Did you know that Cinderella was originally called Zezolla?
And that the tale of Sleeping Beauty is far more terrible than the one we were told when we were little?
The storyteller's marvelous work arose from a plethora of French and Italian sources, oral and written accounts, which sometimes date back to the 9th century BC!
This is the case for the heroine with the glass slipper, who appeared in China at that time under the first name of Yexian.
It is this version which would then have inspired Perrault, by the means of other writers before him.
Local legends and oral accounts are also fertile ground for the composition of his work.
“Donkey Skin
, for example, is one of the oldest attested stories in French tradition: Noël du Fail in his“
Rustic Propos
”
(1547)
talks about the tale of Cuir asnette.
Bonaventure des Périers in his
Tales or New Recreations and Joyeux Devis
(
1557)
evokes the story of a young girl nicknamed Donkey Skin.
In the 17th century, it was so widespread that its title is commonly used to designate any fairy tale, ”
notes Ghislaine Chagrot in
Les sources
.
Do you know one of the peculiarities of Charles Perrault? Did you know that
Le Chat Botté
has a second title? Test your knowledge with this short test.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DCLIXOYIQBESZAIQWZIFE7WEUQ.JPG)
