On January 12, 1628, labor began in Paquette Le Clerc. The Perrault couple had already raised four sons and were expecting a girl this time. However, twins were born. The father decided to name them in honor of the French kings - Charles and Francois. But six months later Francois died. The death of one twin, even in early childhood, becomes a deep trauma for the other. Charles grew up withdrawn, afraid of everything, alienated from people. But his father still decided to give him an education, and 8-year-old Charles entered Beauvais College.
Studying turned out to be a real nightmare. The teachers considered the guy an idiot, and his classmates avoided him. They were afraid to hurt him because his older brothers studied with him. But his friend got it. He was fat, they mocked and ridiculed him. One day, three teenagers pushed the guy into a puddle and started beating him. Charles could not stand it and rushed at them. He bit, scratched and pulled out hair. The guys were confused. They belonged to the most noble families of France and were not used to being given such a rebuff. The next morning, for the first time in five years, Charles raised his hand in class. To the surprise of his teacher and classmates, he answered the lesson in brilliant Latin. And got the highest score. Perrault became so bold that he later even began to argue with the teacher. And when he was forbidden to take part in disputes, he and a friend dropped out of college and continued to study on their own.
Charles successfully graduated from university and became a lawyer. But he didn’t practice for long. “I would willingly burn all the court files,” he said. “There’s nothing better in the world than to reduce the number of lawsuits.” Perrault began writing poems. Some were dedicated to the queen. The 25-year-old lawyer was noticed at court, and Finance Minister Nicolas Fouquet invited Perrault to work. Charles collected taxes and wrote poems. They were printed in 1653. He met politicians and writers, attended balls and social salons. He wrote light comedies, poems and tragedies. A few years later he was already a famous writer. But subsequently his patron fell out of favor. Fouquet was accused of conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Charles managed to stay at court. The new minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, liked him, and he made him his first secretary. Colbert knew very well the whims and weaknesses of his monarch. He created a special “bureau”, which was supposed to glorify Louis XIV, and appointed Charles as its chairman. Perrault became in charge of royal construction and tapestry workshops. Sometimes he himself developed designs and came up with mottos and slogans for triumphal arches. The king was pleased, and even sometimes consulted with Charles. Perrault became rich and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He acquired personal apartments in the Louvre and Versailles, eight houses in Paris, and the castle of Rosier.
In 1672, 44-year-old Charles married the 19-year-old daughter of the royal treasurer, Marie Guichon. Until then, he avoided women because of his innate shyness. But the girl gave a good dowry, and he was tempted to pool capital. Charles fell in love with his wife after the wedding. “You are my magical princess,” he loved to tell her. Marie bore him three sons. But in October 1678 she fell ill with smallpox and died. Perrault took the loss seriously. He left the court and decided to devote himself to children. Charles himself took up their upbringing and education.
At 67, I decided to write some fairy tales with moral instructions for them. Usually he didn’t come up with them himself: some he remembered from childhood, others were collected by his 15-year-old son Pierre. He was the first to publish the fairy tales “Griselda”, “Funny Desires” and “Donkey Skin”. And in 1697 he published the collection “Tales of Mother Goose, or Tales and Tales of Past Times with Moral Instructions.” It included “Sleeping Beauty”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Bluebeard”, “Puss in Boots”, “Cinderella”, “Rikke with the Tuft” and “Tom Thumb”. Up to 50 books were sold every day in Claude Barbin's Parisian store! Over the course of a year, the publisher repeated the circulation three times.
The first editions were signed with Pierre's name. Everyone knew Charles as a serious writer, and he was afraid that now he would be laughed at. In addition, he wanted to glorify his beloved son and help him make a career at court. 19-year-old Pierre received a noble title and entered the circle of close friends of the princess. However, six months later, in a street fight, he stabbed to death a man of his own age, the son of a carpenter. Pierre was arrested, and the mother of the murdered man began a lawsuit against him. Perrault barely managed to get his son out of prison. He paid the woman 2,079 livres, and Pierre was released. His father bought him the rank of lieutenant in the royal regiment, and he went to the front. On May 2, 1700, he died in battle. Charles took the tragedy seriously. He died on May 16, 1703.
