Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty ("La Belle au Bois dormant") is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ("Mother Goose Tales"). Elements of the story are contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone (published 1634), in the tale Sun, Moon and Talia (ch. 39). Professor J. R. R. Tolkien noted that Perrault's cultural presence is so pervasive that, when asked to name a fairy tale, most people will cite one of the eight stories in Perrault's collection. Since Tolkien's generation, however, the most familiar Sleeping Beauty has become the Walt Disney animated film (1959), which draws as much from the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ballet (Saint Petersburg, 1890) as from Perrault. More than many fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty partakes of many deep European myths, both pagan and Christian.

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Perrault so transformed the tale of a sleeping beauty, "Sole, Luna, e Talia" in Giambattista Basile's collection of tales, Il Pentamerone, that she is scarcely recognizable in the first part of the tale, the only part that is still current. Shared themes of violence, rape, rivalry and cannibalism appear in the second parts. Basile's was an adult tale told by an aristocrat for aristocrats, emphasizing concerns such as marital fidelity and inheritance. Perrault's is an aristocratic tale told for a high-bourgeois audience, inculcating female patience and passivity. There are earlier elements that contributed to the tale, in the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (published in 1528), in which a princess named Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep and is raped by a wandering prince, resulting in the birth of their child. Earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions.

Related Topics:
Giambattista Basile - Cannibal - Perceforest - 1528 - Brynhild - Volsunga saga - Hagiography

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