Search

This study proposes to fill a gap in Grimm and folklore studies by staking out the landscape of the reception of the Brothers Grimm in nineteenthcentury France. While E. T. A. Hoffmann's tales received high literary acclaim, those by the Grimms seemed to make little impact on French literature of the period. However, among the French scholarly community, the Grimms were celebrated for their erudition, their integrity, and served as models for many scholars, from the historian Jules Michelet, who corresponded with Jacob Grimm in 1829, to the folklorist Emmanuel Cosquin, whose Contes populaires lorrains (1876) were inspired by the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Through an analysis of prefaces to French tale collections and to translations of Grimm tales, this essay looks at the impact the reception of the Grimms had on French conceptions of regionalist folklore and on the classical French fairy-tale tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]