d'Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine - Anne L. Birberick (essay date 1999)
Anne L. Birberick (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: Birberick, Anne L. “Fatal Curiosity: d'Aulnoy's ‘Le Serpentin vert.’” Papers in French Seventeenth-Century Literature XXVI, no. 51 (1999): 283-88.
[In this essay, Birberick looks at d'Aulnoy's adaptation of the classical story of Psyche and Cupid in the fairy tale “Le serpentin vert.”]
The word curiosité calls to mind the idea of an intense, at times uncontrollable passion for knowledge. As the Dictionnaire universel informs us “[le curieux est] celuy qui veut tout savoir & tout apprendre”. Yet the desire to know and to learn is not always portrayed in a positive light, for the same dictionary also makes a distinction between two kinds of curiosity: “une bonne et une mauvaise”. In possessing the first kind, one seeks to understand “les merveilles de l'art & de la nature”; in possessing the second kind, one seeks to uncover “les secrets...
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