'Sleeping Beauty' in Context
Jun. 20th, 2013 06:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jjhunter posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
factfindingVia the Wikipedia rabbit hole, I recently discovered that 'Sleeping Beauty' was written & published as an 'original literary tale' by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The entry for the latter, however, suggests that at least some of the fairy tales he wrote for that collection had their roots in popular folk tales of the time.
What I am looking for help finding - and honestly am not sure how to effectively do so, my usually excellent google fu is scrambled - are the following:
- a good English translation of Charles Perrault's original French telling of 'Sleeping Beauty', preferably one that captures some of the same rhythms and 'feel' of the French text.
- possible proto texts - pre-1697 CE European folk tales, fairy tales, ballads, poems, etc. that include at least two (or variations thereof) of the following elements from 'Sleeping Beauty': spindles/spinning; enchanted sleep; enchanted/magical place removed from ordinary time/reality; malicious birth gift(s); forest/brambles as protective barrier or threshold; self-fulfilling prophesies; complicated mother-child dynamics; forced ignorance as a counter-productive parenting strategy; kissing/non-platonic touch as transformative.
-- n.b. I'm currently reading my way through the texts listed on tales are similar to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, AT-410, but so far they seem more like related texts than potential predecessors.
- related texts - 'contemporary' (i.e. produced around the turn of the 18th century) or thematically related texts from any time and any culture
-- for example, Yeat's poem 'The Stolen Child' involves a child lured from normal time & geography to an enchanted/magical place
- derivative or transformative texts - :o)
-- n.b. I'm already aware of Robin McKinley's book 'Beauty' and Luzula's 'the Seed of the Forest'
Any suggestions or advice, no matter what scale, are very much welcome.
What I am looking for help finding - and honestly am not sure how to effectively do so, my usually excellent google fu is scrambled - are the following:
- a good English translation of Charles Perrault's original French telling of 'Sleeping Beauty', preferably one that captures some of the same rhythms and 'feel' of the French text.
- possible proto texts - pre-1697 CE European folk tales, fairy tales, ballads, poems, etc. that include at least two (or variations thereof) of the following elements from 'Sleeping Beauty': spindles/spinning; enchanted sleep; enchanted/magical place removed from ordinary time/reality; malicious birth gift(s); forest/brambles as protective barrier or threshold; self-fulfilling prophesies; complicated mother-child dynamics; forced ignorance as a counter-productive parenting strategy; kissing/non-platonic touch as transformative.
-- n.b. I'm currently reading my way through the texts listed on tales are similar to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, AT-410, but so far they seem more like related texts than potential predecessors.
- related texts - 'contemporary' (i.e. produced around the turn of the 18th century) or thematically related texts from any time and any culture
-- for example, Yeat's poem 'The Stolen Child' involves a child lured from normal time & geography to an enchanted/magical place
- derivative or transformative texts - :o)
-- n.b. I'm already aware of Robin McKinley's book 'Beauty' and Luzula's 'the Seed of the Forest'
Any suggestions or advice, no matter what scale, are very much welcome.
