Charles Perrault was a French author and member of the Académie française. He laid 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, Cendrillon, Le Chat
Botté, La Belle au bois dormant and La Barbe bleue. Many of Perrault's stories, which were
rewritten by the Brothers Grimm, continue to be printed and have been adapted to opera,
ballet, theatre, and film. Perrault was an influential figure in the 17th-century French
literary scene, and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients
and the Moderns.
Biography Charles Perrault was born in Paris to a wealthy
bourgeois family, the seventh child of Pierre Perrault and Paquette Le Clerc. He attended
good schools and studied law before embarking on a career in government service, following
in the footsteps of his father and older brother Jean.
He took part in the creation of the Academy of Sciences as well as the restoration of
the Academy of Painting. In 1654, he moved in with his brother Pierre, who had purchased
a post as the principal tax collector of the city of Paris. 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. Jean Chapelain, Amable de
Bourzeys, and Jacques Cassagne were also appointed. Using his influence as Colbert's administrative
aide, he was able to get his brother, Claude Perrault, employed as designer of the new
section of the Louvre, built between 1665 and 1680, to be overseen by Colbert. His design
was chosen over designs by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and François Mansart. One of the factors
leading to this choice included the fear of high costs, for which other architects were
infamous, and second was the personal antagonism between Bernini and leading members of Louis's
court, including Colbert and Perrault; King Louis himself maintained a public air of benevolence
towards Bernini, ordering the issuing of a royal bronze portrait medal in honor of the
artist in 1674. In 1668, Perrault wrote La Peinture to honor
the king's first painter, Charles Le Brun. He also wrote Courses de testes et de bague,
written to commemorate the 1662 celebrations staged by Louis for his mistress, Louise-Françoise
de La Baume le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière.
Perrault married Marie Guichon, age 19, in 1672; she died in 1678.
In 1669 Perrault advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains each representing one
of the fables of Aesop in the labyrinth of Versailles in the gardens of Versailles. The
work was carried out between 1672 and 1677. Water jets spurting from the animals mouths
were conceived to give the impression of speech between the creatures. There was a plaque
with a caption and a quatrain written by the poet Isaac de Benserade next to each fountain.
Perrault produced the guidebook for the labyrinth, Labyrinte de Versailles, printed at the royal
press, Paris, in 1677, and illustrated by Sebastien le Clerc.
Philippe Quinault, a longtime family friend of the Perraults, quickly gained a reputation
as the librettist for the new musical genre known as opera, collaborating with composer
Jean-Baptiste Lully. After Alceste was denounced by traditionalists who rejected it for deviating
from classical theater, Perrault wrote in response Critique de l'Opéra in which he
praised the merits of Alceste over the tragedy of the same name by Euripides. His treatise
was one of the first documents of the literary debate that was later to become known as the
Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Perrault was elected to the Académie française
in 1671 and initiated the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which pitted supporters of
the literature of Antiquity against supporters of the literature from the century of Louis
XIV. He was on the side of the Moderns and wrote Le Siècle de Louis le Grand and Parallèle
des Anciens et des Modernes where he attempted to prove the superiority of the literature
of his century. Le Siècle de Louis le Grand was written in celebration of Louis XIV's
recovery from a life-threatening operation. Perrault argued that because of Louis's enlightened
rule, the present age was superior in every respect to ancient times. He also claimed
that even modern French literature was superior to the works of antiquity, and that, after
all, even Homer nods. In 1682, Colbert gave his son, Jules-Armand,
marquis d'Ormoy, the same tasks as Perrault and forced him into retirement at the age
of fifty-six. Colbert would die the next year, and he stopped receiving the pension given
to him as a writer. Colbert's successor, François-Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvoi, who was jealous
of Colbert, quickly removed Perrault from his other appointments.
After this, in 1686, Perrault decided to write epic poetry and show his genuine devotion
to Christianity, writing Saint Paulin, évêque de Nôle. Just like Jean Chapelain's La Pucelle,
ou la France délivrée, an epic poem about Joan of Arc, Perrault became a target of mockery
from Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux. Charles Perrault died in Paris in 1703 at
age 75. Tales of Mother Goose
In 1695, when he was 67, Perrault lost his post as secretary. He decided to dedicate
himself to his children. In 1697 he published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals,
subtitled Tales of Mother Goose. Its publication made him suddenly widely known beyond his
own circles. He is often credited as the founder of the modern fairy tale genre, yet his work
reflects awareness of earlier fairy tales written in the salons, most notably by Marie-Catherine
Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, who coined the phrase "fairy tale" and was
writing tales as early as 1690. Even so, many of the most well-known tales that we hear
today, such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, are told as he wrote them. He had actually
published his collection under the name of his last son, Pierre Darmancourt, probably
fearful of criticism from the "Ancients". In the tales, he used 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 contrasted his folktale subject matter, with details and asides and
subtext drawn from the world of fashion. Following up on these tales, he translated the Fabulae
Centum of the Latin poet Gabriele Faerno into French verse in 1699.
See also
Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, Charles Perrault's niece
Madame d'Aulnoy The Brothers Grimm retold their own versions
of some of Perrault's fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen, who continued the
fairy tale genre in the 19th century References
Further reading Zarucchi, Jeanne Morgan, Seventeenth-Century
French Writers, Detroit: Gale, ISBN 978-0-7876-6012-3 Perrault, Charles, Les hommes illustres qui
ont paru en France pendant ce siècle - avec leur portraits au naturel 1, Paris
Perrault, Charles, Les hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce siècle - avec
leur portraits au naturel 2, Paris Ozell, John, Characters historical panegyrical
of the Greatest men that have appeared in France during the last century 1704–5
vol. 1, [vol. 2]
External links Media related to Charles Perrault at Wikimedia
Commons "Charles Perrault". Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. Works by Charles Perrault at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Charles Perrault at Internet Archive
Works by Charles Perrault at LibriVox Charles Perrault at the Internet Speculative
Fiction Database Charles Perrault's fairy tales at World of
tales SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: Fairy Tales of
Charles Perrault (French) Charles Perrault, his work in audio
version Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
The Tales of Mother Goose - Illustrated fairy Tales of Charles Perrault