Cinderella

A history presents everywhere in the world

As for much of stories belonging above all to the oral inheritance, this one is present in almost all the times and civilizations. There does not exist inevitably of direct link and identifiable between all these versions. One speaks then about " weave récurrente" probably related to mankind, with the questionings which challenge it since always.

Here the screen in question:

a child more or less rejected by his family which would like to make the same things as the other children of her entourage.
assistance of additives in its tour.
the preference of a person coveted by all for this forsaken child.
an instruction with not enfreindre (ex: twelve strokes of midnight)
the coveted person who ends up finding it after a test of identification.
triumph of the child on those which scorned it.

An ancient version of the tale

Among the multiple versions of the tale which the literary history retained there is this one, retranscribed at the 3rd century by Élien. The author tells the history of Rhodope, young person Greek embarked in Egypt like slave. One day, an eagle stole one of its slippers to him whereas it was with the bath. The bird dropped the slipper to the feet from the Pharaon Psammétique; this one, struck stupor by the delicacy of the slipper, promised to marry the woman to whom it belonged.

The name of heroin

Cendrillon is only the nickname of heroin, derived owing to the fact that it once rests in ash her finished work. One is unaware of his real name. It has a second nickname, that of Cucendron , that a Précieuse would have banished but that Charles Perrault chooses for better underlining the vulgarity of Javotte (the elder sister-in-law).

These two nicknames are derived from the word Cendre , which was always symbol of humiliation and penitence: the Bible and the Odyssée mention Jérémie rolling itself in ashes and Ulysses sitted top. As for the fathers of the Church, they show us the penitent ones covering the head of ashes or alive in ash. The nickname of Cinderella comes from an amalgam between the words ashes and slattern . In a similar Chinese tale of IXe century, the young girl names Ye Xian . This name approaches from a phonetic point of view of terms such as aschen (German), asan (in Sanskrit) ashes (English) and aescen (Anglo-Saxon) which means ashes . It is thus always about the same history.

But they will be primarily Charles Perrault in 1697 with Cendrillon or the small slipper of glass and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, in 1812 with Cendrillon who will have allowed the tale to be fixed in the form that one knows to him in the imaginary collective.

Nevertheless, its English name Cinderella results from a “too easy” translation of its original name; because as opposed to what that could let think, the exact English translation of “ash” is not cinder (which means in fact “ash”) but ash the Oxford English Dictionnary specifies besides that cinder does not have the same etymology as ash . Another difference lies in what indicates the ash and ash: Ash is a matter dusty and clean resulting from a combustion supplements, whereas the ash is a solid and dirty matter resulting from an incomplete combustion.

Comparison enters the written versions of Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers

The version of Charles Perrault, Cinderella or the Small slipper of glass , presents already an important difference with the version of the Grimm brothers: the prince tries to retain heroin by coating the pitch staircase. In other versions, heroin intentionally drops its slipper. It is observed here that these tales are much older than the current versions and than they were adapted for the children, whereas at the origin they were used to convey a certain number of principles. Other versions speak about a ring which would go only to heroin.

It is amusing to thus find similarities with other tales. One of course recognizes in the image of the ring the print of Peau of Ass . In certain versions, it is not a Godmother-fairy which helps heroin, but his/her late mother who appears to him then in the shape of an animal or a tree. However, heroin always receives from the assistance, and that in all the versions.

The majority of the versions result directly from the old popular traditions, and conceal much wisdom. It should be noted that even if the topic of the justice of the destiny is clearly identifiable in all the versions, the storytellers are not all of agreement on the second topic to approach, namely, the punishment or forgiveness. In the version of Charles Perrault, the sisters-in-law are forgiven by heroin, whereas in the version of the Grimm brothers, they are doubly punished; there is on the one hand the fruit of their mutilation meant to enable them to fit the slipper (in a Scottish version entitled Rashin Coatie , the mother-in-law mutilates itself her daughters) and on the other hand the fact that they finish blind.

Still the Grimm brothers are moderated compared to the first German version, in which the sisters-in-law are condemned to dance with metal shoes heated with the red until dead follows. Such a punishment (of which brutality recalls that the popular tales can have the moral vocation of the apologues and that they warn against temptations of the evil) is however in the White-Snow same Grimm brothers.

In the same way, the version of the Grimm brothers, as well as other older versions of the history, does not say absolutely that heroin must at all costs leave the ball before Minuit. It does not go there besides either to edge of a processed pumpkin fits with body some leads by a rat transformed into notching, drawn by six mice transformed into horses, and surrounded by six lizards transformed into lackey (at the time of Charles Perrault, the lackeys were often prone of joke because of their idleness. In the same way, the image of the lizard which remains motionless under the sun with often close to the people of lazy nature; from where this last metamorphosis.)

Psychoanalyze of this fairy tale

The image of the godmother-fairy which in the version of Charles Perrault absolutely holds so that heroin leaves the ball before midnight or else all that it him gave will become again like front, represents the image of the relative who absolutely holds so that his/her newborn does not trail outside late in the night, if not the things could go very badly for him.

Slipper of squirrel fur or glass ?

The slipper of Cinderella, is according to the versions, of Vair (fur of squirrel) and not of Verre . The edition of 1697 of the tales of Charles Perrault mentions well “the slipper of glass ”, given traditional in the folklore, since one finds slippers of glass or crystal in the Catalan tales, Scot, Irish. In other tales, the hero can have iron shoes, and White-Snow of the brothers Grimm a coffin of glass.

Honore de Balzac and Emile Littré wanted, in the name of the reason, to correct this C-W communication in squirrel fur (small-gray, squirrel). This correction does not bring any satisfaction, because in addition to the fact that never the shoes of small-gray in the past were not lined, such shoes would be quite inappropriate with a ball and the dance. Glass was, at the time of Perrault, for the people, a rare and invaluable material. It would be quite difficult to fit a slipper of glass if it were not adjusted exactly with the form and the size of the foot.

The modern direction of the word slipper (comfortable house shoe) influenced certainly in this direction, whereas in the beginning it is a shoe fine and elegant (the translations of the version of Grimm employ escarpin , and besides escarpins in gold , which should not be especially comfortable either).

An account of oral origin source of inspiration for all the artistic disciplines

The tale of Cinderella was propagated through the centuries and the continents. One counts today more than five hundred different versions. Thus, since the legend of Rhodope, while passing by its written setting to China at the 9th century, the Vietnamese tale of Bo Than where heroin requests Bouddha, the brittle She-cat of the Italian Giambattista Basile in 1634, or more recently a ballet of Rudolf Noureev, the musical comedy Cindy of Luc Plamondon, the Cendrillon of modern times in 2002.

See too

Cinderella

References

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