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Rh discouraged by Puritan influence. In Perrault's time, when this influence was beginning to decline, they superseded the English tales, crowding out all but Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Hickathrift, Jack and the Bean-stalk, Tom Thumb, and Childe Rowland.

1650–1705. Fairy Tales, by Madame D'Aulnoy. In France there were many followers of Perrault. The most important of these was Madame D'Aulnoy. She did not copy Perrault. She was a brilliant, witty countess, and brought into her tales, entitled Contes de Fées, the graces of the court. She adhered less strictly to tradition than Perrault, and handled her material freely, making additions, amplifications, and moral reflections, to the original tale. Her weaving together of incidents is artistic and her style graceful and not unpleasing. It is marked by ornamentation, sumptuousness, and French sentimentality. It shows a lack of naïveté resulting from the palace setting given to her tales, making them adapted only to children of high rank. Often her tale is founded on a beautiful tradition. The Blue-Bird, one of the finest of her tales, was found in the poems of Marie de France, in the thirteenth century. Three of her tales were borrowed from Straparola. Among her tales the most important are:—

Graciosa and Percinet. (Basile.)

The Blue-Bird. (Contains a motif similar to one in The Singing, Soaring Lark.)

The White Cat. (Similar to Three Feathers and The Miller's Boy and the Cat.)