Capuchinho Vermelho: I: Perrault e a tradição oral (em torno dum tema de incesto)

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Francisco Vaz da
• Data de Publicação: 1996
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/1282

This paper examins the relationship between Perrault’s Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and the oral tradition of Little Red Riding Hood. Our point of departure is Paul Delarue’s statement that Perrault stayed close to the oral tradition of tale T.333, even though he omitted crucial details and added unimportant ones. This analysis intends to show that the “omissions” and “additions” made by Perrault are in fact thematic transformations through which the Specialist careffully followed the meaning of the traditional motifs in the very act of modifying them. The comparison between the 17th century literary text and the oral variants collected by the modern folklorists reveals, in fact, Perrault’s skillful manipulation of symbols related to a strange traditional story of incest in shades of feminine blood, centred in a double act of devoration in an “anti-baptismal” register, and thought of in terms of lunpine appetite. The revelation of this semantic universe in Le Petit Chaperon Rouge invites looking at Perrault’s text as a legitimate transformation within the conceptual frame of a singular theme constantly recreated through the diversity of the traditional narratives which — as we can see — cannot be reduced to the universe of oral narratives.