The French conte populaire belongs to the vast European treasure of folk-tales which has been extensively explored over the last two centuries. While unique versions of particular tales have been recorded in France, all are related to stories told throughout Europe and beyond. Nevertheless, researchers have usually recognized some specificity in the French tale, seeing it as less fantastic, more down-to-earth, than its Germanic or Slavonic counterparts.
The conte populaire is an oral genre, part of a popular culture which also includes song, dance, ritual, and custom. The stories, passed down from teller to teller by word of mouth, were more or less ritually recounted in a variety of settings, from long sea voyages to the village veillée, an evening gathering in which work combined with the pleasures of story and song. Story-telling was a skilled business, each conteur both re-enacting and renewing the traditional stock. The stories themselves have been grouped (though not without controversy) into a number of classes: the conte merveilleux (fairy-tale), the conte d'avertissement (warning tale), the animal story, the légende (recounting stories connected with local beliefs), and so on. It is essential to remember that these stories were not originally addressed to children, although many of them have become part of children's lore in recent times.
Except in certain limited milieux, the old practice of story-telling was virtually killed by the modernization of society. It hardly exists in present-day France—though it has held its own better in other francophone countries [see Africa (South OF THE Sahara)]. Attempts have recently been made to rekindle the old embers, and story-telling has enjoyed a certain vogue, with festivals such as that of Saint-Rémy de Provence. For the most part, however, the conte populaire survives only in written records.
Folk-tales have been an important source for writers over the centuries; they have left their mark on texts on different as the medieval fabliaux and romances, the work of 16th-c. conteurs such as Rabelais or Du Fail, and the stories of modern writers from Nerval to Tournier. None of these gives direct access to the actual folk-tale. The first significant attempt to transcribe oral tales was Perrault's Histoires ou contes, which certainly draw on the spoken tradition to some extent (exactly how much remains a matter for dispute). However, Perrault adapted his material to the polite taste of his day, as did all the other conteurs who catered for the surprising vogue for fairy-tales at the end of the 17th c. [see Short Fiction].
Perrault's beautiful stories have had an unfortunate effect, in that for many readers they have obscured the real folk-tales from which they were drawn. What is more, their success and reuse in the chapbooks of the Bibliothèque Bleue had a knockback effect on the original stories; by the time collectors began to record these more scientifically from peasant story-tellers, they often bore the marks of Perrault.
The serious recording of folk-tales came rather later in France than in many parts of Europe. The golden age was the period between about 1870 and 1920, which saw the foundation of journals such as the Revue des traditions populaires (1888-1919) and the publication of many collections of tales from different regions (e.g. Emmanuel Cosquin's Les Contes populaires de Lorraine, 1887). A second phase in the collection of folk-tales began after World War II, with modern methods of mechanical recording. In 1953, with the support of the CNRS, the Société d'Ethnographie Française began publication of the journal Arts et traditions populaires. Major research projects were undertaken (just before it was too late) in various parts of France and in French Canada, where old French tales continued to be told. Brittany has been a particularly fruitful source of stories; Hélias's Les Autres et les miens (2 vols., 1977) is both a re-creation in French of Breton stories from the Pays Bigouden and a celebration of the storyteller and traditional peasant culture. In similar fashion, Pourrat produced his own version of stories of the Auvergne in Le Trésor des contes (1948-62).
The years 1953-6 saw the publication of seven volumes of Contes merveilleux des provinces de France, under the direction of Paul Delarue; since then, many other texts and recordings have been made available, notably the series of Récits et contes populaires launched by Gallimard in 1978. The essential scholarly work for the whole of France is, however, Le Conte populaire français (1957- ) of Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Ténèze, a complete catalogue with examples of all the principal story-types recorded.
[Peter France]
Bibliography
- M. Simonsen, Le Conte populaire français (1981)
- G. Massignon, De bouche à oreilles (1983)
