#gabrielle-suzanne barbot de villeneuve

[princesssarisa]

Yesterday, for the first time, I read the original French literary version of Beauty and the Beast, the 1740 novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.

I had read about it before, I knew about its long and complex backstories and continuation after the Beast's curse is broken. But finally reading it was still quite the experience. What a fascinating work it is, and so different from most versions of Beauty and the Beast that we know today!

I'll share a longer post about it some time soon.

In the meantime, I'd like to remark on how many aspects of the original tale I now realize are present – though with new twists – in Megan Kearney's web comic adaptation (see @batbcomic).

A powerful magical woman as the chess-master behind everything?

The Prince having been abused by the mother figure who raised him, leading to his transformation into the Beast?

The Beast being a gardener who tends his roses himself?

Magic preventing him from telling Beauty the truth of who he is?

Beauty's mother having disappeared while the father was away on business, and the confused, frightened servants having lied that she died?

Beauty herself having almost died as a child, but been healed by magic?

A magic/fantasy sequence where the Prince and the Beast have a hostile face-to-face encounter as if they were two separate people?

Beauty's mother turning out to be (spoiler alert) still alive and (double spoiler alert) not really human?

It all has precedent in the very first version of the story.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @themousefromfantasyland, @adarkrainbow

[janestvalentine]

it has to be said

[athena-xox]

Technically I am fluent in French but my reading comprehension… not the best especially with older texts.

Anyways to the point, I was rereading Barbot’s version of beauty and the beast (she’s the original author but also that’s subjective since you could argue she based it off off east of the sun west of the moon and that that was based off Eros and Psyche) and because my French isn’t perfect I admittedly misunderstood a lot of smaller parts of the plot.. but from that I got such an interesting concept

Essentially when Beauty is in the castle she starts having dreams about this handsome “Unknown” man and she falls in love with him. He is of course the beast and I knew this but there was a passage where Beauty is thinking about her unknown and her mirror (the one that she watches plays from (so real of her) (she’s a theatre kid like me) (she probably does other stuff with the mirror) (that I just missed) (since again 1740s French)) and for a while I interpreted that as the “Unknown” being like a mirror version of the beast

And then it got me thinking of if the unknown was the pre curse beast. Like still narcissist and egotistical. Which could be such an interesting beauty and the beast adaptation/ retelling

[thefugitivesaint]

“Hope, resistance, flirtation: these are common threads among the first versions of the Grimms’ fairy tales published in 1812, before they were heavily edited by the brothers ahead of Edgar Taylor’s English translations, first published in 1823. At this point, the names of Dortchen Wild, Marie Hassenpflug and other young female contributors such as Jenny von Droste-Hülshoff had already disappeared from the record, their husbands, sons and brothers ensuring their contributions would not be recognised.” .... “... it was aristocratic women in the Parisian salons of the 1690s who invented not only our modern word ‘fairy tale’ (contes de fée in French), but also one of its most enduring examples: La Belle et la Bête or Beauty and the Beast, whose author was the aristocratic widow Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, whom Voltaire referred to as ‘that old shrew’. Jubber estimates that roughly two-thirds of the 90 tales surviving from this period were written by women, even if this is no longer widely known today. The same fate has been suffered by storytellers of colour, such as Hanna Diyab from Syria, who brought Aladdin and Ali Baba to Europe in the 18th century. How many other collections of tales and fables originated with women, not men? What about Aesop’s fables? Homer’s Iliad? The Bible? If we go back far enough, it may be that we owe most of our classic tales to the oral storytelling tradition women have kept alive for thousands of years. Note that the oldest named author in history may well be a woman: the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna is believed to be the author of the Exaltation of Inanna and the Sumerian Temple Hymns, dating from the 23rd century BCE. “

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || June || 29 || Freebie

Beauty and the Beast

[umi-no-onnanoko]

[studiotriggerfan397]

La Belle et la Bête: journal d'un film (Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film) by Jean Cocteau.

A superb book about the making of a masterpiece.

[libertyreads]

Book Review #55 of 2023--

The Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Rating: 2 stars.

Read from May 8th to 9th.

