ABSTRACT
The folk and fairy tales in French of West Africa and the Caribbean can usefully be considered together, in spite of the undeniable differences between them, because of the historical and cultural links they share. Beginning in the seventeenth century, French interest in West Africa began in earnest as it developed plantation colonies, with slaves, in the Caribbean. The West African captives who made the Middle Passage destined for slavery in French colonies of the Caribbean brought with them storytelling traditions that made their way, albeit transformed, into Creole oral traditions. The English expression “folk and fairy tales” (FFT) gives a better sense than “fairy tale” alone of the variety of narratives from West Africa and the Caribbean that have been translated and/or adapted into French. The written FFTs of the Francophone Caribbean derive from the oral storytelling traditions of the French possessions in the Lesser Antilles.
