(!LANG: The main dates of the life and work of Charles Perrault. Charles Perrault. Biography of Charles Perrault fairy tales short

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. The main opponent of Perro, 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 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 already 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 typical literary story in verse for 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 a description of various details of palace life, housekeepers, maids of honor, maids, gentlemen, butlers, gatekeepers, 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. The witty social conversations of the ugly Riquet and the beautiful princess enable the author to reveal the moral idea in a casually 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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The world-famous writer, poet and prose writer, member of the Paris Academy Charles Perrault was a true Frenchman. He was born on January 12, 1628 in Paris, lived for 75 years and died on May 16, 1703 in Paris. The life of the great creator consisted of loud ups and crushing falls, but he left his bright indelible mark on the history of the world.

Brief biography and interesting facts from the life of Perro:

- Little Charles was born with his twin brother Francois, but after 6 months the kids got sick and poor Francois died.

- Charles became the youngest and favorite child in the family, where 4 more sons grew up - Jean, Pierre, Claude and Nicolas.

- The father of the family held a high position in the parliamentary court, and my mother led the house and devoted a lot of time to the education of children.

- At the age of 8, Charles entered college, but his studies did not work out right away. Due to a conflict with teachers, Perrault dropped out of college and took up self-education.

– With the help of private teachers, thanks to diligence and perseverance, Charles learned 3 languages, re-read all the library literature and delved into the ancient history of the world.

- In 1651, following the brothers, the purposeful Charles became a certified lawyer and began his professional career. Then the first tests of the pen began. A talented, slightly eccentric young man wrote poetry, plays, comedies and parodies.

- For 20 years, Perrault made a dizzying career and became a member of the Academy of Sciences. At 45, Charles married 19-year-old Marie Guchon, and in 6 years 4 children appeared in the family - 3 sons and a daughter, little Francoise.

A break in the fate of a talented writer occurred after the death of his wife. He became very devout and dedicated his life to raising children. The most beloved son, Pierre, first ended up in prison, and then tragically died on the battlefields. Soon the father followed his son, leaving France and the whole world his rich literary heritage.

Creativity of Charles Perrault: Tales of Mother Goose

By 1969, the young author had accumulated an impressive creative baggage. With a collection of works, where there were 14 odes and poems, Charles was admitted to the king and became a member of the high society of France. When the writer retired and began to live on a pension, his works no longer attracted the attention of the royal court.

Then Charles Perrault made a knight's move! He paid tribute to fashion and began to publish his brilliant fairy tales. In 1694, the first works were distributed in a small edition, and after 2 years the best works of the writer "Donkey Skin" and "Sleeping Beauty" were published.

Attention to small and big geniuses! The real fame and recognition of literary talent came to the writer in adulthood. He used folk tales, reworked them in a modern way and brought the wisdom of ancient legends to the high society.

The collection Tales of Mother Goose, published by the writer in 1695, became a literary sensation of that time. In one year, the book was published three times and included the best tales of the writer. All famous characters were taken from folk tales, and only "Rike-tuft" was invented by the brilliant author himself.

Note to readers! In the USSR, Charles Perrault was the third most popular children's writer after Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. For 70 years, from 1917 to 1987, Perrault's collections of fairy tales were published 300 times with a total circulation of 61,000,000 copies.

Immortal heroes of the storyteller Perrault

The famous French writer gave many wonderful fairy tales to children, and his heroes became favorite characters of several generations of readers.

Let's recall the most popular characters from the works of Charles Perot:

Red Riding Hood is a girly story that parents tell their 3 year olds.

Cinderella- an eternal fairy tale about how a mess with a good heart became a princess.

sleeping Beauty- a mysterious story about the spindle and the kiss of love.

Puss in Boots- the best character of Perro, who was voiced by Antonio Banderas himself.

Thumb boy- Thumbelina's cousin, a cunning and brave fellow who deceived the terrible Cannibal.

Blue Beard- a scary tale that is not read at night. It tells about a rich baron nicknamed Bluebeard, who tortured and killed his wives.

Rike-Crest is a story about an ugly prince who fell in love with a beautiful princess for his intelligence, nobility and kind heart.

Reading instructive fairy tales with beautiful pictures will be an exciting journey for a child to a magical land. For kids, fairy tales are written in large print, and colorful illustrations will allow children to develop their imagination and rich imagination.

Children's literature published on this page is intended for free online reading in the family circle. Educators use it for retelling in kindergarten, and teachers for staging performances in school theaters. Read aloud with your children, tell stories for the night, and the inner world of the child will be filled with the light of fairy tales.

For boys and girls of different ages (babies 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old, 6 years old, 7 years old, 8 years old, 9 years old, 10 years old ...), kindergarteners and schoolchildren, as well as their parents. Happy reading!

Charles Perrault's brief biography is set out in this article.

Charles Perrault short biography

WArles Perrault- French poet and critic of the Classical era, known mainly as the author of "The Tales of Mother Goose".

Was born January 12, 1628 in Paris in the family of a parliamentary judge. He was the youngest of seven children. The Perrault family tried to provide children with a good education, so at the age of eight, Charles was sent to college in the north of France. However, the young man never finished his studies, deciding to pursue a legal career. But that also bored him quickly. Soon he became a clerk to his brother-architect, Claude Perrault, who became famous as the author of the east facade of the Louvre.

