Charles Perrault (1628-1703) - French storyteller, critic and poet, was a member of the French Academy.

Childhood

On January 12, 1628, twin boys were born in Paris to the family of Pierre Perrault. They were named François and Charles. The head of the family worked as a judge in the Parliament of Paris. His wife was engaged in housekeeping and raising children, who were already four before the birth of the twins. After 6 months, little Francois fell ill with pneumonia and died, and his twin brother Charles became a favorite in the family and in the future glorified the Perrault family all over the world with his famous fairy tales. In addition to Charles, his older brother Claude was also famous - a great architect, author of the eastern facade of the Louvre and the Paris Observatory.

The family was wealthy and intelligent. Charles' paternal grandfather was a wealthy merchant. Mom came from a noble family, before marriage she lived in the village estate of Viri. As a child, Charles often visited there and, most likely, later drew stories for his fairy tales from there.

Education

Parents did their best to ensure that their children received a decent education. While the boys were small, their mother worked with them, taught them to read and write. My father was very busy at work, but in his free time he always helped his wife. The Perrault brothers all studied at Beauvais University College, and Papa sometimes tested their knowledge. All the boys showed themselves excellently in their studies, for the entire period of study they were not flogged with rods, at that time it was a rarity.

When Charles was 13 years old, he was kicked out of class for arguing with a teacher. The guy dropped out of school, because in many ways he did not agree with the teachers.

He received further education on his own with his best friend Boren. For three years they themselves learned Latin, the history of France, the Greek language and ancient literature. Charles later said that all the knowledge that was useful to him in life was obtained precisely during the period of self-study with a friend.

Having reached the age of majority, Perrault studied law with a private teacher. In 1651 he was granted a law degree.

Career and creativity

While still in college, Perrault wrote his first poems, comedies, and poems.
In 1653, his first work was published - a poetic parody "The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque". But Perrault perceived literature as a hobby, he built his career in a completely different direction.

As his father wanted, having received a law degree, Charles worked as a lawyer for some time, but this kind of activity soon seemed to him not interesting. He went to work as a clerk to his older brother, who by that time contained an architectural department. It should be noted that Charles Perrault built his career successfully, rose to the rank of adviser to the King, chief inspector of buildings, then headed the Committee of Writers and the Department of the Glory of the King.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, statesman and chief controller of finances, who actually ruled France during the time of Louis XIV, patronized Charles. Thanks to such a patron, in 1663, when creating the Academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres, Perrault received the post of secretary. He achieved wealth and influence. Along with the main occupation, Charles successfully continued to write poetry and engage in literary criticism.

But in 1683, Colbert died, and Perrault became unmerciful at court, first he was deprived of his pension, and then the position of secretary.

During this period, the writing of the very first fairy tale about the shepherdess called "Grisel" falls. The author did not pay much attention to this work and continued to engage in criticism, writing a large four-volume collection of dialogues Comparison of Ancient and Modern Authors, as well as publishing the book Famous People of France in the 17th century.

When, in 1694, his next two works, “Donkey Skin” and “Funny Desires,” were published, it became clear that a new era had come for the storyteller Charles Perrault.

In 1696, the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" published in the magazine "Gallant Mercury" became popular in an instant. And a year later, the success of the published book “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings” turned out to be incredible. The plots of the nine fairy tales included in this book, Perrault heard when the nurse of his son told them to the baby before going to bed. He took folk tales as a basis and gave them artistic processing, thereby opening the way for them to high literature.

He managed to tie long-term folk works to the present, his fairy tales were written in such an accessible way that they were read by people from high society and from simple classes. More than three centuries have passed, and all over the world, mothers and fathers read to their children before bedtime:

• "Cinderella" and "Thumb Boy";
• "Puss in Boots" and "Little Red Riding Hood";
• Gingerbread House and Bluebeard.

Based on the stories of Perrault's fairy tales, ballets were staged and operas were written in the best theaters of the world.
Perrault's fairy tales were first translated into Russian in 1768. In terms of the number of works published in the USSR, Charles became the fourth among foreign writers after Jack London, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.

Personal life

Charles Perrault married quite late, at 44. His chosen one was a young, 19-year-old girl Marie Guchon. They had four children. But the marriage did not last long, Marie died at the age of 25 from smallpox. Charles never remarried and raised his daughter and three sons on his own.

In the Chevreuse Valley, not far from Paris, there is the "Possession of Puss in Boots" - the castle-museum of Charles Perrault, where wax figures of characters from his fairy tales are found on every corner.

As well as beautiful fairy tales, and. For more than three hundred years, all the children of the world love and know these fairy tales.

