optics devised to entertain adults—‘the shadow theatres’, entertainments invented in
1772 by Dominique Seraphic at Versailles—were later to be included in books.
Similarly, the drawings of Rodolph Töpffer (1799– 1846), a great admirer of Rousseau,
were introduced into France in 1860, the year in which Heinrich Hoffmann’s
Struwwelpeter was translated and one year before the famous illustration of Perrault’s
Contes by Gustave Doré. These contributions widened the scope of fantasy, freeing the
expression of desire and referring back to the process described by Philippe Ariès in
which cultural objects of adults are handed over to children after they have outlived
their usefulness for adults. The same discrepancy can be seen following the introduction
of the trends in illustration and painting in children’s culture: it was only in 1969 that
François Ruy-Vidal and Harlin Quist dared to take up a surrealist aesthetic to illustrate
Eugène Ionesco’s Contes. Today, the art of photography, the first photograph having
been taken by Niepce in 1822, and the art of the cinema, are just beginning to influence
books for children (Vent Lateral by Pef illustrated by Frédéric Clement, 1988 shows the
influence of Wim Wenders to whom it is dedicated) at the same time as laser discs and
other computerised gadgets from the MacLuhan firmament.
Revolution and Romanticism: Literature and Academic LawsThe 1789 Revolution fostered a new way of looking at children through its concern to
bring into being a new citizen: Emile includes a study of the Social Contract. However,
after the Revolution, on the one hand we see the development of a cult of heroic
childhood, a symbol of the regeneration of the social body, and the juridical liberation of
children (who were now subject to a less draconian mortality than during the ancien
regime) while on the other hand, factory work became widespread. In this context, the
republican school was involved in developing reading and civic awareness: the
revolutionary ‘catechisms’, the alphabetical primers, together with books of civilities,
collections of tales and moral stories were all intended to construct the New Man. This
was reflected in an article published in the Journal de Paris, on the sixteenth
vendémiaire, year IV, which advised that children should be given L’Ami des Enfants,
together with ‘small works’, such as Lolotte et Fanfan, published in 1793 by Ducray-
Duminil (1761–1819) and specifies that a single method is involved, that is good and
holy morality put into practice, incorporated in the stories which ‘appeal to children’
(Manson 86–87). The moralists of the Republic therefore transferred the narrative
techniques of the educationalists of the ancien regime to the modern context.
However, the beginning of romanticism, seen in Das Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–1808)
by Achim von Arnim and Clemens von Brentano, by the works of Canon Schmid, by the
publication of Grimms’ fairy tales in Germany, and those of Fenimore Cooper,
J.D.R.Wyss, and later of Andersen and Dickens, was marked in France by a return to
stories rooted in popular culture. This corresponded to the rise of nationalist feelings in
European countries, and was illustrated by stories such as Charles Nodier’s La fée aux
miettes in 1831, the year following the appearance of Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor
Hugo. (Hugo’s Les Misérables was begun in 1845, but was published only in 1862,
heralding Gavroche). Romanticism also faced the turbulence of adolescence in The Three
Musketeers (1844) and the other works of Alexandre Dumas. In addition, the turbulence
FRANCE 713