Charles perrault biography

Charles Perrault (January 12, – May 16, ) was a Frenchauthor who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale. In in Paris, Perrault published several tales from the oral tradition that he modified with his own embellishments. He was almost 70 years old when he wrote his Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (also known as Mother Goose Tales). They enjoyed instant success. The book contained eight fairy tales and he would eventually record a total of 11 fairy tales. All his tales were written in prose with a moral at the end.

The best known of these 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 dem 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 dem Griselidis (Patient Griselda),Les Souhaits ridicules (The R

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As a literary man from a bourgeois family from Touraine, Charles Perrault was the brother of Claude Perrault, a doctor and architect and member of the Académie des Sciences and the Building Council.

Admitted as a lawyer in , he became a clerk for his brother Pierre, the Receiver-General of Finance. In , Claude Perrault was appointed Secretary of the “Petite Académie” created by Colbert, which later became the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. The powerful Minister then became his protector, helping to bring about his appointment as Premier Commis des Bâtiments in and his election to the Académie Française in Perrault also oversaw the major construction works of the time, including the Louvre and Versailles, where he is credited with the idea and plans for the Maze Grove.

After his fall from grace following Colbert’s death in , Perrault left the “Petite Académie” to devote himself to his writing. He then initiated the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, pitting p

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While Perrault was writing within a tradition of adapting oral tales into literary retellings, however, his work remained much closer to the folk level than other literary retellings of the time. The Opies claim that Perrault "accepted the fairy tales at their own level," and Stith Thompson argues that Perrault's text is a fairly faithful reproduction of oral tales, in contrast to later French collections that were more clearly literary. In addition, his works were relatively short, so they were appropriate for a child audience in ways that longer fairy tales produced in the French court (as earlier in the Italian court of Basile's time) were not. It is this aspect of his work that most justifies identifying him as the first 'children's writer.'" ()

As the above quote mentions, Charles Perrault was a member of the French court, under the reign of Louis XIV. His tales were intended to amuse and educate the young ladies of the court. His stories often have morals, which deal with issue