Tales of Charles Perrault

View the full list of fairy tales

Biography of Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault- a famous French storyteller, poet and critic of the era of classicism, a member of the French Academy since 1671, now known mainly as an author " Tales of Mother Goose».

Name Charles Perrault- one of the most popular names of storytellers in Russia, along with the names of Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Hoffmann. The marvelous fairy tales of Perrault from the collection of fairy tales of Mother Goose: "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Puss in Boots", "Boy with a Thumb", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Blue Beard" are famous in Russian music, ballets, films, theater performances , in painting and drawing dozens and hundreds of times.

Charles Perrault born January 12, 1628 in Paris, in a wealthy family of the judge of the Paris Parliament, Pierre Perrault, and was the youngest of his seven children (the twin brother Francois was born with him, who died after 6 months). Of his brothers, Claude Perrault was a famous architect, the author of the east facade of the Louvre (1665-1680).

The boy's family was concerned about the education of their children, and at the age of eight, Charles was sent to Beauvais College. As historian Philippe Aries notes, the school biography of Charles Perrault is the biography of a typical excellent student. During the training, neither he nor his brothers were ever beaten with rods - an exceptional case at that time. Charles Perrault dropped out of college before finishing his studies.

After college Charles Perrault takes private law lessons for three years and eventually earns a law degree. He bought a lawyer's license, but soon left this position and went as a clerk to his brother, the architect Claude Perrault.

He enjoyed the confidence of Jean Colbert, in the 1660s he largely determined the policy of the court of Louis XIV in the field of arts. Thanks to Colbert, Charles Perrault in 1663 was appointed secretary of the newly formed Academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres. Perrault was also the general controller of the surintendentship of the royal buildings. After the death of his patron (1683), he fell into disfavor and lost the pension paid to him as a writer, and in 1695 lost his position as secretary.

1653 - first work Charles Perrault- a parody poem "The Wall of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque" (Les murs de Troue ou l'Origine du burlesque).

1687 - Charles Perrault reads his didactic poem "The Age of Louis the Great" (Le Siecle de Louis le Grand) at the French Academy, which marked the beginning of a long-term "dispute about the ancient and the new", in which Nicolas Boileau becomes Perrault's most violent opponent. Perrault opposes the imitation and long-established worship of antiquity, arguing that the contemporaries, the "new", surpassed the "ancients" in literature and science, and that this is proved by the literary history of France and recent scientific discoveries.

1691 – Charles Perrault for the first time in the genre fairy tales and writes "Griselda" (Griselde). This is a poetic adaptation of Boccaccio's short story, which completes the Decameron (the 10th novella of the 10th day). In it, Perrault does not break with the principle of plausibility, there is still no magic fantasy here, just as there is no color of the national folklore tradition. The tale has a salon-aristocratic character.

1694 - the satire "Apology of Women" (Apologie des femmes) and a poetic story in the form of medieval fablios "Amusing Desires". At the same time, the fairy tale "Donkey Skin" (Peau d'ane) was written. It is still written in verse, in the spirit of poetic short stories, but its plot is already taken from a folk tale, which was then widespread in France. Although there is nothing fantastic in the fairy tale, fairies appear in it, which violates the classic principle of plausibility.

1695 - issuing his fairy tales, Charles Perrault in the preface he writes that his tales are higher than the ancient ones, because, unlike the latter, they contain moral instructions.

1696 - The magazine "Gallant Mercury" anonymously published the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty", for the first time fully embodying the features of a new type of fairy tale. It is written in prose, accompanied by a verse moralizing. The prose part can be addressed to children, the poetic part - only to adults, and the moral lessons are not devoid of playfulness and irony. In the fairy tale, fantasy turns from a secondary element into a leading one, which is already noted in the title (La Bella au bois dormant, the exact translation is “Beauty in the Sleeping Forest”).

Perrault's literary activity comes at a time when a fashion for fairy tales appears in high society. Reading and listening to fairy tales is becoming one of the common hobbies of secular society, comparable only to the reading of detective stories by our contemporaries. Some prefer to listen to philosophical tales, others pay tribute to the old tales, which have come down in the retelling of grandmothers and nannies. Writers, trying to satisfy these requests, write down fairy tales, processing the plots familiar to them from childhood, and the oral fairy tale tradition gradually begins to turn into a written one.

