1. Fairy tales gained popularity in 17th century Europe among intellectual elites, with authors adapting folktales for aristocratic audiences and adding social/political messages. 2. Charles Perrault popularized versions of fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood that introduced iconic motifs, though they were based on older myths and folktales. 3. This discussion analyzes Perrault's 1697 version of Cinderella alongside earlier variants to understand how the story communicates values around marriage, love, and gender roles.

1. When the Grimm brothers resurrected the genre in the mid-1800s,
When the Grimm brothers resurrected the genre in the mid-1800s, fairy tales and folktales
had been mostly ignored by the literary establishment for the previous century. But, as we
learned in our discussion of “The White Cat,” the Grimms were not the first ones in history
to recognize both the literary merit and the potential power of these culturally significant
forms of storytelling.Travel back a little further, and you’ll find an even earlier period where
fairy tales experienced a flurry of attention among the literary and intellectual elite in
Europe. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Italian poet Gianfrancesco Straparola published a
collection of 75 subversive and salacious fairy tales. This collection, which is believed to be
the first written volume of fairy tales published in Europe, was eventually banned. But
Straparola’s work was rediscovered almost a century later, inspiring another Italian author,
Giambattista Basile. Basile put together his own collection of 50 fairy tales, The
Pentamerone. This time, the Italian fairy tale collector sparked a fad, kicking off nearly a
century of obsession with fairy tales. This period saw the proliferation of published volumes
of fables and fairy tales, but also the transformation of the genre. This included the tales
published by the conteuses – the group of women authors who took the fairy tale industry
by storm – as well as Jean de la Fontaine, Charles Perrault, and others.As we’ve seen in “The
White Cat,” authors of fairy tales in the seventeenth century wanted to play with the
didactic nature of the fairy tale and fable. Stories that were intended to hide a real-world
lesson under the veneer of a fantastical tale seemed to be the perfect vehicles for satire, and
one of the reasons fairy tales gained so much traction in this time period is because they
weren’t just for kids anymore. Like a good Pixar film, many of the fairy tales written during
this time featured fun stories that children would love, but in the background carried
messages of social and political critique that were meant for adults. There was also a
distinct effort to shed the folksy roots of these stories, and transform them into “high
literature.” Most of the people who promoted the fairy tale craze during this period were
social elites. (One reason the fairy tales we know today, many of which were first
popularized during this time, so often feature royal or noble characters, may be due to the
fact that their early influential authors were writing about–and critiquing–their own social
world, aristocratic society.) Most of these stories were not, or at least not completely, the
product of the author’s artistic imagination, but were based on ancient myths or folktales;
yet, the authors of the time believed that fairy tales needed to be legitimized with elevated
language and sophisticated themes.Case in point: Charles Perrault served in the ministry of
finance in the court of King Louis XIV of France. Influenced by the work of Basile, after he

2. retired at the age of 69 he decided to rewrite a number of earlier folktales and fairy tales for
an aristocratic audience. His new adaptations of these tales were tremendously popular
during his life, and hugely influential afterwards. In a sense, Perrault created the modern
concept of the fairy tale, along with inventing its personification: in 1697, Perrault
published Stories from long ago, or, Tales of Mother Goose (Histoires ou contes du temps
passé, ou, Les Contes de ma mère l’oye), introducing to the world the feathered fabulist who
would adorn the covers of children’s books for the next 300+ years.Perrault’s works include
the best-known versions of many popular fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Puss-in-
Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella.So, in our study of Cinderella, we will start
with Perrault’s version of the tale, which introduced the iconic motif of the glass slipper, and
adaptations of which have appeared over and over in print and in film. Then, we’ll look at 2
other versions: Basile’s earlier variant from The Pentamerone, and the Grimm brothers’
version, which was influenced by both Perrault and Basile.???? Read Perrault’s “Cinderella:
or, The Glass Slipper” (France, 1697). (see file on main page; the story begins on p.
449).Consider the following questions to help you read carefully and critically:What do we
learn about Cinderella’s family and background? What is the significance of these details, i.e.
what might they symbolize?What virtues are associated with Cinderella (her character and
behavior)? Which characters in the story are used to embody vices (bad behavior, bad
character) and other undesirable qualities, and what are these qualities?How do the
different characters in the story react to the news of the Prince’s ball? What does this
demonstrate about their characters and the world they live in?How do the different
characters in the story react to Cinderella’s appearance at the ball? What is it about her that
the different characters respond to, and why?What values are communicated in the story
about marriage and love relationships? Remember that there are two marriages
represented – Cinderella’s and her father’s. How do these two examples work together to
communicate something about the nature of marriage, or how marriage should work? What
about the nature of romantic relationships?What’s the deal with the shoe? Why do you
think Perrault chose a glass slipper to serve as the story’s most prominent
symbol????? Read Basile’s “The Cat Cinderella” (Italy, 1634), and the Grimm Brothers’
“Cinderella” (Germany, 1857).Consider the following questions to help you read carefully
and critically:How does the beginning of “The Cat Cinderella” compare with that of the
classic Cinderella story? Does this influence the way you view the heroine of the story?“The
Cat Cinderella” and Perrault’s version both include an explicitly stated moral at the end. Do
you agree that these morals are what the stories seem to teach? Why do the morals differ
when the plot of the stories is largely the same? What would you say the moral of the
Grimm version is? Is it the same as the others, or do the details of the story unique to the
Grimm version change what the story communicates?These two alternative versions of the
Cinderella story are both much more violent than the classic version by Perrault. Why
include violence and blood in the tale? How does that impact what we get out of the
story?What important symbols are present in each version of the story? Which symbols get
introduced in the different versions and why are they significant????? Write a paragraph
(100-300 words) on the following topic:We’ve learned about motifs, or tropes, as a key
feature of fables and tales (and really, of storytelling more generally). One of the reasons

3. motifs are reused over and over, and are often featured so prominently and play such an
important role in defining the story, is because these motifs carry symbolism that
contributes to the meaning of the story. Consider that magic mirror again: mirrors are often
associated with an awareness of what we look like, so they’re linked to beauty and vanity,
with the way others see us, and the way we see ourselves. Because we see ourselves in
them, they can be symbols of one’s identity or sense of self. Since they seem to reflect
reality, but actually reverse, even sometimes distort, an image, they can symbolize
misunderstanding, or a skewed perspective on reality. (Think about how Alice steps
through the looking glass to a topsy-turvy world in Alice in Wonderland). Anything in a
story can have a symbolic meaning, but motifs are frequently very potent symbols, and their
symbolic meaning travels with them from story to story, wherever they reappear (though
this meaning can still be influenced by how the motif is embedded in a particular
plot).—
What motifs define the Cinderella story? Which motifs do you see that show up
across variants of the story? Does the tale of Cinderella share any motifs with other fairy
tales you know? Why are these motifs present in the story – that is, what symbolic value do
they have that contributes to the overall meaning of the story?Choose one of the motifs that
defines the Cinderella story, and discuss what it may symbolize, supporting your point with
details from at least two different texts.