Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690–1715
Nostalgic Utopias

A 1996 study of the genre of the literary fairy tale in late seventeenth-century France.

Lewis C. Seifert (Author)

9780521550055, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 November 1996

292 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.52 kg

"Seifert provides us with a solid and learned study of French fairy tale in its beginnings. He has much to tell us, and he shows us that we have much to learn." Modern Philology

Between 1690 and 1715, well over one hundred literary fairy tales appeared in France, two-thirds of them written by women. This 1996 book explores why fashionable adults were attracted to this new literary genre and, integrating socio-historical, structuralist, and post-structuralist approaches, considers how it became a medium for reconceiving literary and historical discourses of sexuality and gender. The first part of the book considers how the marvellous is used to legitimize the genre, to exemplify theories of 'modern' culture, and to reaffirm women's potential as writers. The second part examines how specific groups of tales both reiterate and unsettle late seventeenth-century discourses of love, masculinity and femininity through conventions such as the romantic quest, the marriage closure, chivalric heroes and good and evil fairies.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Marvelous Storytelling: 1. Marvelous realities: toward an understanding of the merveilleux
2. Reading (and) the ironies of the marvelous
3. The marvelous in context: the place of the contes de fées in late seventeenth-century France
Part II. Marvelous Desires: 4. Quests for love: visions of sexuality
5. (De)mystifications of masculinity: fictios of transcendence
6. Imagining femininity: binarity and beyond
Afterword
Notes, Selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]