Le conte de fées en images: le rôle de l'ilustration chez Perrault et Madame d'Aulnoy (1695-1800)

With the start of the vogue of the fairy tale (conte de fées) in France in the last decade of the seventeenth century, an intertextual debate on the definition of the new genre set off, in which Charles Perrault and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, the pioneers of the new genre, played an important role. Besides the (para)texts of the various fairy tale collections, illustrations were used as visual arguments in this debate. In his famous collection Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (Tales of Mother Goose, 1695), Perrault used the text as well as the illustrations to create the impression of an orally transmitted folktale for children, an old manuscript, or a peasant book. Whereas Perrault used both text and illustration to associate his tales with folk culture, his contemporary, the salonnière Madame d’Aulnoy, emphasized the literary character of her fairy tales. The French fairy tale vogue soon became an international fashion. Numerous editions of the fairy tale collections by Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy were published in both the Netherlands and England. Textual adaptations, new prefaces and altered illustrations provide valuable insights into the international reception of the French fairy tales. In her dissertation, Daphne Hoogenboezem analyses the text and the illustrations of over 130 French, Dutch and English editions of the fairy tales by Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy. She offers a panorama of the debate and the evolution of the new genre from the beginning of the fairy tale vogue until the end of the eighteenth century. During this period of time the fairy tale transformed from a literary genre for adults into a story for children. Illustrations played a central role in this definition process.