The World Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales calls Perrault the kindest storyteller in history. Apparently, he was the first to create real children's fairy tales - good ones and with a happy ending. After all, the folk stories he used were quite cruel. In “Cinderella,” for example, the stepmother cuts off the girl’s legs so that she does not run to the ball. And Sleeping Beauty wakes up not from a kiss, but from the birth of two children, whom the handsome prince “gave” to her and went to himself. “Little Red Riding Hood” also ends tragically, and the Brothers Grimm “wrote a happy ending” for her. The authors of the website of the European Society for the Protection of Wolves from Little Red Riding Hood claim that because of this fairy tale, these predators were exterminated in Europe.
I.S. TurgenevPerrault's Fairy Tales (1867)
Perrault's fairy tales are especially popular throughout Europe; Russian children know them relatively less, which is probably due to the lack of good translations and publications. Indeed, despite their somewhat scrupulous Old French grace, Perrault's fairy tales deserve an honorable place in children's literature. They are cheerful, entertaining, relaxed, not burdened with either unnecessary morality or authorial pretension; the spirit of folk poetry that once created them is still felt in them; they contain precisely that mixture of the incomprehensibly miraculous and the everyday-simple, the sublime and the funny, which constitutes the hallmark of real fairy-tale fiction. Our positive and enlightened time is beginning to abound with positive and enlightened people who do not like precisely this admixture of the miraculous: raising a child, according to their concepts, should be not only an important matter, but also a serious one, and instead of fairy tales, he should be given small geological and physiological treatises. Be that as it may, it seems to us very difficult and hardly useful for the time being to banish everything magical and wonderful, to leave the young imagination without food, to replace a fairy tale with a story. The child undoubtedly needs a teacher, and he also needs a nanny.
The witty publisher of Perrault's fairy tales, J. Getzel, known in literature under the pseudonym P. Stahl, in his preface notes very rightly that one should not be afraid of the miraculous for children. Not to mention the fact that many of them do not allow themselves to be completely deceived and, amused by the beauty and cuteness of their toy, in fact know very firmly that this never happened (remember, gentlemen, how you rode on sticks, because you you knew that these were not horses under you, but the case still turned out to be completely believable and the pleasure was excellent); but even those children (and these are for the most part the most gifted and intelligent heads) who unconditionally believe in all the miracles of a fairy tale are very good at immediately renouncing this belief as soon as the hour comes. Children, like adults, take from books only what they need and as long as they need it. Goetzel is right: the dangers and difficulties of child education do not lie in this direction. We have just said that we believe that one of the reasons for the relative obscurity of Perrault’s fairy tales is the lack of good translations and editions. It is left to the public to judge how satisfactory our translation is; As for this publication, there has never been anything like it, not only here in Russia, but also abroad; and the name of the brilliant draftsman Gustav Doré has become too loud and does not need any praise.
Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628 and died there in 1697.
In 1693, being sixty-five years old, he published the first edition of his fairy tales Contes de ma me`re L`Oie under the name of his eleven-year-old son and written for him.
Charles Perrault should not be confused with his brother, Claudius, a physician and architect, author of the Louvre Colonnade. The article was written by I.S. Turgenev for the publication: "Perrault's Fairy Tales. Translation from French by Ivan Turgenev. Drawings by Gustav Doré. St. Petersburg, M.O. Wolf Publishing House, 1866."
The writer worked on the translation for about two years and was dissatisfied with it, as evidenced by one of his letters. Nevertheless, this was, most likely, the best translation of Perrault's Fairy Tales into Russian for the entire period of their publication in Russia (almost a hundred years). And the magnificent illustrations by G. Doré, seen for the first time by our readers, gave the publication a special charm. Over the past one hundred and forty years, literary historians have clarified the dates of the life and work of the great storyteller - C. Perrault died in 1703, and the first edition of his Fairy Tales was published in 1697.
But I.S. Turgenev’s thoughts about fairy-tale fiction, about the attitude of children towards it and about “Tales of Mother Goose”, which have survived centuries, are not at all outdated. The warning remains relevant: do not confuse Charles Perrault with his brother Claudius, a physician and architect. Unfortunately, in several publications from 1993-2006 that published articles about Charles Perrault, he was credited with knowledge in medicine and construction. Only in the Illustrated Encyclopedia "Russica. (History. 16-18 centuries)" there are a few words about the storyteller's brothers. Claude Perrault was a physician, mathematician, physicist and famous architect, and Nicolas was a doctor of theology.