1697 - a collection of fairy tales " Mother Goose Tales, or Stories and tales of bygone times with moral teachings ”(Contes de ma mere Oye, ou Histores et contesdu temps passe avec des moralites). The collection contained 9 fairy tales, which were a literary processing of folk tales (it is believed that they heard from the nurse of Perrault's son) - except for one ("Riquet-tuft"), composed by Charles Perrault himself. This book made Perrault widely known outside the literary circle. Actually Charles Perrault introduced folk tale into the system of genres of "high" literature.

However, Perrault did not dare to publish the tales under his own name, and the book he published contained the name of his eighteen-year-old son, P. Darmancourt. He was afraid that with all the love for "fabulous" entertainment, writing fairy tales would be perceived as a frivolous occupation, casting a shadow on the authority of a serious writer with its frivolity.

It turns out that in philological science there is still no exact answer to an elementary question: who wrote the famous fairy tales?

The fact is that when the book of fairy tales of Mother Goose was first published, and it happened in Paris on October 28, 1696, a certain Pierre D Armancourt was designated as the author of the book in the dedication.

However, in Paris they quickly learned the truth. Under the magnificent pseudonym D Armancourt, none other than the youngest and beloved son of Charles Perrault, nineteen-year-old Pierre was hiding. For a long time it was believed that the writer father went to this trick only in order to introduce the young man into high society, specifically into the circle of the young Princess of Orleans, the niece of King Louis the Sun. After all, this book was dedicated to her. But later it turned out that young Perrault, on the advice of his father, wrote down some folk tales, and there are documentary references to this fact.

In the end, the situation was completely confused by himself Charles Perrault.

Shortly before his death, the writer wrote a memoir, where he described in detail all the more or less important things of his life: serving with Minister Colbert, editing the first General Dictionary of the French Language, poetic odes in honor of the king, translations of the fables of the Italian Faerno, a three-volume study on comparing ancient authors with new ones. creators. But nowhere in his biography did Perrault mention the authorship of the phenomenal tales of Mother Goose, a unique masterpiece of world culture.

Meanwhile, he had every reason to put this book in the register of victories. The book of fairy tales was an unprecedented success among the Parisians in 1696, every day in the shop of Claude Barben sold 20-30, and sometimes 50 books a day! This - on the scale of one store - was not dreamed of today, probably even by the bestseller about Harry Potter.

During the year, the publisher repeated the circulation three times. It was unheard of. First, France, then all of Europe fell in love with magical stories about Cinderella, her evil sisters and a glass slipper, reread the terrible tale of the knight Bluebeard, who killed his wives, rooted for the suave Little Red Riding Hood, who was swallowed by an evil wolf. (Only in Russia did the translators correct the ending of the tale, in our country woodcutters kill the wolf, and in the French original the wolf ate both the grandmother and the granddaughter).

In fact, the tales of Mother Goose became the world's first book written for children. Before that, no one specifically wrote books for children. But then children's books went like an avalanche. The phenomenon of children's literature was born from Perrault's masterpiece!

Great merit Perrot in what he chose from the mass of folk fairy tales several stories and fixed their plot, which has not yet become final. He gave them a tone, a climate, a style characteristic of the 17th century, and yet very personal.

At the core Perrault's fairy tales- well-known folklore plots, which he outlined with his inherent talent and humor, omitting some details and adding new ones, "ennobling" the language. Most of all these fairy tales fit the kids. And it is Perrault that can be considered the founder of children's world literature and literary pedagogy.

"Tales" contributed to the democratization of literature and influenced the development of the world fairy tale tradition (brothers V. and J. Grimm, L. Tiek, G. H. Andersen). In Russian, Perrault's fairy tales were first published in Moscow in 1768 under the title "Tales of Sorceresses with Morales". The operas “Cinderella” by G. Rossini, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” by B. Bartok, the ballets “Sleeping Beauty” by P. I. Tchaikovsky, “Cinderella” by S. S. Prokofiev and others were created on the plots of Perrault's fairy tales.

Charles Perrault (fr. Charles Perrault; January 12, 1628, Paris - May 16, 1703, Paris) - French poet and critic of the Classical era, member of the French Academy since 1671,

Charles Perrault was born to Pierre Perrault, a judge of the Parlement of Paris, and was the youngest of his six children.
Mostly the mother was engaged with the children - it was she who taught the children to read and write. Despite being very busy, her husband helped with the lessons with the boys, and when the eight-year-old Charles began studying at Beauvais College, his father often checked his lessons. A democratic atmosphere reigned in the family, and the children could well defend a point of view close to them. However, there were completely different orders in college - here cramming and stupid repetition of the words of the teacher were required. Disputes were not allowed under any circumstances. And yet the Perrot brothers were excellent students, and according to the historian Philippe Aries, they were never punished with rods during their entire training. For those times - the case, one might say, is unique.
However, in 1641, Charles Perrault was expelled from the lesson for arguing with the teacher and defending his opinion. Together with him, his friend Boren left the lesson. The boys decided not to return to college, and on the same day, in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, they drew up a plan for self-education. For three years, the friends studied Latin, Greek, French history and ancient literature together - in fact, taking the same program as in college. Much later, Charles Perrault claimed that he received all his knowledge that was useful to him in life during these three years, studying independently with a friend.

