When (and where) do you live, Cinderella? Cultural Shifts in Polish Translations and Adaptations of Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales

Folk and fairy tales are usually set in a particularly elusive and indefinite spatio-temporal context; they are generally perceived as “structures” rather than proper “texts” and therefore are continually rewritten, retold and reshaped according to the needs of each historical epoch. In the transition from folk tale to literary tale however, the situation becomes more complicated: such works as Perrault’s classic fairy tales are considered part of the canon of French and European literature and as such they have achieved – in theory – the status of “permanent” classical texts, deeply rooted in their historical context. However, the analysis of several nineteenth- and twentieth-century Polish translations and adaptations of Cinderella and other Perrault’s tales brings to light a disconcerting fact: all such texts undergo profound distortions and rearrangements that more often than not produce radical shifts in the tale’s cultural dimension. While the practice of adjustments and retouches is generally quite common in the translation of fairy tales, it seems that in Poland this practise has gone much farther than in any other European country. What reasons lie behind this curious “refusal” of the original Perrault’s Contes? I argue that two main motives are to be found in the clash between French and Polish historical context and in the long-established strategy of “polonisation” of translated literature, a strategy, which in the children’s literature has become even more pronounced due to its pedagogical and patriotic purposes.