A Year: Day to Day Men: 12th of January
Climbing Walls
Author and storyteller Charles Perrault was born in Paris, France on January 12, 1628. He was one of the first writers in European literature who turned his eyes to folklore, laying the foundation for the literary genre of fairy tales .
In 1695, when he was 67, Perrault decided to dedicate himself to his children. In 1697 he published “Tales and Stories from the Past with Morals”, subtitled “Tales of Mother Goose”. These tales, based on French popular tradition, were very popular in sophisticated court circles. Its publication made him suddenly very widely known and he is credited as the founder of the modern fairy tale genre. Naturally, his work reflects awareness of earlier fairy tales written in the salons, most notably by Marie Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, the Baroness d’Aulnoy, who coined the phrase “fairy tale” and wrote tales as early as 1690.
Some of his popular stories, particularly “Cinderella” and “The Sleeping Beauty”, are still commonly told similar to the way Perrault had written them, while others have been revised over the years. For example, some versions of “Sleeping Beauty” published today are based partially on a Brothers Grimm tale, “Little Briar Rose”, a modified version of the Perrault story. However, the version done by Disney is quite true to the original Perrault tale.
Perrault had written “Little Red Riding Hood” as a warning to readers about men who were trying to prey on young girls who were walking through the forest. He provided the following comment about the lesson provided by the story: “I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!” In his story, the girl gets into bed with the wolf and is devoured. There is no happy ending.
He published his collection under the name of his last son, Pierre (Perrault) Darmancourt, probably fearful of criticism from those who favored the classical style of writing as opposed to the new modern writing style common under Louis XIV . In the tales, he used images from around him, such as the Chateau Usse for “The Sleeping Beauty”, and the Marquis of the Chateau de’Oiron as the model for the Marquis de Carabas in “Puss in Boots”. He ornamented his folktale subject matter with details, asides and subtext drawn from the world of fashion.