I’ll keep this one short since everyone knows the basic premise of Beauty and the Beast (at least the Disney version). I was surprised by just how different this was than the well known version of today. I didn’t completely hate the differences, but the writing style drove me up a wall. Especially in the last half of the book. We follow a similar enough plot throughout the first 130ish pages, but then we get a fairy who spends the next 75ish pages just explaining how everything came to be and how she managed to work it all out in the end. It felt unnecessary--or if not unnecessary it felt like this should have been seen before the beginning of the novel. As is usual for the classics I read, there were a lot of things that just worked out from nowhere. Contrivances that make everything tie off with a bow nicely. But I guess in the 18th century that’s something you were looking for in fiction. Overall, not my favorite classic I’ve read, but also not a least favorite. And I’m definitely keeping this gorgeous Minalima edition on my shelves.

[noplaceforsanity]

“Who gave you permission to gather my roses? Is it not enough that I kindly allowed you to remain in my palace? Instead of feeling grateful, rash man, I find you stealing my flowers! Your insolence shall not remain unpunished.” Madame de Villeneuve's Original Beauty and the Beast, translated by J. R. Planché

[valiancenodel]

TL;DR: The fairy that cursed the Beast was a bitch and a sexual predator. Also, marrying in the 18th century was a pain in the ass.

What we really need is an adaptation of the original 1740 The Beauty and the Beast

So were you aware that the The Beauty and the Beast story we all know is a heavily abridged and rewritten version of a much longer novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve?  And that a lot of the plot holes existing in the current versions exist because the 1756 rewrite cut out the second half of the novella, which consisted entirely of the elaborate backstory that explains all the weird shit that happened before?  And that the elaborate backstory is presented in a way that’s kind of boring because the novel had only just been invented in 1740 and no one knew how they worked yet, but contains a bazillion awesome ideas that beg for a modern retelling?  And that you are probably not aware that the modern world needs this story like air but the modern world absolutely needs this story like air?  Allow me to explain:

The totally awesome elaborate backstory that explains Beauty and the Beast

Once upon a time there was a king, a queen, and their only son

But while the prince was still in his infancy, in a neat reversal of how these fairy tales usually go, the king tragically died, leaving his wife to act as Regent until their son reaches maturity

Unfortunately, the rulers of all the lands surrounding them go, “Hmm, the kingdom is ruled by a woman now, it must be weak, time for an invasion!”

And the Queen goes, “Well, if I let some general fight all these battles for me, he’ll totally amass enough fame and power to make a bid for the throne; if I want to protect my son’s crown, I have no choice but to take up arms and lead the troops myself!”

(Btw, I want to stress that this woman is not Eowyn or Boudica and nothing in the way her story is presented suggests that she had any interest martial exploits before or in any way came to enjoy them during these battles.  This is a perfectly ordinary court lady who would much rather be embroidering altar covers for the royal chapel and playing with her child until necessity made her go, “Oh no, this sucks, I guess I have to become a Warrior Queen now” and she just happened to kick ass at it anyway.)

And the Queen totally kicked ass, but the whole “twice as good for half the credit” thing meant that no matter how many battles she won, potential enemies refused to take her and her army seriously until she had defeated them so no sooner would she fend off one invasion than another one would pop up on a different border.

So she spent the majority of her young son’s life away from the castle leading armies, but it was OK because she left him in the care of her two best friends, who just happen to be fairies!  This was an awesome idea because a) fairies have magic, and therefore are like the best people to protect the prince from any threats and b) fairies consider themselves to be so above humanity that the lowest fairy outranks the highest mortal, so they’d have no interest in taking a human throne.  Good thing they were both good fairies instead of one good and one evil one!

(Spoiler:  they were not both good fairies.)

So the two fairies basically take turns raising the prince until he’s old enough to rule.  And on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, the evil older one comes into the prince’s bedroom.

“So listen, kid.  You’re about to become king, your mother’s on her way home from the war to see you crowned, and I have a third piece of good news for you!  You see, I’ve actually been spending so much time here lately because Fairyland’s become a bit too hot to hold me for reasons totally not related to me being secretly evil.  And if I have to hang in the human world, I might as well reside in the upper echelons of it, so even though as a powerful fairy I completely eclipse your puny human status in a staggeringly unimaginable way, since you’re about to be king and since my premonition that I should stick this whole guardianship thing out because you would be hot one day has totally proved accurate (go me), I will graciously lower myself to allowing you to marry me.  Please feel free to grovel at my feet in gratitude.  (Btw, we can totally start the wedding night now, we’ll tell your mother about it when she arrives tomorrow.)”

Keep reading

[prosebushpatch]

have a new character who plays the harp so I looked up just “harp cover” because idk I just want to start thinking about how it would look/sound, but anyway now I’ve come to the conclusion that Fireflies should never be played on anything but the harp.