In 1651, he received a law degree and even bought himself a lawyer's license, but he quickly got sick of this occupation, and Charles went to work for his brother Claude Perrault - he became a clerk. Like many young people at that time, Charles wrote numerous poems: poems, odes, sonnets, and was also fond of the so-called "court gallant poetry." Even in his own words, all these writings were distinguished by a fair amount of length and excessive solemnity, but carried too little meaning. The first work of Charles, which he himself considered acceptable, was the poetic parody "The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque", written and published in 1652.

Charles Perrault wrote his very first fairy tale in 1685 - it was the story of the shepherdess Griselda, who, despite all the troubles and hardships, became the wife of the prince. The tale was called "Grisel". Perrault himself did not attach any importance to this work. But two years later his poem "The Age of Louis the Great" was published - and Perrault even read this work at a meeting of the Academy. For many reasons, it aroused the stormy indignation of the classic writers - Lafontaine, Racine, Boileau. They accused Perrault of a dismissive attitude towards antiquity, which was customary to imitate in the literature of that time. The fact is that the recognized writers of the 17th century believed that all the best and most perfect works had already been created - in ancient times. Modern writers, according to the established opinion, had the right only to imitate the standards of antiquity and approach this unattainable ideal. Perrault, on the other hand, supported those writers who believed that there should be no dogma in art, and copying the ancients means only stagnation.

In 1694, his works "Funny Desires" and "Donkey Skin" are published - the era of the storyteller Charles Perrault begins. A year later, he lost his position as secretary of the Academy and devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1696, the Gallant Mercury magazine published the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. The tale instantly gained popularity in all sectors of society, but people expressed their indignation that there was no signature under the tale. In 1697, at the same time in The Hague and Paris, the book “Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings” goes on sale. Despite its small volume and very simple pictures, the circulation sold out instantly, and the book itself gained incredible success.
Those nine fairy tales that were included in this book were just an adaptation of folk tales - but how it was done! The author himself repeatedly hinted that he literally overheard the tales that his son's nurse told the child at night. Nevertheless, Charles Perrault became the first writer in the history of literature who introduced the folk tale into the so-called "high" literature - as an equal genre. Now it may sound strange, but at the time of the release of Mother Goose's Tales, high society enthusiastically read and listened to fairy tales at their meetings, and therefore Perrault's book instantly won the high society.

Many critics accused Perrault of not inventing anything himself, but only writing down plots already known to many. But it should be noted that he made these stories modern and tied them to specific places - for example, his Sleeping Beauty fell asleep in a palace that was extremely reminiscent of Versailles, and the clothes of the Cinderella sisters fully corresponded to the fashion trends of those years. Charles Perrault simplified the "high calm" of the language so much that his tales were understandable even to ordinary people. After all, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Thumb Boy spoke exactly as they would speak in reality.
Despite the enormous popularity of fairy tales, Charles Perrault, in his almost seventy years, did not dare to publish them under his own name. On the books was the name of Pierre de Armancourt, the eighteen-year-old son of the storyteller. The author was afraid that fairy tales, with their frivolity, could cast a shadow on his authority as an advanced and serious writer.
However, you can’t hide an awl in a bag, and very quickly the truth about the authorship of such popular fairy tales became known in Paris. It was even believed in high society that Charles Perrault signed with the name of his youngest son in order to introduce him into the circle of the Princess of Orleans, the young niece of the sun-like King Louis. By the way, the dedication on the book was addressed to the princess.

I must say that disputes about the authorship of these tales are still ongoing. Moreover, the situation in this matter was finally and irrevocably confused by Charles Perrault personally. He wrote his memoirs shortly before his death - and in these memoirs he described in detail, with details, all the most important events and dates of his life. Mention was made of the service of the almighty minister Colbert, and the work of Perrault in editing the first "Dictionary of the French Language", and every single ode written to the king, and translations of Faerno's Italian fables, and research comparing new and ancient authors. But Perrault never even mentioned the phenomenal “Tales of Mother Goose” ... But it would be an honor for the author to include this book in the register of his own achievements! In modern terms, the rating of Perrault's tales in Paris was unimaginably high - only one bookstore by Claude Barben sold up to fifty books a day. It is unlikely that today even the adventures of Harry Potter can even dream of such a scale. For France, it became unheard of that the publisher had to repeat the circulation of "Tales of Mother Goose" three times in just one year.

