge about forgotten people, forgotten stories. It captured all the things I love in one project: history, literature, fairy tales, feminism, France. Although I’ve been actively studying her and her work for two years now, I still feel there is so much more to learn. I am hand-translating a 1980 biography about her, but somehow doing it myself brings me closer to her, and her work.
Les Contes des Contes contains Persinette, an early version of Rapunzel, but her other stories are just as wonderful. Over the next few months, I’ll be exploring these stories (and some of her novels and poetry with a few side explorations into other interesting things) in a deep dive into this fascinating woman from the seventeenth century. My thesis is on the implied sexuality in her works, and while some of my posts will contain extracts about these, they are blushworthy, but not explicit pornography.
I guess, more than anything, this Substack project is about the things I discover which I find interesting, and I hope you do too. Please feel free to leave a comment or share with your networks.
~ Alyssa