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Perrault's great merit is that he selected several stories from the mass of folk tales and recorded their plot, which had not yet become final. He gave them a tone, a climate, a style that was characteristic of the 17th century, and yet very personal.
Among the storytellers who “legalized” the fairy tale in serious literature, the very first and honorable place is given to the French writer Charles Perrault. Few of our contemporaries know that Perrault was a venerable poet of his time, an academician of the French Academy, and the author of famous scientific works. But it was not his thick, serious books that brought him worldwide fame and recognition from his descendants, but his beautiful fairy tales “Cinderella”, “Puss in Boots”, “Bluebeard”.
One day two boys came to the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. It was a weekday morning. These were two students from Beauvais College. One of them, Charles, was driven out of class, the second, Borain, followed his friend. The boys sat down on a bench and began to discuss the current situation - what to do next. They knew one thing for sure: they would never return to the boring college. But you need to study. Charles heard this from his childhood from his father, who was a lawyer at the Paris Parliament. And his mother was an educated woman; she herself taught her sons to read and write. When Charles entered college at the age of eight and a half, his father checked his lessons every day; he had great respect for books, learning, and literature. But only at home, with your father and brothers, you could argue, defend your point of view, but in college you had to cram, you just had to repeat after the teacher, and God forbid you argue with him. For these arguments, Charles was kicked out of class.
No, never set foot in the disgusting college again! What about education? The boys racked their brains and decided: we’ll learn on our own. Right there in the Luxembourg Gardens they drew up a schedule and began implementing it the next day.
Borin came to Charles at 8 in the morning, they studied together until 11, then had lunch, rested and studied again from 3 to 5. The boys read ancient authors together, studied the history of France, learned Greek and Latin, in a word, those subjects that they would take and in college.
“If I know anything,” Charles wrote many years later, “I owe it solely to these three or four years of study.”
We don’t know what happened to the second boy named Boren, but the name of his friend is now known to everyone - his name was Charles Perrault. And the story you just learned took place in 1641, under Louis XIV, the “Sun King” in the days of curled wigs and musketeers. It was then that the one we know as a great storyteller lived. True, he himself did not consider himself a storyteller, and sitting with a friend in the Luxembourg Gardens, he did not even think about such trifles.
Charles Perrault was born on January 12, 1628. He was not a nobleman, but his father, as we know, sought to give all his sons (he had four) a good education. Two of the four became truly famous: firstly, the eldest, Claude Perrault, who became famous as an architect (by the way, he was the author of the Eastern façade of the Louvre). The second celebrity in the Perrault family was the youngest, Charles. He wrote poetry: odes, poems, very numerous, solemn and long. Few people remember them now. But later he became especially famous as the head of the “new” party during the controversial dispute between the “ancients” and the “new” in his time.
The essence of this dispute was this. In the 17th century, the opinion still reigned that ancient writers, poets and scientists created the most perfect, best works. The “new” ones, that is, Perrault’s contemporaries, can only imitate the ancients; they are still not capable of creating anything better. The main thing for a poet, playwright, scientist is the desire to be like the ancients. Perrault's main opponent, the poet Nicolas Boileau, even wrote a treatise "The Art of Poetry", in which he established "laws" on how to write each work, so that everything would be exactly like the ancient writers. This is what the desperate debater Charles Perrault began to object to.
Why should we imitate the ancients? - he was surprised. Are modern authors: Corneille, Moliere, Cervantes worse? Why quote Aristotle in every scientific work? Are Galileo, Pascal, Copernicus inferior to him? After all, Aristotle’s views were long outdated; he did not know, for example, about blood circulation in humans and animals, and did not know about the movement of planets around the Sun.