Despite the fact that Perrault became a prolific writer, his works of fiction have hardly survived, with the exception of fairy tales. The first work of the writer appeared in 1653. It was a poem in the comic style "The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque." She did not bring great fame to the poet, but marked the beginning of his literary career. Charles Perrault enjoyed the confidence of the statesman and de facto ruler of France after 1665, Jean Colbert. Thus, the writer could largely determine the policy of the court. In 1663 he was appointed secretary of the new Academy. However, after the death of Colbert (1683), he lost everything: the position of secretary and literary pension.

In the history of literature, Ch. Perrault is also known as the founder of the "controversy about the ancient and the new." So, in 1687, he published the poem "The Age of Louis the Great", and then dialogues about the parallels between ancient and new views on art and science. In his works, he singled out the art of the age of Louis, as an opportunity for progress and retreat from the immutable ancient ideal. He saw the future of literature in the development of the novel as a successor to the ancient epic. In 1697, the collection Tales of Mother Goose appeared, which included 7 revised folk tales and one tale composed by Perrault himself. This was the tale "Rike-tuft", which widely glorified the writer.

Charles Perrault(fr. Charles Perrault)

(12.01.1628 - 16.05.1703)

Often, when studying the biographies of writers, we notice that in addition to their successful creative activity, they occupied a rather high position in the society of the time in which they lived. This is not surprising, since in those distant times there were very few educated people, mostly the elite were educated, so it turned out that the nobles, being close to the emperor, in addition to performing their official duties, wrote famous and exciting works, thanks to which they entered historical heritage of mankind. One such writer is Charles Perrault. Born into the family of Pierre Perrault, a judge of the Parisian parliament, he received a decent education for that time. And thanks to his father's connections and his personal qualities, he rapidly climbed the career ladder. Perrault was both a lawyer and tax collector, and for 20 years he was at the top of the administrative state pyramid, being an adviser to the king and chief inspector of buildings. Perrault also had to deal with foreign policy issues, the royal production of furniture and tapestries, and cultural issues. Taking into account the workload of the writer, it would be more likely to assume that some magazines, reports, etc. will form his legacy. for historians and economists, however, the tales of Charles Perrault were inherited, for which he miraculously had enough time to write. As we can see, this man was diversified and perfectly aware of the spirit of society, which soared both in the elite and in the lower strata of society of that time. And the times, it must be admitted, were far from the best! Constant peasant revolts, constant famine, lack of medicine, sanitation led to epidemics ... Charles Perrault, holding such a high position, had a clear idea of ​​​​all this. Probably all this situation made people more cruel, more evil, more merciless, which is what we see when we start reading the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. It should be noted that almost all the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, which were printed in the Soviet Union, were changed by the press. The compilers removed all the cruelty and left the plots with a good ending. Probably because of this, in childhood, we so liked the works of Charles Perrault to read his fairy tales in which good always triumphs over evil. However, in the original source, these tales were filled with the harsh reality of the time in which Charles Perrault lived and wrote tales. Reading the collection "Tales of Mother Goose" by Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood, having listened to the wolf, was eaten with her grandmother and this is where the fairy tale ends, no one frees her, the Sleeping Beauty also faces a sad fate. Her mother-in-law is a cannibal who hates her daughter-in-law, it was only by a miracle that the sleeping beauty and her children managed to escape, The Thumb Boy and Bluebeard also amaze with the amount of blood and cruelty. It seems to us that our compilers removed all these scenes from Perrault's fairy tales and made them really childish. On our website, we published fairy tales from different editions, trying to choose fairy tales with the least number of atrocities, but you can’t remove everything, so we strongly recommend that parents first familiarize themselves with the content of fairy tales, and then make their own decision to read Charles Perrault’s fairy tales online. children, or wait until they grow up and then introduce them to the work of the French storyteller of the 17th century. Also on our site you can download the fairy tales of Charles Perrault in the formats you need.

Information sheet:

The fairy tales of Charles Perrault are sure to be remembered by every adult from their childhood. Their heroes have passed through the centuries and still remain loved. Not a single inquisitive child will remain indifferent to the story of the cunning Puss in Boots, poor Cinderella or the villain Bluebeard. A slightly modified Little Red Riding Hood is perceived as written in Russia.

Fairy-tale adventures unobtrusively teach children mindfulness and responsibility, a positive attitude towards life.

Who wrote fairy tales?

The author did not reveal the secret of his magical writings to anyone. It is believed that he processed folk tales and published them under the name of his son, because he was afraid of condemnation of high society for such an occupation. The second version was the desire of the father to bring his heir to a high position.

The collection was very well received. People liked the language of presentation and plots so much that the book was literally swept off the shelves. Rave reviews passed from mouth to mouth. The whole society in the royal palace was also carried away by discussions of the adventures of fairy-tale heroes.

It was rumored that children's fairy tales were published by Charles Perrault. But in his memoirs, written at the end of his life, he did not mention them at all. Therefore, the question of the authorship of the father or son has been lost for centuries. Although it was Perrault who began to be considered the founder of children's literature and pedagogy.

Features of Perrault's works

It is impossible to say which fairy tales are the best, because they are all written in the same interesting way. These are real magical stories, but as if from the real world. Features of Perrault's stories are the liveliness of the plot, combined with faith in its possible implementation. This idea is well felt by children and immediately enroll Perrault's fairy tales in the category of their favorites.

The list of works is given on the page in alphabetical order. You can read or print any of them for free.