Le Noble, Eustache
Le Noble, Eustache (1643–1711),French writer. After a tumultuous early life that included banishment, prison, and love affairs, Le Noble began a prolific writing career. He inserted two fairy tales, ‘L'Apprenti magicien’ (‘The Apprentice Magician’) and ‘L'Oiseau de vérité’ (‘The Truth Bird’), into a collection of intercalated stories, Le Gage touché (The Wager Paid, 1700). Like his contemporaries Mlle Lhéritier and Charles Perrault, Le Noble avows and idealizes the popular origins of his two fairy tales, both of which are narrated by young girls who in turn had been told these stories by their governesses. The plot of ‘The Apprentice Magician’ resembles somewhat ‘The Sorcerer's Apprentice’ in that an apprentice, Alexis, experiments with the magic of his master, La Rancune. Here the resemblance stops, for it is...
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