“Why respect the ancients so much?” wrote Perrault. “Only for antiquity? We ourselves are ancient, because in our time the world has become older, we have more experience.” Perrault wrote a treatise about all this, “Comparison of the Ancients and the Moderns.” This caused a storm of indignation among those who believed that the authority of the Greeks and Romans was unshakable. It was then that Perrault was remembered that he was self-taught, and they began to accuse him of criticizing the ancients simply because he was not familiar with them, had not read them, and did not know either Greek or Latin. This, however, was not at all the case.
To prove that his contemporaries were no worse, Perrault published a huge volume, “Famous People of France in the 17th Century,” where he collected more than a hundred biographies of famous scientists, poets, historians, surgeons, and artists. He wanted people not to sigh - oh, the golden times of antiquity have passed - but, on the contrary, to be proud of their age, of their contemporaries. So Perrault would have remained in history only as the head of the “new” party, but...
But then the year 1696 came, and the fairy tale “The Sleeping Beauty” appeared in the magazine “Gallant Mercury” without a signature. And the next year, the book “Tales of Mother Goose” was published in Paris and at the same time in The Hague, the capital of Holland. The book was small, with simple pictures. And suddenly - incredible success!
Charles Perrault, of course, did not invent fairy tales himself, some he remembered from childhood, others he learned during his life, because when he sat down to write fairy tales, he was already 65 years old. But he not only wrote them down, but turned out to be an excellent storyteller himself. Like a true storyteller, he made them terribly modern. If you want to know what fashion was like in 1697, read “Cinderella”: the sisters, going to the ball, dress in the latest fashion. And the palace where Sleeping Beauty fell asleep. - according to the description exactly Versailles!
The same is true of language - all people in fairy tales speak as they would speak in life: the woodcutter and his wife, the parents of Little Thumb speak like ordinary people, and the princesses, as befits princesses. Remember, Sleeping Beauty exclaims when she sees the prince who awakens her:
"Oh, is it you, prince? You kept yourself waiting!"
They are magical and realistic at the same time, these fairy tales. And their heroes act like completely living people. Puss in Boots is a real clever guy from the people who, thanks to his own cunning and resourcefulness, not only arranges the fate of his master, but also becomes an “important person” himself. "He doesn't catch mice anymore, except sometimes for fun." The little boy also quite practically does not forget at the last moment to pull a bag of gold out of the Ogre’s pocket, and thus saves his brothers and parents from starvation.
Perrault tells a fascinating story - it is impossible to tear yourself away from a fairy tale, from any one, be it “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty” or “Little Red Riding Hood”, until you finish reading or listen to the very end. Of course, the action is developing rapidly, you always want to know - what will happen next? Here Bluebeard demands his wife be punished, the unfortunate woman shouts to her sister: “Anna, my sister Anna, don’t you see anything?” The cruel, vindictive husband had already grabbed her by the hair and raised his terrible saber over her. “Ah,” the sister exclaims. “These are our brothers. I give them a sign to hurry up!” Hurry up, hurry up, we worry. At the very last moment everything ends well.
And so every fairy tale, not one of them leaves the reader indifferent. This is probably the secret of Perrault’s amazing fairy tales. After they appeared, numerous imitations began to appear, everyone wrote them, even society ladies, but not one of these books has survived to this day. But "Mother Goose's Tales" live on, they have been translated into all languages of the world, they are familiar in every corner of the earth.
In Russian, Perrault's fairy tales were first published in Moscow in 1768 under the title "Tales of Sorceresses with Moral Teachings", and they were entitled like this: "The Tale of a Girl with a Little Red Cap", "The Tale of a Certain Man with a Blue Beard", "The Tale of about Father the Cat in Spurs and Boots", "The Tale of the Beauty Sleeping in the Forest" and so on. Then new translations appeared, they were published in 1805 and 1825. Soon Russian children will be just like their peers in other countries. countries, learned about the adventures of Little Thumb, Cinderella and Puss in Boots. And now there is no person in our country who has not heard of Little Red Riding Hood or Sleeping Beauty.
Could the once famous poet and academician think that his name would be immortalized not by long poems, solemn odes and learned treatises, but by a thin book of fairy tales. Everything will be forgotten, and she will live on for centuries. Because her characters became friends of all children - the favorite heroes of the wonderful fairy tales of Charles Perrault.
E. Perekhvalskaya
Published in Bonfire magazine, August 1988.