The death of the storyteller finally confused the question of authorship. Even in 1724, "The Tales of Mother Goose" was printed with the name of Pierre de Amancourt in the title. But public opinion nevertheless decided later that the author of the tales was Perrot Sr., and tales are still published under his name.
Few people today know that Charles Perrault was a member of the French Academy, the author of scientific papers and a famous poet of his time. Even fewer people know that it was he who legalized the fairy tale as a literary genre. But any person on Earth knows that Charles Perrault is a great storyteller and author of the immortal "Puss in Boots", "Cinderella" and "Bluebeard".

Charles Perrault

MAGIC TALES

Blue Beard

Once upon a time there lived a man who had beautiful houses both in the city and in the countryside, gold and silver dishes, armchairs decorated with embroidery, and gilded carriages. But, unfortunately, this man had a blue beard; this gave him such an ugly and terrible appearance that there was not a woman or a girl who would not run away when she saw him.

One of his neighbors, a noble lady, had two daughters, wonderfully beautiful. He asked to marry one of them and left his mother to choose the one she would agree to give for him. Both did not want to go for him and refused him one in favor of the other, unable to choose as a husband a man whose beard is blue. They were also disgusted by the fact that this man had already been married several times, and no one knew what had become of his wives.

In order to make a closer acquaintance, Bluebeard invited them, along with his mother and three or four best friends, as well as several young people, their neighbors, to one of his country houses, where the guests stayed for a whole week. All the time was occupied by walks, trips to hunt and fish, dances, feasts, breakfasts and suppers; no one thought to sleep, and every night passed in the fact that the guests were joking with each other; finally everything settled down so well that it began to seem to the youngest daughter that the beard of the owner of the house was no longer so blue at all, and that he himself was a very decent person. As soon as they returned to the city, the wedding was decided.

A month later, Bluebeard told his wife that he had to go to the country for at least six weeks on important business; he asked her to entertain herself during his absence; told her to call her girlfriends, so that she, if she liked, took them out of town; so that everywhere she tried to eat deliciously. “Here,” he said, “the keys to both large pantries, here are the keys to the gold and silver dishes, which are not served every day; here are the keys to the chests where my gold and silver are kept; here are the keys to the chests where my precious stones lie; Here is the key that unlocks all the rooms in my house. And this small key is the key to the room at the end of the lower large gallery: open all the doors, go everywhere, but I forbid you to enter this small room so strictly that if you happen to open the door there, you must expect everything from my anger."

She promised to strictly observe everything that was ordered to her, and he, embracing his wife, got into his carriage and set off.

Neighbors and girlfriends did not wait for messengers to be sent for them, but they themselves went to the newlywed - they were so eager to see all the riches of her house, because while her husband was there, they did not dare to visit her - because of his blue beard which was feared. So they immediately began to inspect the rooms, rooms, dressing rooms, surpassing one another in beauty and wealth. Then they moved on to the pantries, where they could not stop admiring the multitude and beauty of carpets, beds, sofas, cabinets, small tables, tables and mirrors, in which one could see oneself from head to toe and the edges of which, in some - glass, in others - from gilded silver, were more beautiful and more magnificent than anything that had ever happened to be seen. Not ceasing to envy, they all the time extolled the happiness of their friend, who, however, was not at all interested in the spectacle of all these riches, for she was impatient to go and open the little room below.

She was so overcome by curiosity that, without considering how impolite it was to leave her guests, she descended a secret ladder, and moreover with such haste that two or three times, as it seemed to her, she almost broke her neck. At the door to the small room she stood for several minutes, remembering the prohibition that her husband had imposed, and thinking that misfortune might befall her for this disobedience; but the temptation was so strong that she could not overcome it: she took the key and tremblingly opened the door.

At first she didn't see anything because the windows were closed. After a few moments, she began to notice that the floor was covered with gore and that the bodies of several dead women tied along the walls were reflected in this blood: they were all the wives of Bluebeard, he married them, and then killed each of them. She thought she would die of fright and dropped the key she had taken out of the lock.

Recovering a little, she picked up the key, locked the door, and went up to her room in order to at least somewhat recover; but she did not succeed, she was in such a state of agitation.

