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Paper short abstract

This paper will explore how representations of forests in d'Aulnoy's fairy tales reflect the neo-classical ideal of nature perfected by culture but also approximate Donna Haraway’s notion of “natureculture,” the recognition that nature and culture are intertwined and mutually constitutive.

Paper long abstract

D’Aulnoy’s Forests and the Nature/Culture Divide

Lewis C. Seifert

Brown University

In Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, Robert Pogue Harrison argues that Western civilizations have defined themselves against forests, making them the antithesis of culture. Many Western European fairy tales, of course, substantiate this claim: forests are often spaces where heroes and heroines, having left home, encounter antagonists or accomplish difficult tasks which, once overcome, allow them to leave the forest and return to (human) culture set aright.

The contes de fées of late 17th-century France can be seen to both confirm and complicate this scenario. On the one hand, the fairy tales of Charles Perrault accentuate the divide between culture as a domesticated space and the forest as threat to or a retreat from that space. On the other hand, the forests in fairy tales by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy blur the boundaries between nature and culture. Even as forests unleash existential threats to human protagonists, they are also frequently pastoral retreats that are the product of the magical melding of culture with nature. Focusing on Gracieuse et Percinet, La Princesse Printanière, La Biche au bois, and Le Prince Marcassin, this paper will explore how the representation of the forest reflects the neo-classical ideal of nature perfected by culture, but also how, at moments, d’Aulnoy’s forests approximate Donna Haraway’s notion of “natureculture,” the recognition that nature and culture are mutually constitutive. In various ways, these forests lay bare the interconnections between nature and culture, leaving human protagonists and human culture transformed.