PROSTOR KAO MORALNA KATEGORIJA U BAJKAMA ŽANE MARI LEPRENS DE BOMON

In the educational and pedagogical framework of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, a representative of religious Enlightenment philosophy, fairy tales played a crucial role. Drawing on the pedagogical potential of the genre, this French writer was the first to adapt fairy tales for children and use them as a tool for instruction. In Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tales, spatial categories contribute to the definition of a moral value system, conveying a clear message about what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad. The system of binary oppositions inherent in all fairy tales is further enriched here by pairs related to the cultural and historical context in which these tales emerged — most notably, the juxtaposition with village and city. The conventional spaces of fairy tales (forest, castle, palace, house) in Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s work acquire social meaning at the expense of the mythical, making the moral message more accessible and transparent. In the interplay between the archetypal and the historical, as well as in the specific encoding of the work’s educational message through the language of spatial relationships, one can trace a connection between these fairy tales and medieval chivalric romances — the most widely read and popular form of didactic literature in the Middle Ages.