Abstract
This article discusses how the seventeenth-century French fairy tale investigates embodiment through the figure of metamorphosis in the examples of Charles Perrault’s “The Mirror or the Metamorphosis of Orante” (1661), Charlotte-Rose de La Force’s “Les jeux d’esprit” (1701) and “Plus Belle que Fée” (1698), and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s “La Chatte Blanche” (1696). These fairy-tale metamorphoses do not present a rich embodied language, but rather invite us to reconsider the dichotomies between mind and body, at stake in Cartesian philosophy, and between cognition and culture, central to today’s conceptualization of the mind as “extended” beyond the body. Deploying the marvelous in playful ways, the conteuses take embodiment beyond the limits of everyday mimesis.
Recommended Citation
Kukkonen, Karin. "Metamorphosis: Embodied Narrative at Play in the Seventeenth-Century Fairy Tale." Marvels & Tales 37.2 (2024). Web. <https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol37/iss2/3>.