Charles Perrault - French writer and critic of the era of classicism, member of the French Academy - was born 12 January 1628year in Paris in the family of the judge of the Parisian Parliament Pierre Perrault and was the youngest of his six children (his twin brother Francois was born with him, who died 6 months later).
At first, the mother was involved in the education of the heirs, to which the parents attached great importance. She taught the children to read and write. At the age of eight, Charles, like his older brothers, went to study at the Faculty of Arts at the Beauvais University College, not far from the Sorbonne. But due to a conflict with teachers, the boy dropped out of school. Together with his friend Boren, he continued his self-education. The boys learned everything that was taught in college on their own over several years, including Greek and Latin, the history of France, and ancient literature.
Later, Charles took lessons from a private teacher. In 1651 received a law degree and worked briefly in a law office. Perrault soon became bored with the legal field, and the young lawyer went to work for his older brother Claude. Claude Perrault subsequently became famous as one of the first members of the French Academy of Sciences and an architect who had a hand in the creation of the Louvre Palace and the Paris Observatory.
In 1654 elder brother Pierre Perrault acquired the position of tax collector. The finances were then managed by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the future powerful minister of the era of the “Sun King” Louis XIV. Charles worked as a clerk for his brother for ten years. In his free time, he read books from the library purchased from the heirs of the Abbé de Cerisy, a member of the French Academy.
Colbert patronized Charles, took him to the position of secretary, made him his adviser in cultural affairs and introduced him to the court. Under Colbert, Perrault became a member of the Committee of Writers, whose task was to praise the king and royal policies. Perrault supervised the production of tapestries and supervised the construction of Versailles and the Louvre. Later he was appointed Secretary General of the Intendance of Royal Buildings, the de facto head of the Minor Academy.
In 1671 Perrault was elected a member of the Académie de France (the future Academy of Sciences), in 1678 appointed its chairman. Charles's career went uphill, and with it his financial well-being.
Charles Perrault took his first steps towards writing while still in college - he wrote poetry and comedies. In 1653 published a parody, “The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque.”
In 1673 Charles, together with his brother Claude, wrote a fairy tale in verse, “The War of the Crows against the Stork,” an allegory of the war between supporters of classicism and new literature. The essay is dedicated to this confrontation 1675 “Criticism of the opera, or analysis of the tragedy called “Alceste”. The work was written jointly with brother Pierre. Charles collaborated a lot with his brothers. The plays included in the “Collection of Selected Works” are permeated with an atmosphere of friendly competition and dialogue.
Spring 1682 For the birthday of the Duke of Burgundy, the writer published an ode “On the Birth of the Duke of Bourbon” and a poem “The Sprout of Parnassus”.
After the death of his wife, Perrault became very religious. During these years he wrote the religious poem "Adam and the Creation of the World." And after the death of his patron Colbert in 1683- poem "Saint Paul". This work, published in 1686, Charles wanted to regain the lost attention of the king.
A year later, Perrault presented his poem “The Age of Louis the Great” to readers. Another attempt to attract the attention of the monarch in 1689 became “Ode to the Capture of Philsburg.” But Louis ignored the appeal. In 1691 Charles Perrault wrote the ode "The Reasons Why the Battle is Subject to the King" and "Ode to the French Academy".
Perrault truly became interested in literary creativity as a tribute to fashion. In secular society, along with balls and hunting, reading fairy tales has become a popular hobby. In 1694 The essays “Funny Desires” and “Donkey Skin” were published. Two years later, the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” was published. The books, although they were published in small editions at that time, quickly gained fans.
The collection “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings” turned into a bestseller of that time. The tales included in the book were not composed by Perrault himself. He only reworked and retold what he heard from his nanny in childhood or finalized the unfinished plot. The only author's work is the fairy tale “Rike the Tuft”. Book published in 1695 and was reprinted four times in the first year.
Ashamed of such a frivolous hobby, in his opinion, as fairy tales, Charles signed his works with the name of his son, Pierre d’Armancourt. Subsequently, this fact allowed researchers to doubt the authorship of Charles Perrault. Allegedly, rough notes of folk tales were made by Pierre. But, nevertheless, my father turned them into literary masterpieces. In the high society of the 17th century, it was generally believed that in this way Charles tried to bring his son closer to the court of the king’s niece, Princess Elizabeth of Orleans.
