Charles Perrault
French author
1628 CE to 1703 CE
Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) is a French author and member of the Académie française.
He lays the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales.
The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), Cendrillon (Cinderella), Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots) and La Barbe bleue (Bluebeard).
Many of Perrault's stories are rewritten by the Brothers Grimm, continue to be printed and have been adapted to opera, ballet (such as Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty), theater, and film (Disney).
Perrault is an influential figure in the 17th century French literary scene, and is the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.
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Charles Perrault, having lost his post as secretary to the influential minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1695, when he was sixty-seven, has decided to dedicate himself to his children.
At a time when the French court values embellishments and elaboration, Perrault modifies simple plots, embellishes the language, and writes for an audience of the nobility and aristocracy.
His stories were either original literary fairy tales, modified from commonly known stories or based on stories written by earlier writers such as Boccaccio.
Thematically, the stories support Perrault's belief that nobility is superior to the peasant class; moreover many of his stories show an adherence to Catholic beliefs, such as those in which a woman must undergo purification from sin and repentance before reintegration into society.
In 1694, Perrault had written in verse form three stories, "Griselidis", "The Ridiculous Wishes", and "Donkeyskin", published in a single volume and republished a year later in a volume to which he added a preface.
A further edition containing eight more stories, titled Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories of Times Past) with the subtitle Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose Stories), is published in 1697.
The eight new stories written for the 1697 edition are written in prose and combined with the three tales previously written in verse: "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Bluebeard", "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots", "Diamonds and Toads", "Cinderella", "Riquet with the Tuft", and "Hop o' My Thumb", "Griselidis" (La Patience de Grisélidis), "The Ridiculous Wishes" (Les Souhaits ridicules), "Donkeyskin" (Peau d'Ane) and "Diamonds and Toads" (Les Fées).
Three of the stories were first published in the elegant literary magazine Mercure galant: "Griselidis" and "Suhait" in 1693, and "Sleeping Beauty" in 1696.
Its publication makes Perrault suddenly widely known beyond his own circles and marks the beginnings of a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with many of the most well-known tales, such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood.
He has 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".
In the tales, he uses images from around him, such as the Chateau Ussé for The Sleeping Beauty and in Puss in Boots, the Marquis of the Château d'Oiron, and contrasts his folk tale subject matter with details and asides and subtext drawn from the world of fashion.