Charles Perrault

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Charles Perrault, around 1690

Charles Perrault (* 12. January 1628 in Paris ; † on the night of May 15th to the 16th May 1703 ) was a French writer and senior officials. He became famous above all for his fairy tale collection Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (“Stories or Tales from Ancient Times”) and popularized the genre in France and thus in Europe. German authors such as the Brothers Grimm , Ludwig Bechstein and the folklorist Franz Xaver von Schönwerth from Upper Palatinate also adopted fairy tales from him.

Life and work

The early years

Perrault (whose twin brother died as an infant) grew up as the youngest of four brothers in a wealthy family that belonged to the Parisian legal and civil service milieu and, as is often the case there, was close to Jansenism . He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1651.

He had already started to write beforehand, in the then fashionable genre of burlesque . In 1648 he wrote a Virgil parody ( L'Énéide burlesque ) and in 1649 the parodistic verse satire Les murs de Troie ou l'Origine du burlesque , in which he mocked the rebellious Parisian people, with whose revolt the Fronde - The uprising had started, but also did not spare the Cardinal Minister Mazarin , who was initially defeated. Even in these texts a certain disrespect for antiquity is evident.

In 1653, after the end of the Fronde, he entered the service of his eldest brother Pierre, who held a high position in the financial administration of the Crown, and was introduced to the court by him. There, and especially in Parisian salons , he excelled as a good entertainer and versatile writer (e.g. with his Odes au Roi et autres poèmes ). Here he was positively noticed by the older literary colleague Jean Chapelain , who recommended him to the new almighty Minister Colbert . In 1662 he made Perrault secretary of the so-called Petite Académie , a kind of reviewing body for all works of art and literature that King Louis XIV was offered for sale or that should be made available to him.

A little later, Perrault became something of a chief cultural officer. As such he woke z. B. on the artistic quality of the royal building projects, with which he was significantly involved in the renovation of the Louvre and (together with his brother Claude , a naturalist and architect) in the planning and construction of the Versailles Palace . Around 1670 he took over from Chapelain the management of the list of writers who were acceptable to Colbert and Louis XIV and who seemed worthy of an annual gratuity ( pension ) from the royal casket. In 1671 he was elected to the Académie française with the help of Colbert and shortly afterwards to its secretary, d. H. Appointed chairman, and librarian. At the same time (1672) he married, quickly became a father of four, but soon also (1678) a widower. In 1680 he gave up his post at the Académie in favor of Colbert's son.

The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes

Charles Perrault, painted by Philippe Lallemand, 1672

In 1683 Perrault's career was stopped by the death of Colbert, and he turned back to writing. So he wrote u. a. the Christian epic Saint Paulin, Évêque de Nole (1686). In early 1687, at a special meeting of the Académie dedicated to the king's homage, he read a poem entitled Le Siècle de Louis le Grand , in which he postulated the superiority of his time over antiquity . Since until then classical antiquity was considered an unattainable artistic and civilizational model, Perrault's poem sparked an unexpectedly violent controversy that went down in history as the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes .

On the side of the traditionalists, the "ancients", counted almost all the established authors of the time, especially Jacques Bénigne Bossuet , François Fénelon , Jean de La Bruyère , Jean de La Fontaine , Jean Racine and Nicolas Boileau . Above all, Boileau was a dogged opponent of Perrault. In 1674, in his verse poetics L'Art poétique , he naturally gave priority to ancient literature. On the side of the "modern" related u. a. Charles de Saint-Évremond (1613–1703), Pierre Bayle and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle position.

In 1688, Perrault began to substantiate his position, to write individual comparisons in dialogue form, which he published until 1697 in four volumes under the title Parallèles des Anciens et des Modernes . The portrait series Les Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce Siècle , which also grew to four volumes (published 1696–1700), served the same purpose . Meanwhile, however, Time was also working for him. Boileau publicly reconciled with him as early as 1694, and by 1700 the idea of ​​the equivalence, if not superiority, of modernity had become practically common.