[whisperinglines]

I pianti sono la consolazione dell’infelicità.

- Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, La Bella e la Bestia

[violetasteracademic]

The Glass Coffin: HOFAS x Elriel

Many HOFAS spoilers ahead!! This is an INTENSIVE post on all the Elriel coding in HOFAS, so strap in! This is largely a theory post and my personal interpretations, so take it or leave it! It's all in good fun.

Let's start with The Glass Coffin. When it comes to the analysis of the songs Bryce played for Azriel and Nesta in the much beloved and much dissected bonus chapter, I have seen a lot of conversation around Stone Mother and significantly less (if any?) around The Glass Coffin!

The Glass Coffin is played next after the Stone Mother. And it is a ballet.

What is the The Glass Coffin?

My friends, it is Sleeping Beauty.

Now we all know that many suspect Elriel to be a Sleeping Beauty retelling. And I'll be honest, I take a lot of the mythology or "retellings" with a grain of salt when it comes to SJM, because she doesn't do incredibly loyal retellings but takes bits and pieces of inspiration. I suppose it's up to you where you draw the line of a retelling, or free IP inspiration. But one thing to understand about IP is that Sarah J. Maas would have to get Disney's permission to call her work a retelling of Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Much like Beauty and The Beast, she did not "retell" the Disney princess movie, but the original La Belle et la Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve published in 1740. So with that little lesson in intellectual property, lets look at the story of The Glass Coffin, because it is actually quite interesting:

A magician forces a proposal on a Maiden using his magic. The Maiden is repulsed by the use of magic in the proposal and rejects him. The Magician turns her brother into a stag, traps her in the glass coffin, and enchants the land around them.

There is a LOT to unpack here. I do not think Lucien is "The Magician" in this story. Instead, I think the Cauldron is, and I do think that the use of magic to force a proposal is a very close parallel to what Azriel discovered in HOFAS: That the Cauldron had been corrupted by the Asteri to serve their will. If you have read all of the books in the multiverse, you know that there is no other SJM universe where mating bond rejections happen. There is no other universe in which there are unhappily mated pairs forced together because the function of the mating bond, at a base level, is simply to produce the most powerful offspring. Mates in other worlds are true soulmates, and they fall in love before discovering they are mates.

In HOFAS, Azriel listened to a song from The Glass Coffin. He also listened to the story of Silene, and learned that the Cauldron was corrupted by the Asteri. It is not a theory or interpretation that the Asteri curate powerful bloodlines to ensure they have the strongest food from the souls that they eat. It is a fact. So it is not a jump to interpret that the Cauldron's corruption by the Asteri, and mates that are not a good fit on a soul level but forced together to produce powerful offspring, are one and the same. At this time, both Azriel and Elain have discussed feelings of repulsion or discomfort regarding E/ucien's bond. There are also negative consequences to a female rejecting the bond, as there were for the Maiden in The Glass Coffin. Rejecting a bond can lead to madness on the males end in Prythian because he believes he is entitled to her, just as the Maiden rejecting the Magician's proposal led to him trapping her in glass and enchanting the lands so no one else could have her.

This is already quite interesting, but it gets even more powerful as you continue to breakdown the Elain coding in HOFAS.

This line basically started a war:

"I can hear your heart beating through the stone." She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer, "Can you hear mine?" (ACOWAR, chpt. 24)

Now many people have used this to claim she is Lucien's mate, because she can hear his heartbeat. Though only a few pages earlier, we had this moment:

Elain can hear Feyre's heartbeat. She says if she listens carefully, she can hear hers too. At the time, we all assumed she was talking about Nesta. And yet we've discovered that Vesperus, an Asteri, (or Valg, depending on which theory you vibe with) was also a beating heart under the stone.

Inside a glass coffin.

More than that, we have this passage:

We now know that the Prison was once the Dusk Court, and just like UTM, The Hewn City, and Ramiel, it is encapsulated in stone beneath the mountain. Within the stone of the Prison lies the long buried heart of the Dusk Court. When you look back at Elain's line to Lucien, and see that she is staring out at the city, looking for answers at the heart she can hear beating beneath the stone, and not Lucien, this all starts to click together in a brilliant way. And the imagery, the island having a soul nurtured and blossoming under her care, has Elain written all over it.

