Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault (Paris, January 12, 1628-ibid., May 16, 1703) was a French writer, best known for having given literary form to classic children's stories such as Piel Donkey, Thumbelina, Bluebeard, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood and Puss in Boots, tempering in many cases the harshness of the oral versions, most of their stories are children's and fantasy.

Biography

Charles Perrault was born on January 12, 1628 in the city of Paris. He had a twin brother, François, who died at six months of life. His father was a lawyer in Parliament, she made it possible for him to have a good childhood and attend the best schools of the time. He entered the Beauvais college in 1637, where he discovered his facility for dead languages.

From 1643 he began to study law. Undoubtedly clever and with a notorious sense of practicality, he receives the protection of his older brother Pierre, who was general collector . In 1654 he is appointed civil servant to work in the government service. He participated in the creation of the Academy of Sciences and in the restoration of the Academy of Painting. He never fought against the system, which made it easier for him to survive in a France that was very politically convulsed and in which the favorites fell all too often.

His life, always devoted to study, left little room for fantasy. In his first book The walls of Troy (1661), nothing childish is shown. This is because throughout his bureaucratic and boring existence as a privileged official, what he wrote the most were odes, speeches, dialogues, poems and works that flattered the king and princes, which earned him a life full of honors., which he knew how to take advantage of.

He was secretary of the French Academy from 1663, becoming the protégé of Colbert, the famous adviser of Louis XIV, until in 1665 when he progressed in his labor category becoming the first of the royal civil servants, which means great benefits for him. He extended his good fortune to his relatives, getting in 1667 that the plans with which the King's Observatory is built belong to his brother Claude.

He was made an academic in 1671; and the following year 1672 he married Marie Guichon . He is elected chancellor of the Academy and in 1673 he becomes its librarian. That same year his first child, a girl, is born, and then, in the interval from 1675 to 1678, he has three more children, but his wife dies after the birth of the last one.

In 1680, Perrault had to cede his privileged position as first civil servant to Colbert's son. Later on, others of a literary-scholarly nature were added to these troubles, such as the famous controversy between the ancients and the moderns that distanced him from Boileau, due to a divergence of opinions and which resulted in his critical work: Parallel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which the Arts and Sciences are contemplated.

In 1687 he wrote the poem The Century of Louis the Great and, in 1688, Comparison Between Ancient and Modern, a plea for and against modern writers. of the traditionalists, following the "Dispute between ancient and modern" at the French Academy.

The author wrote a total of 46 works, eight of them published posthumously, including Memories of my life. With the exception of children's stories, all his work is composed mostly of praise to the King of France.

He died on May 16, 1703 in his house on rue de l'Estrapade in Montagne Saint Genevieve (Paris) and is buried the following day in the church of Saint Benedict Betourné in the presence of his son Charles Perrault.

Perrault's tales

In 1683, at the age of 55, Perrault, after losing his position at the Academy and his wife at the same time, decides to dedicate himself to the education of his children and writes Tales of Yesteryear, where his most famous tales appear. This collection, published in 1697 when he was 69 years old, was subtitled "Tales of Mother Goose"; and they are stories:

• so much inspiration in oral tradition — Mama Ganso / Mama Oca (“Mère l’Hey»), which represents the nanny who tells stories to children,
• as a literary (Boccaccio had already written a first version of Grisélidis in the Decameron).
• Or legends of exotic origin.

To this already existing material, Perrault adds a moral that makes them useful "for the education of young girls": At the end of each story, the author includes a moral teaching regarding the content of each story, to highlight the values of the story. same.

The characters he uses are fairies, ogres, talking animals, witches, princesses and princes enchanted, among others. Fairy tales were all the rage in mundane salons; high society attended popular evenings and took note of the stories that were made. His publication began to make him famous among his acquaintances and meant the beginning of a new style of literature: fairy tales.

For his stories, Perrault resorted to landscapes that were familiar to him, such as the castle of Ussé, which inspired the tale of Sleeping Beauty, or a small forest where the tale was inspired. from ''Little Red Hood''.

Chronology of editions

The Sleeping Beauty of the Forest.

Cinderella.

• In 1691, Perrault publishes a "novel" in verse: Grisélidis (in French, The Marquise of Salusses ou the Patience of Griselidis).
• In 1693, he published his first “Verse Story” in the magazine Mercure Galant: The ridiculous wishes (Les Souhaits ridicules).
• In 1694, it brings together in the same edition the two previous works with another, the second "count in verse": Skin ass (Peau d'âne).
• In 1696 published in Mercure Galant a prose story: The Sleeping Beauty of the Forest (La Belle au bois dormant).
• The following year, 1697, Claude Barbin's printing press release a volume titled Counts of old (Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités). This volume contains the following eight prose stories:

1. The Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant)
2. Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon rouge)
3. Blue bar (The Barbe bleue)
4. The Cat with Boots (Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté)
5. Fairy (Les Fées)
6. Cinderella (Cendrillon ou la Petite Pantoufle de verre "I'll see.» is the exact graph that appears in the original edition of 1697—)
7. Riddle the coke (Riquet à la houppe)
8. Pulgarcito (Le Petit Poucet)

This collection suffered two forgeries that same year: the edition by Jacques Desbordes, in Amsterdam, Histoire ou Contes du temps passé. Avec Moralites and the edition of the Prince of Dombes, in Trévoux, Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. Avec des Moralites.

Authorship of the Stories

Perrault published the collection of short stories under the name of his third son, Pierre Darmancour, or d'Armancour, who, born in 1678, aspired to be secretary to Mademoiselle, niece of Louis XIV, to whom the book is dedicated. book.

In addition, Perrault wanted to avoid a new controversy between "the ancients and the moderns" (he was the leader of the latter) that could arise when publishing his Tales. He had just reconciled with Boileau in 1694. Thus, the name of his son came in handy to prevent further fighting.

However, controversy over the attribution of the Prose Tales to his son remains, based on the fact that they were too primitive and immoral to come from the father's pen. it is now quite disputed, with detailed proof, for example, by Ute Heidmann and Jean-Michel Adam.

Inspiration and subsequent alteration of Perrault's tales

Perrault conceived his stories as a disagreement with the position of the «Ancients» and within a dialogue with his contemporaries: La Fontaine and Fénelon, Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier and Catherine Bernard.

It has been shown that he promoted a certain use of Latin texts and that he was frequently inspired by Virgil and Apuleius, as well as Straparola (The Pleasant Nights) and Basile (Pentameron).

According to Marc Soriano, Perrault is "the most underestimated of the classics": everyone knows his stories, but very few know "his" version of the stories. For example, for Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother end up devoured by the wolf; the later version in which the hunter rescues them from the womb is by the Brothers Grimm. Similarly, in the Disney version the prince wakes up Sleeping Beauty with a kiss (it also comes from the Grimm version); for Perrault, she awakens herself when the prince kneels before her. Likewise, it has long been doubted whether Cinderella's famous little slipper was really made of glass (in French, "verre") or of leather (in French, "vair" refers to petit skin]. -gray of various squirrels). It was in fact Balzac who, to make Perrault's stories reasonable, modified the story by stating that it was about a little leather shoe. This idea was taken up by Littré in his famous dictionary. Obviously, it is a glass slipper.

Time has preferred to stay only with what Perrault called the "plain tale", that is, the fairy tale, forgetting the morals. Perrault's morals are as essential to his stories as those of La Fontaine's Fables.

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