Beauty and The Beast: Difference between revisions

'''''[httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20170212161259/http://surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/index.html Beauty And The Beast]''''' is an old French [[Fairy Tale]] which was, at the time, basically propaganda for [[Arranged Marriage]] using [[Rags to Royalty]]. Over time it has lost that meaning and become more romanticized. The original literary version of the story was written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, and was a sprawling and convoluted affair of [[Contrived Coincidence]]s and last-minute exposition, in which the Beast and Beauty were revealed to be [[Kissing Cousins|first cousins]], [[Half-Human Hybrid|half-fairy]] (on their mothers' side), and [[Everything's Better with Princesses|royalty]] (on their fathers' side). In 1756, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont condensed it to the version which is best known today (excepting Disney's). While presumably based on older tales, de Villeneuve's version is the first to use the ''[[Beauty and The Beast]]'' title.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 425C, which has a good number of variants (some found [https://web.archive.org/web/20170728093929/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/other.html here] and [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0425c.html here]), but in folklore it is less common than tales of 425A, such as "[[East of the Sun and West of the Moon]]" -- which it has nevertheless engulfed in popular culture.