Charles Perrault

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Charles Perrault, 1665

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Charles Perrault (January 12, 1628 – May 16, 1703) was a French author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales include Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), Le Chat botté (Puss-in-Boots), Cendrillon (Cinderella), Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard), Le Petit Poucet (Hop o' My Thumb), Les Fées (Diamonds and Toads), la patience de Grisélidis,Les Souhaits, Peau d'Âne and Ricquet à la houppe (Ricky of the Tuft). 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, including the highly-successful animated features Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty by The Walt Disney Company.

[edit] Biography

Perrault was born in Paris to a wealthy bourgeois family. 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 became Colbert's right hand.

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 tempted to prove the superiority of the literature of his century.

In 1695, at the age of 67, he lost both his post as secretary and his wife. 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'Oye). Its publication (slyly over the name of his 17-year-old son) made him suddenly widely-known beyond his own circles and marked the beginnings of a new literary genre, the fairy tale. He used images from around him, such as the Chateau Ussé for Sleeping Beauty and in Puss-in-Boots, the Marquis of the Chateau 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.

[edit] Fairy tales

Illustration de ma mère l'Oye, by Gustave Doré

Perrault's tales were mostly adapted from earlier folk tales (for example by Giambattista Basile) in the milieu of stylish literary salons in the 1690s, as a diversion from the more strenuous energy expended in the Battle of the Ancients and Moderns or the struggles of Jansenism. For amusement, someone would take a simple traditional tale, such as an old peasant woman might tell in the kitchens, and remake into in a "moralized," succinct, witty story purged of all coarseness. The salon audience, whose favorite literature (such as The Princess of Cleves) was full of high-flown sentiment, could appreciate such well-turned, short sermons.

Mythologist Jack Zipes has emphasized that these tales served the interests of the educated ruling classes. There was also a slightly subversive bite to the game as Perrault played it, a sense of an underlying, dry criticism of the aristocracy. Instead of wily peasants, as in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (not a Perrault tale), Perrault's stories feature princesses. But the subtext of his "Puss-in-Boots" is that the right clothes and a fine castle can make a "Marquis of Carabas" out of a miller's son.

Some of the droll fun of Perrault is in the mock-heroic contrast between the folktale context and fashionable life. In "Sleeping Beauty," once the Princess has fallen asleep, the good fairy arrives to set things to rights:

"on la vit au bout d'une heure arriver dans un chariot tout de feu, traîné par des dragons. Le roi lui alla présenter la main à la descente du chariot." ("One could see her in an hour's time, arriving in a fiery chariot drawn by dragons. The King went to hand her down from the chariot...")

In etiquette, the importance of a visitor was assessed by the distance the host proceeded from his private apartments to receive her. To hand her out of her carriage was a signal courtesy. But in the 1690s in French a "coach" (coche) had become a lumbering public conveyance, and those who knew better followed the example of the Précieuses, and always called a private carriage a "chariot". The contrast between the fiery dragon-drawn goddess-like arrival and the courtly yet familiar gesture of handing her down, caused a ripple of entertainment to pass through Perrault's assembled listeners, too refined to laugh out loud. Sometimes the skeptical undertone can be quite wicked.