Now, the reason I bring up the Hewn City here is because I believe there is a reason for Elain's lifelessness and distress in the Hewn City that has nothing to do with her wearing the color black.

In HOFAS, we discover a few important things about Earth Fae. Lidia discovers in her time on Team Archives what the Earth Fae did, and what their powers were used for:

Earth Fae were used on Midgard to discover ley lines of power to create powerful strongholds. One important thing I have noticed is that all Fae on Midgard are said to come from either Erilea or Prythian (at least that is all that is mentioned) and yet there is no indicator of where the Earth Fae come from. it is my personal belief the Earth Fae are from Prythian. Yet the entire Dusk Court disappeared, and their story continued on Midgard. It is my belief that Elain is not only a Seer, but that she has also been gifted with the Earth powers that have since been lost on Prythian, priming her to both restore Earth powers on Prythian as well as the Dusk Court.

What does this have to do with the Hewn City?

Earth Fae experience distress when they are in places where the magic is dead or warped, and they are the only ones that can feel it:

Bryce mentions she forgets the Earth Fae even have magic, because what they can do is often unseen.

If Elain is in possession of the lost Earth power, she would have been able to feel her power literally shriveling up and dying anywhere that has been warped by that magic.

And then of course we have the fact that the cave on Prythian is an exact match to the Cave of Princes on Avallen. We end HOFAS with all the weapons in the possession of the IC, the knowledge that there are cache's of magic hidden in the lands, and that there are places where the magic has been twisted and must be freed, one being the Prison/Dusk Court.

This was the imagery used once the magic was freed on Avallen, and it took its true, lush, blossoming form:

If what is true on Avallen will also be true once the Dusk Court is freed on Prythian, answer this question honestly: When you read this imagery- blooming vines and roses, beautiful and surreal, the land seeming to know her, small blooming flowers nestling around her body and in her hair- who do you think of? Who could this possibly be alluding to back in Prythian?

Elain's coding was all over HOFAS, and Azriel's "what if the Cauldron was wrong storyline" continued. These statements are true, even if none of my theories about her being an Earth Fae are right, though I know I'm not the only one who believes that is where we are headed!

The fact that The Glass Coffin is Sleeping Beauty, and that Azriel listened to it, may not be a powerful statement on its own (though I think it is). But the fact that the Cauldron corruption was revealed, and The Glass Coffin is a story of a woman who was entrapped due to her rejecting a proposal forced by magic, and Sarah used the Glass Coffin again with Vesperus, potentially tying her back to the heartbeat Elain can hear if she listens closely, it's all just too much to ignore.

I was personally overwhelmed by all of the Elain and Azriel nods in HOFAS. I think they get buried under all of the criticism in the book. I am so excited to see where everything goes, and I hope you had fun going down this rabbit hole with me!

[libraflyter]

Every now and again someone triggers my need to explain how the original version of Beauty and the Best by de Villaneuve contains a flashback prequel that fundamentally transforms the story into something completely different than the conventional interpretation.

I have no regrets

Anyone: Hey (asks about a special interest of mine)? Me: Becomes an unskippable cutscene

[leer-reading-lire]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || January || 10 || Magical Moment

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve

[naturaltolife]

Fairy Tale: Beauty & the Beast —Aesthetic

Book Description

The French tale, La Belle et la Bête, was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. In the story, Beauty’s father is a ruined merchant. When returning from a futile trip to recover profits from a trading ship, he's caught in a storm and takes shelter in a castle. There, he meets no one but finds food, a fire, and a bed for him. While leaving, he takes a rose from the garden to bring Beauty, thus evoking Beast’s wrath. In exchange for his life, he agrees to return with one of his daughters. Beauty agrees to go, but fears Beast will eat her. Instead, she’s given a lavish chamber, good food, and constant entertainment. Beauty never sees anyone, except when Beast joins her for dinner, where he asks her to marry him each night. However, she refuses. After several months, Beauty is attached to him, yet she misses her family. The Beast allows her to visit her home, but warns he'll die if she delays her return. Jealous of the finery Beauty wears upon her return, her two older sisters hope Beast will kill her if they make her miss her deadline. Instead, Beauty returns late to find him dying of grief. Beauty then realizes she loves Beast and begs him to live to marry her. Immediately, he's restored to his handsome, princely self. Beauty is then rewarded for choosing a virtuous husband over a handsome or witty one. Finally, her sisters are condemned to be living statues outside the castle, forever viewing their sister’s better fortune.