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As I began to write this review, I had just put down a newspaper that included a highly laudatory critique of the new Disney film, Beauty and the Beast. It recalled to my mind my adolescent pleasure at having seen the original Beauty and the Beast film by Jean Cocteau, with all its avant garde cinematographic touches, as well as my enjoyment of the recent popular television series. This coincidence
highlights what the author of this erudite, yet charming volume describes as the timelessness of this enchanting story.
The author, who has been a noted storyteller and librarian, is a member of the faculty of the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago. Her opus is a tour de force of exhaustive scholarship. The volume traces the story of Beauty and the Beast from early myth through folk tale, as first written down by Apuleius in the second century A.D. in the form of the romance of Cupid and Psyche, to literary fairy tale. While the Apuleius version was probably based on Greek legends, the author points out that similar stories influencing the many subsequent versions of the tale are found in Indian and African sources as well. A chapter in the book on literary traditions demonstrates the passage of the basic story through numerous versions, crystallizing in the most popular edition of Madame Le Prince de Beaumont in the middle of the eighteenth century. Over the centuries many changes appeared in the details of the tale as well as in the cast of characters, including elimination of certain characters and addition of others.
The text is copiously annotated; and there is a very helpful and comprehensive index, as well as an extensive bibliography which the author tells us cites only those editions actually discussed in the text. The book is charmingly illustrated: twenty-eight black and white drawings derived from a variety of editions are dispersed throughout; and there is a section containing twelve beautiful color plates from similarly diverse sou