Charles Perrault Biography Quotes 12 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Charles Perrault was born in Paris on 12 January 1628 into a prosperous bourgeois family connected with the legal and administrative world of the city. He studied at the College de Beauvais, where a classical curriculum grounded him in Latin, rhetoric, and the literary models of antiquity that later became both the foundation and the foil for his critical views. He trained in law and was admitted to practice, but a strictly legal career soon gave way to work in letters and administration. Perrault grew up in a gifted family: his elder brother Claude Perrault became a renowned physician and architect, later credited with the celebrated eastern colonnade of the Louvre, and this sibling's prominence at court helped introduce Charles into circles where literature, the arts, and royal policy intersected.

Entry into Royal Service
Perrault's skill as a writer of polished French prose and ceremonial verse brought him into contact with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the powerful minister of Louis XIV. Under Colbert's patronage, he joined efforts to systematize royal cultural policy. In 1663 he helped organize what was known as the Petite Academie, a body tasked with inscriptions, medals, and commemorative texts that celebrated the reign; this group later evolved into the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Perrault's administrative talent and literary tact were valuable in a court culture that prized eloquent, carefully shaped representation. He supported projects that placed the arts under the benevolent guidance of the monarchy, and he contributed to commissions that linked public building, learned commentary, and the image of Louis XIV's magnificence. His election to the Academie francaise in 1671 confirmed his standing among leading men of letters.

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
Perrault's most famous controversy unfolded in the cultural debate known as the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Daring to challenge the absolute authority of Greek and Roman models, he published Le Siecle de Louis le Grand in 1687, a poem arguing that the age of Louis XIV rivaled and even surpassed antiquity in the arts and sciences. He expanded this case in the multi-volume Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes, appearing in the 1690s. As a leading voice for the Moderns, he found himself opposed by figures such as Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, the formidable critic and poet who championed classical rules and ancient authority. Madame Anne Dacier, an erudite translator of Homer, also resisted the Moderns' claims with learned vigor. Although Jean Racine stayed largely outside the polemic, the dispute engaged many of the brightest lights around the court and the academies. Perrault argued not for ignorance of antiquity but for the legitimacy of contemporary genius, empirical knowledge, and the refinement of modern taste.

Literary Production and Public Role
For years Perrault balanced administrative and literary activity. He wrote occasional pieces for ceremonies, encomia that praised royal achievements, and essays on the aims and practice of literature. Colbert's death in 1683 weakened his position at court, and with the decline of his official influence, Perrault devoted more time to letters. The shift allowed him to consolidate the ideas he had been developing about the new age and, eventually, to explore narrative forms outside court panegyric. Throughout these years he maintained cordial relations with many writers, among them Jean de La Fontaine, even when their tastes diverged. The world he inhabited was small and intense: academicians, architects, librettists, scholars, and ministers debated the direction of French culture while serving a monarch who both protected and constrained them.

The Fairy Tales
Perrault's enduring fame rests on the tales he crafted in the 1690s, first in verse and then in prose. In 1697 he published Histoires ou contes du temps passe, avec des moralites, a collection that later became known in English as Tales of Mother Goose. The book included versions of Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), Cinderella (Cendrillon), Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant), Puss in Boots (Le Maitre Chat, ou le Chat Botte), Bluebeard (La Barbe bleue), Donkeyskin (Peau d'Ane), Little Thumb (Le Petit Poucet), The Fairies (Les Fees), and Ricky with the Tuft (Riquet a la houppe). Each tale concluded with a moral that spelled out its lesson in a tone at once urbane and gently ironic. Some pieces circulated under the name of his son, often referred to as Pierre d'Armancourt, a choice that contemporary readers sometimes interpreted as a modest veil for the father's authorship. The collection fixed the French literary fairy tale as a recognized genre, blending folk motifs with courtly polish, and it offered a new way to consider childhood, desire, prudence, and social mobility. Perrault's heroines and heroes navigate danger with wit, patience, and the occasional aid of enchantment; his prose is lucid and economical, designed to be read aloud yet precise on the page.

Family and Personal Circle
Perrault's family remained central to his life. The longstanding collaboration and friendly rivalry with his brother Claude testified to an environment in which science, architecture, and letters flourished side by side. Within the cultural sphere, he exchanged ideas with Jean Chapelain and other members of the Petite Academie, worked under Colbert's demanding but protective oversight, and learned to negotiate court politics as ministries changed hands. His opponents, especially Boileau, sharpened his arguments, and even the polemics of Madame Dacier helped clarify the stakes of translation, erudition, and modern criticism. Though the quarrel was sometimes heated, it occurred within an elite republic of letters that shared a commitment to eloquence and to France's intellectual prestige under Louis XIV.

Later Years and Death
In his later decades Perrault continued to write and to refine his positions in the debate over ancient and modern excellence. He composed memoirs that offer glimpses of court life, the workings of the academies, and the cultural ambitions of the reign. By the turn of the century, the fairy tales had already begun to circulate beyond elite salons, and their popularity ensured that his name remained linked not only to critical prose but to narrative charm. He died in Paris on 16 May 1703, leaving behind a body of work that bridged ceremonial letters, criticism, and storytelling.

Legacy
Perrault decisively shaped the European fairy-tale tradition. His urbane retellings codified plots and character types that later collectors and authors recognized, adapted, and transformed, from the Brothers Grimm to countless writers of children's literature. The morals, sometimes cautionary and sometimes playful, invited reflection on courtesy, ambition, credulity, and the perils of unquestioning trust. In criticism he helped legitimize the notion that modernity could rival antiquity, an idea that resonated far beyond France as new sciences and arts sought their own rules. His connections to Colbert, his contests with Boileau and Madame Dacier, and the creative companionship of figures like Claude Perrault and La Fontaine situate him among the architects of the Grand Siecle's cultural order. Today he stands at the crossing of two histories: the institutional history of academies and royal culture, and the imaginative history of tales that passed from salons to nurseries and from Paris to the wider world.

Our collection contains 12 quotes who is written by Charles, under the main topics: Writing - Book - I Love You - Romantic - Soulmate.