Forms of the Marvelous: The Eighteenth-Century merveilleux

This chapter traces how writers, dramatists, and critics transformed the fairy tale into one of the most successful and cosmopolitan forms that became a common point of reference and convergence of many other literary genres. It surveys the forms the marvelous took and it explores which literary, dramaturgical, socio-political innovations and developments the genre allowed to introduce when it was adapted into other media and forms. Although the fairy tale enjoyed enduring popularity that acquired transnational dimensions, my focus here is on France, Italy, and Russia, centers whose primacy for the fairy-tale tradition was well-established. The examples discussed herein are drawn from the well-known works of the leading exponents of the fairy-tale genre that have been chosen for the resonance they produced throughout the eighteenth century.