The Little Fays in the Air

<p>Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) wrote more tales featuring fays than any other French writer—nearly twice as many as Madame d’Aulnoy. However by the 1880s the genre had been largely misremembered and remained unread for a hundred years. It is therefore unsurprising that Mendès elected to draw his own imaginative raw materials from Shakespeare rather from than any original French sources.</p><p><br />Even though his tales feature a different species of fays Mendès’ belated contributions to the genre have closer affinities with it than he may have suspected. He is a deliberately subversive writer not only employing the narrative dynamic of his fantasies to insist that amour is far from perfect but frequently applauding certain aspects of that imperfection.</p><p><br />This volume provides a useful illustration of a significant if eccentric phase in the history of the genre.</p>