Though based on older folk tales of demon lovers and devilish bridegrooms, the story of Bluebeard, as we know it today, is the creation of French writer Charles Perrault — first published in 1697 in his collection Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of Past Times). Perrault was one in a group of writers who socialized in the literary salons of Paris, collectively creating a vogue for literature inspired by peasant folk tales. These new stories were called contes des feés, from which our modern term "fairy tales" derives — but the contes des feés of the French salons were intended for adult readers.
Bluebeard," for example, has little to recommend it as a children's story. Rather, it's a gruesome cautionary tale about the dangers of marriage (on the one hand) and the perils of greed and curiosity (on the other) — more akin, in our modern culture, to horror films than to Disney cartoons. The story as Perrault tells it is this... >More>>>
