Describe Perrault’s tales. Utpictura18 Review Sections
Describe Perrault’s tales
Figure 18, Magazine sections
https://utpictura18.univ-amu.fr/rubriques
Coordinating number:
Olivier Leplatre, University Jean Moulin-Lyon3, IRHIM
Scientific Committee:
Floriane Daguise, University of Rouen
Anne Defrance, University of Bordeaux Montaigne
Aurélia Gaillard, University of Bordeaux Montaigne
Ute Heidmann, University of Lausanne
Volker Schröder, Princeton University
Benoît Tane, University of Toulouse-Le Mirail
Myriam Tsimbidy, University of Bordeaux Montaigne
Describe Perrault’s tales
The illustration situation of Perrault’s tales seems paradoxical. The tale, in fact, evokes an image in the mind of the reader, and moreover, a calligraphic manuscript of 1695 confirms this seemingly inextricable link between the stories and their visual interpretations: the stories are accompanied by beautiful paintings. In the vignettes engraved by Clouzier in the first edition of 1697. However, the iconographic catalog of Perrault’s tales is not particularly rich, at least during the Ancien Regime period. Despite the illustrated edition by Jacques de Sève (1742) and the large publishing enterprise of the Cabinet des Fées, until the 19th century the potential of the illustrations was hidden in the fable and developed by artists. Since then, following him and amplifying the phenomenon through various techniques and media (children’s albums, comic strips, films, commercials, posters, etc.), we have continued to revise and update Perrault’s tales, thus rediscovering them. , the initial semiological arrangement of the manuscript to reproduce it.
History and Genealogy of Perrault’s Fairy Tale Illustration
To be interested in the illustrations of fairy tales requires making a historical inventory of their representation, identifying stages and revealing logics: primarily creative, but also editorial, advertising, dissemination and even heritage. the work and through it the genre of the fairy tale, in parallel with its reception in the literary field, according to the diversity of its audience. The significant increase in illustrations marked by the contribution of Gustave Doré and the production of the romantic edition leads us to think about the role played by images in the collective production of Perrault’s stories in France as well as abroad.
As evidenced by the 1695 manuscript and the care given to the quality of the vignettes, the opening of the collection and the beginning of the stories, the fables appear in Perrault accompanied by figures, apparently essential to the strategy of re-appropriating the material. literary and folklore. Born in images, like La Fontaine’s tales, this device invites the reader to understand the need for imagery attached to the tale, what the illustrations, interpretive centers bring to the reading, and measure the meaning of the stories. as the definition of the genre.
Memory formation and retrieval strategies
Symmetrical to the act of writing, this illustrative gesture is located at the intersection of earlier sources that it surfaces, alters, or transforms. Illustrators store iconographic memory, stories. They sometimes use, quote, alter, modify, or even parody images from previous publications. But it happens that they stand out from this visual heritage by inventing their own path in the work. In particular, comparisons between images over the centuries attached to this or that scene will help to explore the workings of this living intercanonical memory. In addition to past images, this appropriation is enriched by the contribution of other figurational techniques to reveal each era or sometimes decidedly anachronistic: for example, for Sarah Moon, those of Shoa, originating from the Little Caperon red. (1983). These palimpsest, memorial, hybrid images continue to enliven the stories; they remember the ancient nature of fairy tales as a lesson they offer for all of today.
From an inventive point of view, the illustrative process, as we know, depends on choices consisting of pros and cons. But what about the images created from Perrault’s texts? What aspect of the story do they focus on emphasizing or, conversely, hiding or detracting from? What frame do they acquire and for what reading (spiritual, aesthetic, etc.)? What scene, what detail, what sign do they base their transposition on? Do they engage with the text in a competitive fashion that results in a self-contained visual story? Or, on the contrary, do they become closely dependent on it? How to show the mysterious and inexplicable part of stories in pictures, how to do the work of fantasy in the work of stories, how to engrave the power of capture or reveal its evocative power? The nature of Perrault’s tales makes them a particularly stimulating object for assessing the degrees of intermediality between texts and images: economical in general terms, aesthetically mixed, yet close to ‘reality’, powerfully symbolic. open type graphics capabilities.
Depending on the editions and the conditions of the illustration, the emblematic single image can integrate the memory of Perrault’s artistic works in different places, isolated or graphically integrated into the text; elsewhere, a series presented in various ways punctuates the reading and weaves a certain visual continuum until it absorbs the stories or largely transcends them. This more or less presence of images changes the reader’s approach to the text; he engages in processes of re-reading or even cross-writing: text-to-text, text-to-image, and images in between, as he creates his own “film” or his own visual dramaturgy.
Parasites, vaccines, descriptions
For purposes of illustration, it will also be appropriate to question the phenomena of intervention and grafting that link Perrault’s text to other texts in the fairy corpus. In many cases, illustrations continue to reinvent the material of fairy tales and, especially from the 20th century onwards, continue to mix Perrault’s stories with other known versions, starting with those recorded by the Brothers Grimm; For example, trying to describe such a variant of the Grimms, we will not overlook the cases where images partially return to Perrault’s text as a substrate of the memory unconscious.
We can still open the file to descriptions of rewrites, Grégoire Solotareff, Yvan Pommaux, or Anthony Browne, or even Warja Lavater, who practiced a zero-degree form of rewriting by deleting stories.
Finally, this issue would like to focus on the imagery of Perrault’s tales: how to reduce the same text of no more than a few pages to the graphic minimalism of Warja Lavater’s symbolic adaptations and at the same time the cinematographic extension of Peau d’Ane by Jacques Demy? It will be a matter of seeing what encourages these extreme plastic modulations in fiction, and what images reveal its deep tension.
Iconography
Articles will be able to reference all the images they need about them and use Utpictura18 directly or request the integration of new documents.
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Paper proposals (250-300 words) with a short bio-bibliography should be sent to Olivier Leplatre, olivierleplatre@hotmail.com by January 30, 2023.
The committee will give its answer by February 28, 2023.
Selected articles must reach us by August 31, 2023.
Publication is expected in the fall of 2023.
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