While I was writing notes about this blog, I kept writing “faily” instead of “fairy” and did it so many times I decided to combine the two words and put “fairly” in the blog title just so I could legitimately use that “l”. This error led to a blog title, making me wonder how many silly mistakes have lead to interesting ideas or adventures (think “Diagon Alley” from Harry Potter or “Apprentice to a pirate” [pilot] from The Pirates of Penzance). Mostly, they probably just lead to new words or names, particularly if the error is a child mispronouncing a name.
But I’m rambling. Back to fairy tales. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale. I love watching the Disney adaption and listening to the delightful songs. Notice I said adaption. The story is actually based on the traditional French tale La Belle et la Bete. I hope this comes a surprise to someone because it did to me a few years ago when I first began researching the tale. I was curious about the enchantress and began looking for a written version. I discovered several versions but learned little about the enchantress.
I’m the type of person who likes to watch a movie and then read the book to fill in the details missing in the movie and just to savor the story. If you’re one of those too, I recommend the most well known of the traditional tales by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s (available here http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/beauty.html), Beauty by Robin McKinely, and The Merchant’s Daughter by Melanie Dickerson. I will talk more about these in future posts.
What do you like most about Disney’s Beauty and the Beast?” The romance, the characters, the music? Have you read the classic tale or one of its adaptions?