Les visages de la Barbe bleue.

Regarded as a solar myth or as an avatar of the medieval legend of Saint Trophime, historically identified with Gilles de Rais or with Guillaume de Flavy, Perrault's Bluebeard, 'the sexually ambiguous' hero (Mothe), has been simultaneously psychoanalyzed, absolved from his crimes and deemed to be a victim of his wives, but above all he has constantly been transformed by scholars into a good excuse to talk about something else, sometimes even altering the original meaning of the tale. In this paper we propose to show how Perrault was able to intimately blend together, without dissonance or strain, two traditional literary genres: the conte licencieux and the gnomic tale, thus creating a little literary miracle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]