Noticing that the key to the small room was stained with blood, she wiped it two or three times, but the blood did not come off; no matter how much she washed it, no matter how much she rubbed it with sand and sandy stone, still the blood remained, because the key was magical, and there was no way to completely clean it off: when the blood was cleaned from one side, it appeared on the other.

Bluebeard returned from his journey that same evening and said that he had received a letter on the way, informing him that the matter for which he had traveled had been resolved in his favor. His wife did everything possible - just to prove to him that she was delighted with his quick return.

The next day he demanded the keys from her, and she gave them to him, but with such a tremor in her hand that he easily guessed everything that had happened. “Why is it,” he asked her, “there is no key to the little room along with other keys?” “Probably,” she said, “I left it upstairs on my desk.” "Don't forget," said Bluebeard, "give it to me as soon as possible."

Finally, after various excuses, I had to bring the key. Bluebeard, looking at him, said to his wife: “Why is there blood on this key?” “I don’t know,” answered the unfortunate wife, pale as death. "Do not know? asked Bluebeard. - I, I know. You wanted to enter a small room. Well, madam, you will enter it and take your place there with the ladies you saw there.

She threw herself at her husband's feet, weeping, begging his forgiveness, and by every sign sincerely repenting of her disobedience. She, so beautiful and sad, would even touch a rock, but Bluebeard had a heart harder than a rock. "You must die, ma'am," he told her, "and without delay." “If I have to die,” she replied, looking at him with eyes full of tears, “give me at least a few minutes to pray to God.” "I'll give you seven minutes," Bluebeard replied, "but not a moment more."

Charles Perrault

(1628 - 1703)

Born January 12th. The great merit of Perrault is that he chose several stories from the mass of folk tales and fixed their plot, which has not yet become final. He gave them a tone, a climate, a style 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 world-wide fame and recognition from his descendants were brought to him not by his thick, serious books, but by the wonderful fairy tales Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and Bluebeard.

Charles Perrault was born in 1628. The boy's family was concerned about the education of their children, and at the age of eight, Charles was sent to college. As historian Philippe Aries points out, Perrault's school biography is that of a typical straight-A student. During the training, neither he nor his brothers were ever beaten with rods - an exceptional case at that time.

After college, Charles took private law lessons for three years and eventually received a law degree.

At twenty-three, he returns to Paris and begins his career as a lawyer. Perrault's literary activity comes at a time when a fashion for fairy tales appears in high society. Reading and listening to fairy tales is becoming one of the common hobbies of secular society, comparable only to the reading of detective stories by our contemporaries. Some prefer to listen to philosophical tales, others pay tribute to the old tales, which have come down in the retelling of grandmothers and nannies. Writers, trying to satisfy these requests, write down fairy tales, processing the plots familiar to them from childhood, and the oral fairy tale tradition gradually begins to turn into a written one.

However, Perrault did not dare to publish the tales under his own name, and the book he published contained the name of his eighteen-year-old son, P. Darmancourt. He was afraid that with all the love for "fabulous" entertainment, writing fairy tales would be perceived as a frivolous occupation, casting a shadow on the authority of a serious writer with its frivolity.

Perrault's fairy tales are based on well-known folklore plots, which he outlined with his usual talent and humor, omitting some details and adding new ones, "ennobling" the language. Most of all, these fairy tales were suitable for children. And it is Perrault that can be considered the founder of children's world literature and literary pedagogy.

Charles Perrault: the childhood of a storyteller.

The boys sat down on the bench and began to discuss the current situation - what to do next. They knew one thing for sure: they would not return to the boring college for anything. But you have to study. Charles heard this from childhood from his father, who was a lawyer for 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, teaching, and literature. But only at home, with his father and brothers, it was possible to argue, to defend his point of view, and in college it was required to cram, it was only necessary to repeat after the teacher, and God forbid, argue with him. For these disputes, Charles was expelled from the lesson.

No, no more to the disgusting college with a foot! But what about education? The boys racked their brains and decided: we will study on our own. Right there in the Luxembourg Gardens, they drew up a routine and from the next day began to implement it.

Borin came to Charles at 8 in the morning, they studied together until 11, then dined, 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 pass and in college.

“If I know anything,” Charles wrote many years later, “I owe it solely to these three or four years of study.”

What happened to the second boy named Borin, we do not know, but the name of his friend is now known to everyone - his name was Charles Perrault. And the story you've 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 whom we know as the 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.

The essence of this dispute was this. In the 17th century, the opinion still prevailed that the ancient writers, poets and scientists created the most perfect, the best works. The "new", that is, Perrault's contemporaries, can only imitate the ancients, all the same they are not able to create 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 "Poetic Art", in which he established "laws" on how to write each work, so that everything was exactly like the ancient writers. It was against this that the desperate debater Charles Perrault began to object.

