Graciosa and Percinet

About this episode

The episode discusses the story of Graciosa and Percinet, exploring themes of beauty and love in the context of 17th century French fairy tales.

We're back at the mercy of Madam d'Aulnoy again today with a story of witch-foiled love between a naive princess and a fairy prince, Graciosa and Percinet . Rooted in 17th century French theatricality, this one has been made into pantomimes, plays, works of art from across the centuries, and it's also slightly tamer in the Lang version than the original. Ultimately though, does it all just boil down to being sooo pretty that men even come out of the past to solve all your problems for you? And isn't it true that being ugly just inherently makes you the worst ?!? We really hope that you enjoy the story and our discussion round it, and we will speak to you again on Saturday with our show from last weekend recorded Live @ Ditchling Bookshop all about the folklore of East Sussex! If you are unfamiliar with the Lang Fairy Tales, these seminal collections were assembled between 1889 and 1913 by a married couple, folklorists and translators Nora and Andrew Lang, with most of the work done to compile them completed by Nora, also known as Leonora Blanche Alleyne. Assembled and published in 12 colour-coded "Fairy Books," the corpus the Langs put together included 798 fairy tales from…

People in this episode

Host: Three Ravens

Topics covered

• fairy tales
• 17th century
• French literature
• love stories
• folklore

Keywords

• Graciosa and Percinet
• Madam d'Aulnoy
• fairy prince
• Nora Lang
• Andrew Lang
• folklore
• 17th century

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Graciosa and Percinet, Lang Fairy Tales

Places: Ditchling Bookshop, East Sussex

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