Scan barcode
A review by abomine
Beauty and the Beast Tales from Around the World by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, Heidi Anne Heiner
4.0
2015 Reading Challenge:
---A Classic Romance, A Book Written By A Female Author, A Book More Than 100 Years Old
Beauty and the Beast is my all time favorite fairytale, so to have all of these different versions from all over the world in one volume is pretty fantastic. The racist stories are god-awful and definitely worth skipping, but having TWO important translations of Villeneuve's original novella is amazing and unheard of in an anthology like this.
Villeneuve's novella (specifically the Dowson translation) was what I chose for the reading challenge. While it does become rather convoluted towards the end with Beauty's origin story and the politics of the World of Faerie, it provides insight and detail that you just don't see in the more well-known 'fairytale' version by Madame de Beaumont. For instance, instead of Beast asking Beauty to marry him, he asks if he may sleep with her. And keep in mind that this isn't some majestic, princely lion-man or hot bald guy with scars and tattoos. Villeneuve is much more specific than the subsequent retellings regarding Beast's appearance (gigantic and reptilian with a long proboscis, or possibly tentacles), and he is by NO stretch of the imagination a "sexy beast". Quite a bit more of a challenge for Beauty, don't you think?
---A Classic Romance, A Book Written By A Female Author, A Book More Than 100 Years Old
Beauty and the Beast is my all time favorite fairytale, so to have all of these different versions from all over the world in one volume is pretty fantastic. The racist stories are god-awful and definitely worth skipping, but having TWO important translations of Villeneuve's original novella is amazing and unheard of in an anthology like this.
Villeneuve's novella (specifically the Dowson translation) was what I chose for the reading challenge. While it does become rather convoluted towards the end with Beauty's origin story and the politics of the World of Faerie, it provides insight and detail that you just don't see in the more well-known 'fairytale' version by Madame de Beaumont. For instance, instead of Beast asking Beauty to marry him, he asks if he may sleep with her. And keep in mind that this isn't some majestic, princely lion-man or hot bald guy with scars and tattoos. Villeneuve is much more specific than the subsequent retellings regarding Beast's appearance (gigantic and reptilian with a long proboscis, or possibly tentacles), and he is by NO stretch of the imagination a "sexy beast". Quite a bit more of a challenge for Beauty, don't you think?