Why should we imitate the ancients? he wondered. Are modern authors: Corneille, Moliere, Cervantes worse? Why quote Aristotle in every scholarly writing? Is Galileo, Pascal, Copernicus below him? After all, Aristotle's views were outdated long ago, he did not know, for example, about blood circulation in humans and animals, did not know about the movement of the planets around the Sun.

Creation

Charles Perrault now we call him a storyteller, but in general during his lifetime (he was born in 1628, died in 1703). Charles Perrault was known as a poet and publicist, dignitary and academician. He was a lawyer, the first clerk of the French Minister of Finance Colbert.

When the Academy of France was created by Colbert in 1666, among its first members was Charles's brother, Claude Perrault, who shortly before this Charles had helped win the competition for the design of the facade of the Louvre. A few years later, Chars Perrault was also admitted to the Academy, and he was assigned to lead the work on the "General Dictionary of the French Language".

The history of his life is both personal and public, and politics mixed with literature, and literature, as it were, divided into what glorified Charles Perrault through the ages - fairy tales, and what remained transient. For example, Perrault became the author of the poem "The Age of Louis the Great", in which he glorified his king, but also - the work "Great People of France", voluminous "Memoirs" and so on and so forth. In 1695, a collection of poetic tales by Charles Perrault was published.

But the collection "Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings" was released under the name of Charles Perrault's son Pierre de Armancourt - Perrault. It was the son who in 1694, on the advice of his father, began to write down folk tales. Pierre Perrault died in 1699. In his memoirs, written a few months before his death (he died in 1703), Charles Perrault does not say anything about who was the author of the tales or, to be more precise, of the literary record.

These memoirs, however, were published only in 1909, and twenty years after the death of literature, academician and storyteller, in the 1724 edition of the book "Tales of Mother Goose" (which, by the way, immediately became a bestseller), authorship was first attributed to one Charles Perrault . In a word, there are many "blank spots" in this biography. The fate of the storyteller himself and his fairy tales, written in collaboration with his son Pierre, is for the first time in Russia described in such detail in Sergei Boyko's book "Charles Perrault ".

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was the first writer in Europe to make the folk tale part of children's literature. Unusual for a French writer of the "age of classicism" interest in oral folk art is associated with the progressive position that Perrault took in the literary controversy of his time. In 17th-century France, classicism was the dominant, officially recognized trend in literature and art. The followers of classicism considered the works of ancient (ancient Greek and especially Roman) classics exemplary and worthy of imitation in all respects. At the court of Louis XIV, a real cult of antiquity flourished. Court painters and poets, using mythological plots or images of heroes of ancient history, glorified the victory of royal power over feudal disunity, the triumph of reason and moral duty over the passions and feelings of an individual, sang of the noble monarchical state that united the nation under its auspices.

Later, when the absolute power of the monarch began to come into ever greater conflict with the interests of the third estate, oppositional sentiments intensified in all areas of public life. Attempts were also made to revise the principles of classicism with its unshakable "rules", which managed to turn into a dead dogma and hindered the further development of literature and art. At the end of the 17th century, a dispute broke out among French writers about the superiority of ancient and modern authors. Opponents of classicism declared that the new and latest authors were superior to the ancient ones, if only by the fact that they had a broader outlook and knowledge. One can learn to write well without imitating the ancients.

One of the instigators of this historic controversy was Charles Perrault, a prominent royal official and poet, elected in 1671 to the French Academy. Coming from a bourgeois-bureaucratic family, a lawyer by training, he successfully combined official activities with literary. In the four-volume series of dialogues “Parallels between the ancient and the new in matters of art and science” (1688-1697), Perrault urged writers to turn to the image of modern life and modern customs, advised drawing plots and images not from ancient authors, but from the surrounding reality.

To prove his case, Perpo decided to work on processing folk tales, seeing in them a source of interesting, lively plots, "good morals" and "characteristic features of folk life." Thus, the writer showed great courage and innovation, since fairy tales did not figure at all in the system of literary genres recognized by the poetics of classicism.