However, there is no doubt that thanks to Perrault, folklore was “registered” within the palace walls. The writer modernized the fairy tales and simplified them for perception by children of any age. The characters speak the language of ordinary people, teach them to overcome difficulties and be smart, like Jean and Marie from The Gingerbread House. The castle in which the Princess sleeps from The Sleeping Beauty is copied from the Ussay castle on the Loire. The image of Little Red Riding Hood depicts the image of Perrault's daughter, who died at the age of 13. Bluebeard is also a real character, Marshal Gilles de Rais, executed in 1440 in the city of Nantes. And any work by Charles Perrault ends with a certain conclusion, a moral.
At the same time as writing fairy tales, Charles Perrault was also engaged in serious academic activities. At the Academy, Perrault led the work on the “General Dictionary of the French Language”. The dictionary took the writer almost forty years of his life and was completed in 1694.
He became famous as the head of the "new" party during the sensational controversy surrounding the comparative merits of the literature and art of antiquity and modernity. To prove that contemporaries are no worse than the heroes of past centuries, Perrault published the essay “Famous People of France of the 17th Century.” The book describes the biographies of famous scientists, poets, doctors, artists: Rene Descartes, Jean Baptiste Moliere, Nicolas Poussin, Richelieu. In total there are more than a hundred biographies.
In 1688-1692 The three-volume book “Parallels between the Ancient and the New”, written in the form of a dialogue, was published. Perrault in his work overthrew the unshakable authority of ancient art and science, criticized the style, habits, and way of life of that time.
Little is known about the personal life of Charles Perrault. The writer, passionate about his career, married late, at 44 years old. His wife Marie Guchon was 25 years younger than Charles.
The marriage produced three sons and a daughter: Charles-Samuel, Charles, Pierre and Francoise. However, six years after the wedding, Marie Guchon died suddenly.
There is a sad page in the biography of Charles Perrault. Son Pierre, who helped his father collect material for essays, went to prison for murder. Charles used all his connections and money to rescue his son and bought him the rank of lieutenant in the royal troops. Pierre died in 1699 on the fields of one of the wars that Louis XIV then waged.
Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628 on January 12. Charles is a French poet of the classical era, critic, member of the French Academy. Most of all, Charles became famous for “Tales of Mother Goose.”
Career
Charles was born in Paris, in the family of parliamentarian Pierre Perrault. There were seven children in the family, Charles was the youngest of all. He was born with his twin brother Francois, but unfortunately he died six months after birth. His older brother Claude Perrault became the architect and author of the eastern part of the Louvre facade. Charles studied at Beauvais College, but did not finish his studies. Then he acquired a lawyer's license, but worked very little in his profession; he became a clerk for his brother Claude.
Charles enjoys the trust of Jean Colbert; it was he who determined the internal policy at the court of Louis the 14th concerning the arts. Colbert gets Charles a job as a secretary at the Academy of Fine Letters. Charles was also the controller of the Surinentate for royal buildings. Then Colbert dies, and Charles loses his patron and falls into disgrace, losing his writer's pension, and then his secretary's position. In 1697, his collection “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings” was published.
They constitute a literary adaptation of folk tales (they were heard by Charles from his nurse), except for one - “Rike the Tuft”. Perrault composed it himself. Perrault became known far beyond the literary circle thanks to this book. Perrault introduced fairy tales into the genres of high literature.
Fairy tales made literature more democratic and had a significant influence on the world-class fairy tale tradition, on the fairy tales of G.H. Andersen, Brothers Grimm. For the first time, fairy tales were published in Russian in Moscow in 1768 under the title “Tales of Sorceresses with Moral Teachings.” Based on the plots of Charles's fairy tales, “The Castle of Duke Bluebeard” by B. Bartok, “Cinderella” by G. Rossini, “Cinderella” by S. S. Prokofiev, the ballet “The Sleeping Beauty” by P. I. Tchaikovsky and others were created.
