Charles Perrault's Contes, published in 1697, is one of the most famous works in French literature. Its success has been such that the expression 'conte de Perrault' has become a generic term Much of what has been written about the Contes seeks to consider them as a collection of traditional folk stories. Drawing upon mythological, linguistic, ethnological, or psychoanalytical contributions, critics, from Saintyves to Bettelheim, have defined these tales as a mere representation of collective or individual significance. Another orientation (Propp, Levi-Strauss) focuses on the morphology and structure of the conte My thesis situates Perrault's Contes within their particular historical and literary context which is the end of the 17th century, a time of many crises. It examines the theme of genealogy which traverses the tales and its significance which is mainly ideological. I argue that genealogy is used in the Contes to represent (desired) shifts in the nature of the familial, political, and social structures This dissertation has as its theoretical framework socio-historical studies on the period. It also profits from psychoanalysis. A psychoanalytical reading illuminates the larger historical dimension by uncovering the ideological conflicts that the Contes express The thesis consists of five chapters. In the first I address the problem of the genre. The ambiguity involving the genre of the conte raises the question of genealogy In the second chapter I study the break in the characters' genealogical line, and their invention of fictional origins The third chapter explores the question of paternity, the absence of the father leading to the invention of a fictive father The law and its transgressions are the focus of the fourth chapter. A word was in fact necessary on the expression 'Ma Mere L'Oye' and its phonological analogy with the law. Here the emergence of the unconscious questions the established order In the concluding chapter I propose an in-depth analysis of a particular tale, La Barbe bleue, chosen not only because it may be the only 'conte' Perrault invented, but also because it illustrates in condensed form all the preoccupations of the dissertation / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24922 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Contributors | Delavault, Carole Nathalie (Author), Koch, Erec (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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