In 1697, Charles Perrault, under the name of his son Pierre Perrault d'Harmancourt, published a small collection entitled "Tales of my mother Goose, or Stories and tales of bygone times with teachings." The collection consisted of eight fairy tales: "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Bluebeard", "Puss in Boots", "Fairies", "Cinderella", "Riquet with a Tuft" and "A Boy with a Thumb". In subsequent editions, the collection was replenished with three more fairy tales: "Donkey Skin", "Funny Desires" and "Griselda". Since the last work is a literary story in verse typical of that time (the plot is borrowed from Boccaccio's Decameron), we can assume that Perrault's collection consists of ten fairy tales 3. Perrault adhered to folklore plots quite accurately. Each of his fairy tales was traced back to the original source that exists among the people. At the same time, by presenting folk tales in his own way, the writer clothed them in a new artistic form and largely changed their original meaning. Therefore, Perrault's tales, although they retain a folklore basis, are works of independent creativity, that is, literary tales.

In the preface, Perrault proves that fairy tales are "not trifles at all." The main thing in them is morality. “They all aim to show what are the advantages of honesty, patience, foresight, diligence and obedience, and what misfortunes befall those who deviate from these virtues.”

Each fairy tale by Perrault ends with a moralizing in verse, artificially bringing the fairy tale closer to the fable - a genre accepted with some reservations by the poetics of classicism. Thus, the author wanted to "legitimize" the fairy tale in the system of recognized literary genres. At the same time, ironic moralizing, not connected with the folklore plot, introduces a certain critical trend into the literary fairy tale - counting on sophisticated readers.

Little Red Riding Hood was imprudent and paid dearly for it. Hence the moral: young girls should not trust "wolves".

Little kids, not without reason (And especially girls, Beauties and spoiled ones), Meeting all sorts of men on the way, You can’t listen to insidious speeches, Otherwise the wolf can eat them ...

Bluebeard's wife nearly fell prey to her immoderate curiosity. This gives rise to the maxim:

A woman's passion for indiscreet secrets is amusing: It is known, after all, that something dearly got, Will instantly lose both taste and sweetness.

Fairy-tale heroes are surrounded by a bizarre mixture of folk and aristocratic life. Simplicity and artlessness are combined with secular courtesy, gallantry, wit. Healthy practicality, a sober mind, dexterity, resourcefulness of a plebeian take precedence over aristocratic prejudices and conventions, over which the author does not get tired of making fun of. With the help of a clever rogue, Puss in Boots, a village boy marries a princess. The brave and resourceful Boy with a finger defeats the cannibal giant and breaks out into the people. The patient, hard-working Cinderella marries the prince. Many fairy tales end with "unequal" marriages. Patience and diligence, meekness and obedience receive the highest reward from Perrault. At the right moment, a good fairy comes to the aid of the heroine, who perfectly copes with her duties: she punishes vice and rewards virtue.

Magical transformations and happy endings are inherent in folk tales from time immemorial. Perrault expresses his thoughts with the help of traditional motifs, colors the fabulous fabric with psychological patterns, introduces new images and realistic everyday scenes that are absent in folklore prototypes. Cinderella's sisters, having received an invitation to the ball, dress up and preen. "I," said the eldest, "I will put on a red velvet dress with lace trim." there is." They sent for a skilled craftswoman to fit double-frilled caps for them, and bought flies. The sisters called Cinderella to ask her opinion: after all, she had good taste. Even more everyday details in "Sleeping Beauty". Along with the description of various details of palace life, housekeepers, maids of honor, maids, gentlemen, butlers, doorkeepers, pages, lackeys, etc. are mentioned here. Sometimes Perrot reveals the gloomy side of contemporary reality. At the same time, his own moods are guessed. The woodcutter and his large family live in poverty and starve. Only once did they manage to have a hearty dinner, when “the lord who owned the village sent them ten ecu, which he had owed them for a long time and which they no longer hoped to receive” (“A Boy with a Finger”). Puss in Boots intimidates the peasants with the loud name of an imaginary feudal lord: “Good people, reapers! If you do not say that all these fields belong to the Marquis de Caraba, you will all be minced up like meat for a pie.

The fairy-tale world of Perrault, for all its seeming naivety, is complex and deep enough to not only captivate the imagination of a child, but also influence an adult reader. The author has invested in his tales a rich stock of life observations. If such a fairy tale as "Little Red Riding Hood" is extremely simple in content and style, then, for example, "Rike with a Tufted Hat" is distinguished by a psychologically subtle and serious idea. Witty secular conversations between the ugly Riquet and the beautiful princess enable the author to reveal the moral idea in a relaxed and entertaining way: love ennobles a person's heroic traits.

Subtle irony, graceful style, Perrault's cheerful moralizing helped his fairy tales to take their place in "high" literature. Borrowed from the treasury of French folklore, "The Tales of My Mother Goose" has returned to the people, polished and cut. In the processing of the master, they lit up with bright colors, healed with a new life.

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