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Le conte en ses paroles: La figuration de l'oralite dans le conte merveilleux du Classicisme aux Lumieres.

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Le conte en ses paroles: La figuration de l'oralite dans le conte merveilleux

du Classicisme aux Lumieres. Edited by Anne Defrance and Jean-Francois Perrin.

Paris: Editions Desjonqueres-L'Esprit des Lettres, 2007. 504 pp.

The volume under review presents the proceedings of the second conference titled Le conte en ses paroles: le dire et le dit dans le conte merveilleux de l'age Classique (XVIIe-XVIIIe siecles), which took place at the University of Grenoble 3-Stendhal, September 22-24, 2005. The thirty-two presentations, put together by Anne Defrance and Jean-Francois Perrin, join a larger group project directed by Perrin and focused on the subject of "The Fairy Tale in the Seventeenth Century: The Wonder Tale and the Baroque Culture of the Voice" (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LIRE, University Grenoble 3, 2002-2006). Perrin opens his preface to the volume by quoting the initial challenge for this original research: "At a time ... when the notion of 'oral literature' was widely circulating and especially attached to the mighty revival of tale-telling as a social practice, it seems necessary to re-think this notion in a critical way, by reviewing the overpowering of speech by writing and the special capacity of literature to produce 'fictions of presence.'" Orality and literature are thus perceived as complementary notions.

The studies present in this volume cover the period from the end of the seventeenth century to the end of eighteenth century. These two centuries in France represent the golden era when fairies became...

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