Perrault published his publications not under his own name, but under the name of his 19-year-old son Perrault d'Armancourt, so he tried to protect his reputation because he had once worked with a low genre in literature. Charles's son tried to add to his surname the name of the Armancourt castle purchased by his father, then tried to get a job as a secretary for the king's niece, the Princess of Orleans, to whom the fairy tales were dedicated.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a discussion arose during which the question of the authorship of fairy tales was raised; some tried to prove that the fairy tales were written by Perrault's son. But the traditional version of authorship is more likely.
There is probably no such person who did not read fairy tales as a child. When listing the authors of works for children, among the first, along with the brothers Grimm and, the name of Charles Perrault comes to mind. For several hundred years, boys and girls have been reading the amazing story of Cinderella, following the adventures of Puss in Boots, and envying the ingenuity of Thumb.
Childhood and youth
Charles Perrault and twin brother François were born in January 1628 in Paris. The wealthy family of parliamentary judge Pierre Perrault and housewife Paquette Leclerc already had four children - Jean, Pierre, Claude and Nicolas. The father, who expected great achievements from his sons, chose for them the names of the French kings - Francis II and Charles IX. Unfortunately, Francois died six months later.
At first, the mother was involved in the education of the heirs, to which the parents attached great importance. She taught the children to read and write. At the age of eight, Charles, like his older brothers, went to study at the Faculty of Arts at the Beauvais University College, not far from the Sorbonne. But due to a conflict with teachers, the boy dropped out of school. Together with his friend Boren, he continued his self-education. The boys learned everything that was taught in college on their own over several years, including Greek and Latin, the history of France, and ancient literature.
Later, Charles took lessons from a private teacher. In 1651 he received a law degree and worked briefly in a law office. Perrault soon became bored with the legal field, and the young lawyer went to work for his older brother Claude. Claude Perrault subsequently became famous as one of the first members of the French Academy of Sciences and an architect who had a hand in the creation of the Louvre Palace and the Paris Observatory.
In 1654, Pierre Perrault's elder brother acquired the position of tax collector. The finances were then managed by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the future powerful minister of the era of the “Sun King”. Charles worked as a clerk for his brother for ten years. In his free time, he read books from the library purchased from the heirs of the Abbé de Cerisy, a member of the French Academy.
Colbert patronized Charles, took him to the position of secretary, made him his adviser in cultural affairs and introduced him to the court. Under Colbert, Perrault became a member of the Committee of Writers, whose task was to praise the king and royal policies. Perrault supervised the production of tapestries and supervised the construction of Versailles and the Louvre. Later he was appointed Secretary General of the Intendance of Royal Buildings, the de facto head of the Minor Academy.
In 1671, Perrault was elected a member of the Académie de France (the future Academy of Sciences), and in 1678 he was appointed its chairman. Charles's career was going uphill, and with it his financial well-being.
Literature
Charles Perrault took his first steps towards writing while still in college - he wrote poetry and comedies. In 1653 he published a parody, The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque.
In 1673, Charles, together with his brother Claude, wrote a fairy tale in verse, “The War of the Crows against the Stork,” an allegory of the war between supporters of classicism and new literature. The 1675 essay “Criticism of the Opera, or Analysis of the Tragedy Called Alcestes” is dedicated to this confrontation. The work was written jointly with brother Pierre. Charles collaborated a lot with his brothers. The plays included in the “Collection of Selected Works” are permeated with an atmosphere of friendly competition and dialogue.
Illustration for Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Cinderella" In the spring of 1682, for the birthday of the Duke of Burgundy, the writer published an ode “On the Birth of the Duke of Bourbon” and a poem “The Sprout of Parnassus”.
After the death of his wife, Perrault became very religious. During these years he wrote the religious poem "Adam and the Creation of the World." And after the death of his patron Colbert in 1683 - the poem “Saint Paul”. With this work, published in 1686, Charles wanted to regain the lost attention of the king.
Illustration for Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Puss in Boots" A year later, Perrault presented his poem “The Age of Louis the Great” to readers. Another attempt to attract the attention of the monarch in 1689 was “Ode to the Capture of Philsburg.” But Louis ignored the appeal. In 1691, Charles Perrault wrote the ode "The Reasons Why Battle is Subject to the King" and "Ode to the French Academy."
