34 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2007), pp. 34–49. Copyright © 2007 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. C HARLOTTE T RINQUET On the Literary Origins of Folkloric Fairy Tales: A Comparison between Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Finette Cendron” and Frank Bourisaw’s “Belle Finette” This research traces the journey of a single fairy tale from its origins in Parisian salons three hundred years ago to an oral version told from memory by a French Missourian miner in 1934. Mme d’Aulnoy’s “Finette Cendron” has a peculiar history because it combines the plots of two tale types, “Le Petit Poucet” (“Little Thumbling,” ATU 327) and “Cendrillon” (“Cinderella,” ATU 510). Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Countess of Aulnoy, received a privilege to publish Les Contes des Fées (Tales of the Fairies; March 1697), which included “Finette Cendron,” only a few months after Charles Perrault obtained approval to publish his Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of Past Times; December 1696), and only one month before they were actually published. “Le Petit Poucet” and “Cendrillon” are missing from the 1695 manuscript of Contes de ma Mère L’Oye attributed to Perrault and bearing the arms of Mademoiselle. We do not know who wrote the tales first or if it was part of a salon exercise, but there is persuasive evidence that d’Aulnoy knew of Perrault’s tales when she wrote “Finette Cendron.” It is not rare to find tales in which types are combined in the European oral tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the specific case of “Finette Cendron,” the only currently known French oral versions stem from d’Aulnoy’s literary tale and come from North America: one incomplete version 02 (34-49).qxd 10/11/07 12:07 PM Page 34