Knowra Madame d’Aulnoy Madame d’Aulnoy Madame d’Aulnoy was a French writer whose fairy tales helped establish the literary fairy-tale genre in the late seventeenth century. Her stories combined wonder, courtly satire, and female-centered plots.
Literary fairy tale : A written tale that adapts folk motifs into a deliberate literary work, often with an identifiable author. D’Aulnoy helped establish this genre through authored tales published for adult literary audiences.
The Blue Bird : A fairy tale by Madame d’Aulnoy about a princess and a prince transformed into a blue bird. It is among her best-known tales and exemplifies her elaborate transformations and courtship plots.
Charles Perrault : A French author whose late-seventeenth-century tales include “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” Perrault was a contemporary whose published tales helped make fairy stories fashionable alongside hers.
Frame story : A narrative structure in which an enclosing story introduces or connects one or more embedded tales. D’Aulnoy used framing devices to present tales as social storytelling rather than isolated fables.
Fairy-tale revival : A renewed literary and scholarly interest in fairy tales after periods of reduced prominence. D’Aulnoy’s works became part of the canon revisited by later editors and fairy-tale scholars.
Conte de fées : A French literary fairy tale, especially one produced in salons and print during the late seventeenth century. The French genre name became associated with the form d’Aulnoy helped popularize.
The White Cat : A fairy tale by Madame d’Aulnoy in which a prince encounters a mysterious cat who rules a kingdom. Its enchanted court and hidden identity display d’Aulnoy’s playful use of animal transformation.
Marie-Catherine de Villedieu : A French novelist and playwright whose works addressed love, gender, and social convention. Her fiction shares the literary culture of women’s authorship in which d’Aulnoy published.
Fairy-tale motif : A recurring character, object, event, or situation found across fairy tales. Her plots transform shared motifs such as enchanted helpers, metamorphosis, and impossible tasks.
The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault : A collection of French literary fairy tales by Charles Perrault, published in the late seventeenth century. Perrault’s more concise tales offer a useful comparison with d’Aulnoy’s expansive salon narratives.
Show all 25