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France: Centuries
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For writers and readers of late 17thâ€century France, both the fairy tale's mythic origin and its aesthetic served a particular ideological function. The archetypal storytelling of lowerâ€class women assimilated the popular oral tradition into élite literary practice so as to obscure the reality of hierarchical social relations. At the same time, the seemingly fantastical aesthetic of the contes de fées none the less served to celebrate the values of the selfâ€contained social elite of late 17thâ€century France, values which are readily visible in characters and descriptions. Only in tales by Perrault and Eustache Le Noble are the protagonists of this first vogue not royalty, and the other writers frequently incorporate the discovery of noble birth as a plot motif. Throughout these fairy tales, lengthy and tedious descriptions of luxurious settings recall (sometimes directly) the French court at Versailles. Given that French aristocrats and the court were experiencing severe economic difficulties at the time, both the protagonists and the settings of these fairy tales suggest that the genre was at least in part a form of compensation or escape from the pressures of the real.
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The borders of modern France are approximately the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was conquered for Rome by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC, and the Gauls eventually adopted Roman speech (Latin, from which the French language evolved) and Roman culture. Christianity took root in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and became so firmly established by the fourth and fifth centuries that St. Jerome wrote that Gaul was the only region "free from heresy".
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In spite of their instant success, the Mother Goose Tales did not inspire direct imitations among writers of fairy tales in 17th†and 18thâ€century France. Contrary to what is often asserted, the other writers were not following Perrault's but a different and parallel path. To be sure, like Perrault's, many of their tales can be traced (probably indirectly) to folkloric sources; yet, they are ... far more indebted to motifs from novels and make more prominent use of magic characters and settings. While Perrault's collection was recognized from the beginning as being exceptional, if not inimitable, many tales by his contemporaries were no less popular well into the 19th century. Almost all of the fairy tales published between 1690 and 1715 were republished and anthologized later in the 18th century, but d'Aulnoy's tales came the closest to matching the popularity of the Mother Goose Tales. None the less, Perrault's and d'Aulnoy's fairy tales were popular for different reasons.
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Centuries