While we recognize Madame Le Prince's version of The Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete) as 'the original', we don't need much to find versions published several decades or several centuries before this French writer published 'her' fairy tale, which was actually abridged version of Madame Villeneuve's.
Of course, in all these variations we can also find many changed details which make all the difference. Even in the 20th and 21st century this story still inspires countless artists who try to use the well-known frame of the lady who helped the beast at the transformation in a human being to present their own views on contemporary society send their personal messages or express criticism to the established conditions in our relationships.
I dived several thousand years into the past to present you 10 popular versions of The Beauty and the Beast, each with a short comment and links to further exploration of the theme:
Did you know there are so many versions of The Beauty and the Beast?
Hi, Derdriu Marriner, you are opening a very complex topic. It's next to impossible to find the oldes fairy tale motif and often even to distinguish between myth and fairy tale as two literary / artistic approaches to the same story. Yet the most logical (to many, including me) is the definition of the plot structure, where 'the first' fairy tales are defiied by the structure - they are stories about the rise in society which is possible only by the magical help. This is actually kid of parody, offering the possibility of rising in the society where you life was very limited and determined by your birth and explaining that this possibility comes only from magic what actually denies the possibility.
This makes the birth of fairy tales similar to the birth of the novel where the first novel Don Quixote became a parody of thematically similar works.
Tolovaj, Thank you for the presentation and products.
Do we have any idea why the names that were chosen were selected in the more modern recyclings of older fairy tales, folklore, legends and myths?
What do you know or speculate as to why a story about a beauty and a beast would even arise?
Italian authorship is interesting -- at least to me, who first knew the French- and German-influenced stories -- in terms of the possible more ancient origins of fairy tales. May not the peninsula be seen as a vehicle for cultural legacies of ancient Celts, Egyptians, Greeks, Phoenicians and Trojans?
Hi, AngelaJohanson! Beauty and the Beast has a slightly different status than some other fairy tales which were frequently rewritten in Grimms' and Perrault's collections. One of the reasons is authorship - it has known autohors from the very beginning while for all Perrault's and Grimms' tales majority of scholars believed they come from oral tradition. Today we know all of them are written by more or less professional writers. Thanks for stopping by.
Although my mother read Fairy Tales and Aesop's Fables to us when we were kids, she never read the story of Beauty and the Beast.
Glad to hear that, sandyspider!
Interesting to find out all the different versions. I did not know this before.
Thanks, Veronica. I am glad to hear that.
Thank you. What a great piece of research. beauty and the beast is one of my favourite stories and certainly my favourite Disney .
I never knew all these versions and from your writing it is easy to see bhhow the best known story developed.
Thank you for this post.