SOURCE: Adams, D. J. “The ‘Contes de Fées’ of Madame d'Aulnoy: Reputation and Re-evaluation.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76, no. 3 (autumn 1994): 5-22.

In the following essay, Adams gives an overview of socio-cultural themes in d'Aulnoy's fairy tales in order to demonstrate that modern critics have wrongly classified them as merely children's literature.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, and for much of the eighteenth, the contes de fées enjoyed great success, particularly in France and England. While they were to some extent neglected during the intervening period, they have benefited in recent years from the attention of scholars, who have firmly established their typology, structure and thematic affiliations.¹ The most notable beneficiary of this renewed interest in the form has probably been Charles Perrault, though he is only the best known of the many writers who produced such works in France...