ABSTRACT
Through a close reading of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast”, published in the Magasin des enfants (‘Children’s Warehouse’, 1756) by governess-author Marie Leprince de Beaumont, as well as its later Russian reception, this chapter examines a number of developments central to the Enlightenment. During the eighteenth century, literature came to play a new role in society. Reading was often a collective act, reflecting a conception of human beings as fundamentally sociable, living in society and therefore requiring political organization. Literature’s aim was to help readers become better citizens and construct a better society. With literature’s increasing role in public life, new spaces such as coffeehouses arose where readers could meet to discuss literature and society, away from official political institutions: the so-called “public sphere”. These debates engendered new literary genres, including newspapers and the “bourgeois” genre of the novel. Public intellectuals such as the French philosophes dominated much debate, but an important role was also played by authors of pedagogical texts who sought to popularize knowledge among a broader audience. Accepted Enlightenment ideas and pedagogical insights were finally contested by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his pedagogical work Emile, ou de l’éducation (‘Emile, or On Education’, 1762), thereby announcing Romanticism.
