| Charles Perrault | |
|---|---|
 Perrault in an early 19th century engraved frontispiece[1] |
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| Born | 12 January 1628 Paris, France1 |
| Died | 16 May 1703 (aged 75) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Author |
| Genres | Fantasy |
| French literature |
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Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was a French author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales, offered as if they were pre-existing folk tales, include Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté (Puss in Boots), Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre (Cinderella), La Barbe bleue (Bluebeard), Le Petit Poucet (Hop o' My Thumb), Les Fées (Diamonds and Toads), La Marquise de Salusses ou la Patience de Griselidis (Patient Griselda), Les Souhaits ridicules (The Ridiculous Wishes), Peau d'Âne (Donkeyskin) and Riquet à la houppe (Ricky of the Tuft).[2] Perrault's most famous stories are still in print today and have been made into operas, ballets (e.g., Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty), plays, musicals, and films, both live-action and animation.
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Perrault was born in Paris to a wealthy bourgeois family, son of Pierre Perrault and Paquette Le Clerc. His brother, Claude Perrault, is remembered as the architect of the severe east range of the Louvre, built between 1665 and 1680. Charles attended the best schools and studied law before embarking on a career in government service. He took part in the creation of the Academy of Sciences as well as the restoration of the Academy of Painting. When the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres was founded in 1663, Perrault was appointed its secretary and served under Jean Baptiste Colbert, finance minister to King Louis XIV.[3] He married Marie Guichon, age 19, in 1672, who died in 1678 after giving birth to a daughter. The couple also had three sons. When Colbert died in 1683, he stopped receiving the pension given to him as a writer.
He was a major participant in the French Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes), which pitted supporters of the literature of Antiquity (the "Ancients") against supporters of the literature from the century of Louis XIV (the "Moderns"). He was on the side of the Moderns and wrote Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (The Century of Louis the Great, 1687) and Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes (Parallel between Ancients and Moderns, 1688–1692) where he attempted to prove the superiority of the literature of his century.
In 1695, when he was 67, he lost his post as secretary. He decided to dedicate himself to his children and published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé) (1697), with the subtitle: Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oie).[4] Its publication made him suddenly widely-known beyond his own circles and marked the beginnings of a new literary genre, the fairy tale. He had actually published it under the name of his last son (born in 1678), Pierre (Perrault) Darmancourt ("Armancourt" being the name of a property he bought for him), probably fearful of criticism from the "Ancients".[5] In the tales, he used images from around him, such as the Chateau Ussé for Sleeping Beauty and in Puss-in-Boots, the Marquis of the Château d'Oiron, and contrasted his folktale subject matter, with details and asides and subtext drawn from the world of fashion. He died in Paris in 1703 at age 75.
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"Charles Perrault". Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Charles_Perrault.
| Cultural offices | ||
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| Preceded by Jean de Montigny |
Seat 23 Académie française 1671–1703 |
Succeeded by Armand-Gaston-Maximilien de Rohan |
Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was an author of fairy stories. His collection Contes de ma mere l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose) appeared in 1697 and was translated into English by Robert Sambert in 1727. It is not clear how much he wrote the stories and how much was just recording folk stories.
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CHARLES PERRAULT (1628-1703), French author, was born in Paris on the 12th of January 1628. His father, Pierre Perrault, was a barrister, all of whose four sons were men of some distinction: Claude (1613-1688), the second, was by profession a physician, but became the architect of the Louvre, and translated Vitruvius (1673). Charles was brought up at the College de Beauvais, until he chose to quarrel with his masters, after which he was allowed to follow his own bent in the way of study. He took his degree of licencie en droit at Orleans in 1651, and was almost immediately called to the Paris bar, where, however, he practised for a very short time. In 1654 his brother became receiver-general of Paris, and made Charles his clerk. After nearly ten years of this employment he was, in 1663, chosen by Colbert as his secretary to assist and advise him in matters relating to the arts and sciences, not forgetting literature. He was controller-general of the department of public works, member of the commission that afterwards developed into the Academie des inscriptions, and in 1671 he was admitted to the Academie francaise. Perrault justified his election in several ways. One was the orderly arrangement of the business affairs of the Academy, another was the suggestion of the custom of holding public seances for the reception of candidates. Colbert's death in 1683 put an end to Perrault's official career, and he then gave himself up to literature, beginning with Saint Paulin eve'que de Nole, avec une epitre chretienne sur la penitence, et une ode aux nouveaux convertis. The famous dispute of the ancients and moderns arose from a poem on the Siecle de Louis le Grand (1687), read before the Academy by Perrault, on which Boileau commented in violent terms. Perrault had ideas and a will of his own, and he published (4 vols., 1688-1696) his Parallele des anciens et des modernes. The controversy that followed in its train raged hotly in France, passed thence to England, and in the days of Antoine Houdart de la Motte and Fenelon broke out again in the country of its origin. As far as Perrault is concerned he was inferior to his adversaries in learning, but decidedly superior to them in wit and politeness.
It is not known what drew Perrault to the composition, of the only works of his which are still read, but the taste for fairy stories and Oriental tales at court is noticed by Mme de Sevigne in 1676, and at the end of the 17th century gave rise to the fairy stories of Mlle L'Heritier de Villaudon, whose Bigarrures ingenieuses appeared in 1696, of Mme d'Aulnoy and others, while Antoine Galland's translation of the Thousand-and-One Nights belongs to the early years of the 18th century. The first of Perrault's contes, Griselidis, which is in verse, appeared in 1691, and was reprinted with Peau d'dne and Les Souhaits ridicules, also in verse, in a Recueil de pieces curieuses - published at the Hague in 1694. But Perrault was no poet, and the merit of these pieces is entirely obscured by that of the prose tales, La Belle au bois dormant, Petit chaperon rouge, La Barbe bleue, Le Chat botte, Les Fees, Cendrillon, Riquet a la houppe and Le Petit poucet, which appeared in a volume with 1697 on the title-page, and with the general title of Histoires ou contes du temps passe avec des moralites. The frontispiece contained a placard with the inscription, Contes de ma mere l'oie. In 1876 Paul Lacroix attributed the stories to the authorship of Perrault's son, P. Darmancour, who signed the dedication, and was then, according to Lacroix, nineteen years old. Andrew Lang has suggested that the son was a child, not a young man of nineteen, that he really wrote down the stories as he heard them, and that they were then edited by his father. This supposition would explain the mixture of naïveté and satire in the text. Perrault's other works include his Memoires (in which he was assisted by his brother Claude), giving much valuable information on Colbert's ministry; an Eneide travestie written in collaboration with his two brothers, and Les Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce siecle (2 vols., 1696-1700). He died on the 16th of May 1703, in Paris. His son, Perrault d'Arma-Court, was the author of a well-known book, Contes des fees, containing the story of Cinderella, &c.
Except the tales, Perrault's works have not recently been reprinted. Of these there are many modern editions, e.g. by Paul Lacroix (1876), and by A. Lefebvre ("Nouvelle collection Jannet," 1875); also Perrault's Popular Tales (Oxford,. 1888), which contains the French text edited by Andrew Lang, with an introduction, and an examination of the sources of each story. See also Hippolyte Rigault, Hist. de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (1856).
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| Charles Perrault | |
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| Died | |
| Occupation | Author |
Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was a French author who started the literary genre of fairy tales. His best known tales include the following:
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   | SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault - SurLaLune Fairy Tales: The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault |
| | Great resource to introduce young children to Perrault Fairy Tales. - Perrault Fairy Tales |
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