Chemins du patrimoine en Finistère

Eat or be eaten? This is a question that can often be read between the lines of popular story tales, whether they’re from Brittany or Canada. The exhibition-visit available at the Manoir de Kernault takes its inspiration from a rich repertoire of stories from both regions and develops comparisons in order to better understand the relationship their authors and heroes have with food. Storytellers spin their yarns against the backdrop of the manor, thereby allowing the public to see this site in a new perspective and to discover its kitchens, orchard and fishpond guided by Snow White’s apple, Tom Thumb’s breadcrumbs and a crafty ogre’s ferocious appetite…
The Manoir de Kernault, dedicated to the spoken word and the imagination, promises to transport the public to the fantastic world of fairytales. Eat or be eaten, that is the question that will be explored in conjunction with the ‘Cooking and culture’ theme that forms part of this year’s cultural programme. Food, i.e., Snow White’s apple, Tom Thumb’s bread or Jack’s magic beans all play an important role in popular stories. But what do they tell us about our past and our relationship to food?
From an initial lack of food, including the ogre’s kitchen or the wolf’s jaws, to the final resolution with a large banquet, visitors discover various fairytales in the different rooms of the residence. The mastery of the storytellers and the evocative setting bring the stories to life with particular gusto.
Food is a theme that is particularly relevant to this former agricultural estate where cider is still produced and where one can find a large granary, a fishpond where eels were once bred and of course, as with any dwelling worthy of the status of château, a kitchen, dining room and wine cellars.
The exhibition-visit takes its inspiration from the rich repertoire of French-language fairytales from Canada, a distant country whose stories are not unlike our own, even if they reflect different practices. Moreover, Canada shares a similar interest in the collection of oral literature like Brittany, a region that has been pioneering in this regard.
Canada’s French-language fairytales enter into a dialogue with some very well-known French tales, such as Perrault’s and some lesser-known stories taken from the Breton corpus. Here, we have the encounter between two imaginary worlds and cultures that are often considered to be ‘related’. The overall effect voices one of the primary concerns of humanity – the hunt for food – accompanied by a shared imaginary world filled with scary wolves and ogres, magic foods and cooking utensils, gluttony, etc.