Perrault truly became interested in literary creativity as a tribute to fashion. In secular society, along with balls and hunting, reading fairy tales has become a popular hobby. In 1694, the works “Funny Desires” and “Donkey Skin” were published. Two years later, the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” was published. The books, although they were published in small editions at that time, quickly gained fans.
Illustration for Charles Perrault's fairy tale "The Sleeping Beauty" The collection “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings” turned into a bestseller of that time. The tales included in the book were not composed by Perrault himself. He only reworked and retold what he heard from his nanny in childhood or finalized the unfinished plot. The only author's work is the fairy tale “Rike the Tuft”. The book was published in 1695 and was reprinted four times in the first year.
Ashamed of such a frivolous hobby, in his opinion, as fairy tales, Charles signed his works with the name of his son, Pierre d’Armancourt. Subsequently, this fact allowed researchers to doubt the authorship of Charles Perrault. Allegedly, rough notes of folk tales were made by Pierre. But, nevertheless, my father turned them into literary masterpieces. In the high society of the 17th century, it was generally believed that in this way Charles tried to bring his son closer to the court of the king’s niece, Princess Elizabeth of Orleans.
Illustration for Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" However, there is no doubt that thanks to Perrault, folklore was “registered” within the palace walls. The writer modernized the fairy tales and simplified them for perception by children of any age. The characters speak the language of ordinary people, teach them to overcome difficulties and be smart, like Jean and Marie from The Gingerbread House. The castle in which the Princess sleeps from The Sleeping Beauty is copied from the Ussay castle on the Loire. The image of Little Red Riding Hood depicts the image of Perrault's daughter, who died at the age of 13. Bluebeard is also a real character, Marshal Gilles de Rais, executed in 1440 in the city of Nantes. And any work by Charles Perrault ends with a certain conclusion, a moral.
Illustration for Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Bluebeard" Books by the French writer are available in every home where small children grow up. The number of adaptations of Perrault’s works in film and on stage is countless. Bela Bartok's operas, ballets, etc. are recognized as masterpieces of theatrical art. Based on a Russian folk tale, the plot of which has something in common with Perrault’s fairy tale “Gifts of a Fairy,” the director shot the film “Morozko.” And the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” is the leader in the number of film adaptations, both in feature films and in cartoons and musicals.
At the same time as writing fairy tales, Charles Perrault was also engaged in serious academic activities. At the Academy, Perrault led the work on the “General Dictionary of the French Language”. The dictionary took the writer almost forty years of his life and was completed in 1694.
He became famous as the head of the "new" party during the sensational controversy surrounding the comparative merits of the literature and art of antiquity and modernity. To prove that contemporaries are no worse than the heroes of past centuries, Perrault published the essay “Famous People of France in the 17th Century.” The book describes the biographies of famous scientists, poets, doctors, artists - Nicolas Poussin,. In total there are more than a hundred biographies.
In 1688-1692, the three-volume “Parallels between the Ancient and the New” was published, written in the form of a dialogue. Perrault in his work overthrew the unshakable authority of ancient art and science, criticized the style, habits, and way of life of that time.
Personal life
Little is known about the personal life of Charles Perrault. The writer, passionate about his career, married late, at 44 years old. His wife Marie Guchon was 25 years younger than Charles.
The marriage produced three sons and a daughter - Charles-Samuel, Charles, Pierre and Francoise. However, six years after the wedding, Marie Guchon died suddenly.
Death
There is a sad page in the biography of Charles Perrault. Son Pierre, who helped his father collect material for essays, went to prison for murder. Charles used all his connections and money to rescue his son and bought him the rank of lieutenant in the royal troops. Pierre died in 1699 on the fields of one of the wars then waged by Louis XIV.
The death of his son was a merciless blow for Charles Perrault. He died four years later, on May 16, 1703, according to some sources - in his castle of Rosier, according to others - in Paris.
Bibliography
- 1653 - “The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque”
- 1673 - “The War of the Crows against the Stork”
- 1682 - “On the birth of the Duke of Bourbon”
- 1686 - "St. Paul"
- 1694 - "Donkey Skin"
- 1695 - “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings”
- 1696 - "Sleeping Beauty"
