Fairy Tales
French fairy tales are particularly known by their literary rather than their folk, oral variants. Perrault derived almost all his tales from folk sources, but rewrote them for the upper-class audience, removing rustic elements. The précieuses rewrote them even more extensively for their own interests. Collection of folk tales as such only began about 1860, but was fruitful for the next decades.
Read more about this topic: French Folklore
Famous quotes related to fairy tales:
“What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“And in their fairy tales
The warty giant and witch
Get sealed in doorless jails
And the match-girl strikes it rich.”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)