fail to exploit this tendency; when you see that they are ready to listen to you, tell
them a short and pretty tale.
Author’s translation, Fénelon 1983:114Here we note a historic codification of the properties specifically attributed to tales for
children: what is involved is indeed telling ‘tales’ to children for educative and moral
purposes, but also to move a public consisting also of adult educators. This strategy was
adopted by the Counter-Reformation and was apparent in the religious works of Jean-
Baptiste de la Salle, who spoke to the mind through the emotions, and was related to
baroque aesthetics, which were still triumphant in contemporary operas and court
entertainments. Thus, the fairy from Cinderella has been transposed to the childhood
imagination from the enchantments of Circe, the sorceress. The ‘fairies’ of Charles
Perrault indicate extravagance, irregularity (baroco in Portuguese means an irregular
pearl) which is that of the marvellous in the order of classical Reason (Perrot 1991:26). All
the major writers of the period pay homage to this aesthetic. We should refer first to The
Adventures of Telemachus, the Son of Ulysses of 1699 by Fénelon (1651–1715), which
was to be published in hundreds of editions in many languages during the following
century: this didactic novel was animated by the ‘machines’ of baroque opera such as
those, for example, in Lully’s Atys (1676) and shows Venus on her chariot ascending to
the heavens. Baroque stage productions also figure in La Tour ténébreuse et les jours
lumineux (1701) by Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier de Villandon (1664–1734), Charles Perrault’s
niece, who was famous for her Les Enchantements de l’Eloquence, published in her
Oeuvres Meslées in 1696. We should also mention the publication in 1698 of several
collections: Contes nouveaux ou les Fées a la mode by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel,
baroness of Aulnoy (1650–1705), the best known stories of which are ‘The bluebird’, ‘The
white cat’ and ‘The yellow dwarf’; Contes de fées by Henriette-Julie de Castelnau-Murat
(1670–1716); and Les fées, contes des contes by Charlotte-Rose de la Force (1654–1754),
reflecting the literary jousting and the fashion which predominated in the Salons of the
time. This fashion was led towards exoticism by Antoine Galland’s translation of A
Thousand and One Nights between 1704 and 1717, and the finest flowers of the eighteenth
century were Mille et un quarts d’heure contes tartares (1723), by Thomas-Simon
Gueulette (1683–1766) and those tales published by Madame Leprince de Beaumont in
Magasin des enfants and particularly in Beauty and the Beast (1757). The fame of the
best stories was ensured during the eighteenth century by their inclusion in Cabinet des
fées which gradually grew to forty-one volumes by 1783 and their systematic use by
educators: notably by Arnaud Berquin (1747–1791), who also published plays in one of
the first magazines for children, a much admired work, L’Ami des enfants (1782–1785).
This appeared in England as The Children’s Friend from 1783. A collection of tales
translated from L’Ami des enfants was published by E.Newberry in 1787: The Looking
Glass for the Mind or Intellectual Mirror, being an elegant collection of the most delightful
little Stories and interesting Tales (Escarpit 1983:37). In L’Ami de l’adolescence (1784–
1785), Berquin used the theatre as Jean Racine had done in Esther (1689) and Athalie
(1691), plays written for the girls of Saint Cyr, the school set up by Madame de
Maintenon, in the same way as the Jesuits and Mme de Genlis had resorted to
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