Beauty and the Beast (Disney song) author Jerry Griswold believes that the song's opening line "tale as old as time" alludes to the fact that Belle's story is an ancient, timeless one "deliberately situated within the context of other traditional tales;" hers is simply "the newest incarnation" of it. "The Translation of the Songs in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast": an example of Manipulation" author Lucía Loureiro Porto agrees that although the song "does not tell any story, it is made of phrases that imply that love is as old a feeling as mankind." According to Perry Seibert of AllMovie, "Beauty and the Beast" is "as
Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast () is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in "La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins" ("The Young American and Marine Tales"). Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published first by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in "Magasin des enfants" ("Children's Collection") and by Andrew Lang in the "Blue Fairy Book" of his "Fairy Book" series in 1889, to produce the version(s) most commonly retold. It was influenced by some earlier stories, such as "Cupid and Psyche", "The Golden Ass" written