‘Foolish Wishes, The’ (‘Les Souhaits ridicules’, 1693) is a verse fairy tale by Charles Perrault about a couple who waste wishes from Jupiter. His only tale with mythological characters, it alludes to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and burlesques classical tradition by alternating between noble and vulgar registers.
Jean de La Fontaine had also treated this theme of a popular medieval fabliau. Perrault's silly wish that a sausage grow from the wife's nose recalls the obscene version in which genitalia sprout from the spouses' faces. The warning that his fairy tale is ‘hardly delicate’ reinforces this sexuality that supposedly horrifies ‘Mademoiselle’ of his dedicatory preface. This is a good example of how Perrault adapted ribald folk tales for aristocratic readers.
Bibliography
- Barchilon, Jacques and Flinders, Peter, Charles Perrault (1981).
- Soriano, Marc, Les Contes de Perrault (1968).
— Mary Louise Ennis
