French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach (Suny Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture) - Softcover

"Within the area of French fairy tales, I know of no other critical work with such vast chronological range. This is really a trip through the centuries as far as French or comparative literature scholars are concerned. Some of the tales chosen for discussion are original in themselves and have perhaps never been discussed, certainly never this competently: Diderot's The White Bird, Rousseau's The Fantastic Queen, Nodier's The Crumb Fairy, Gautier's Arria Marcella, George Sand's The Castle of the Crooked Peak, and Chedid's The Suspended Heart. The very discussion of these lesser-known tales comes as a happy surprise even to specialists in French literature and is a tribute to Bettina Knapp's encyclopedic erudition and in-depth knowledge of these tales. In other cases, she deals with tales we might think we know well--Perrault's, Maeterlinck's, Cocteau's, for example--but she makes us feel like we are being introduced to them for the first time, so fresh is her approach." -- Paul Archambault, author of Seven French Chroniclers: Witnesses to History

Offers analysis of fourteen French fairy tales, from the medieval Romance of Melusine to Jean Cocteau;s film version of Beauty and the Beast, exploring their universal and eternal nature as well as their relevance to modern readers.