The fairytales

However, Perrault was to become famous primarily for his fairy tales. Between 1691 and 1694 he had published three fairy-tale-like verse narratives: La Marquise de Salusses ou la Patience de Griselidis , Les Souhaits ridicules (1693) and Peau d'Âne , which he published in 1694 and again in 1695 as a volume. After this success, in 1697 he published eight Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, avec des moralités , without an author's name , which later also traded as Contes de ma mère l'Oye . The collection was dedicated to Élisabeth Charlotte von Orléans , the niece of Louis XIV. The signatory of the dedication and alleged author is “P. Darmancour ", d. H. Perrault's third son, Pierre, born in 1678. The claim that the stories came from "Mother Goose" apparently refers to Bertha , the legendary mother of Charlemagne , who is said to have had a "goose foot" deformed by pedaling the spinning wheel .

The fairy tales themselves came from oral tradition as well as from other authors (e.g. Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile ). Perrault adapted it to the tastes of the literary public of the time, especially that of the Paris salons. So he lets the individual texts, which he writes in deliberately simple, slightly archaic prose, each follow a humorously commenting and ironic “morality” in verse and sometimes even two such comments that relativize each other.

Also in 1697, in the same year as the fairy tales, Perrault published a religious epic, Adam ou la Création de l'Homme , which he dedicated to Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet . Perhaps that was why he hadn't wanted to draw the fairy tales with his own name. In 1701 he began to write memoirs, which were not printed until posthumously in 1755.

List of fairy tales

The Versmärchen ( Contes en vers ), 1694

  • Griseldis (French Griselidis , first published in 1691 as La Marquise de Salusses ou la Patience de Griselidis )
  • The Foolish Desires ( Les Souhaits ridicules , first 1693)
  • Donkey skin ( Peau d'Âne , first 1694)

The prose tales ( Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, avec des moralités , also Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ), 1697

The eight Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités ("Stories or tales from ancient times, with morals") first appeared under the name of Perrault's son. According to the frontispiece of the original edition and the title of the manuscript from 1695, they were also known as Contes de ma mère l'Oye (for example, "Stories of my mother goose") and also appeared posthumously in one volume together with Perrault's three verse tales (then mostly as Contes de fées , Contes des fées or simply Contes overwritten).

reception

In a roundabout way, changed versions of the stories found their way into the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm (1812–1858) and Ludwig Bechstein's German Fairy Tale Book (1845–1857). Even Ludwig Tieck translated the fairy tale into German. Many of Perrault's fairy tales have become common European property and have been adapted in drama , opera , ballet and finally in film .

Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty (1890), which is still popular today, is based on an adaptation of La belle au bois dormant by Perrault. Maurice Ravel composed a piano suite for four hands Ma mère l'Oye (1910), which he then orchestrated and a year later also performed as ballet music (Paris 1911).

The best-known Perrault adaptations by Walt Disney (but based on the English versions) are the cartoons Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Exhibitions

Works

  • Poème sur le siècle de Louis le Grand. 1687.
  • Parallèles des anciens et des modern en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences. 1688–1697 (four volumes).
  • Le cabinet des beaux arts ou recueil d'estampes gravées d'après les tableaux d'un plafond où les beaux arts sont representés: avec l'explication des ces mêmes tableaux. Edelinck, Paris 1690, ( digitized version ).
  • Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. 1697 (German fairy tale for young people , 1822).
  • Memoires de C. Perrault . 1755.
  • Labyrinte de Versailles (prose by Charles Perrault, verses by Isaac de Benserade , engravings by W. Swidde). Visscher, Amsteldam 1682 ( digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf ).

literature

  • Hans Kortum: Charles Perrault and Nicolas Boileau. The ancient dispute in the age of classical French literature. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1966.
  • Marc Soriano: Les Contes de Perrault. Culture savante et traditions populaires. Gallimard, Paris 1968.
  • Marc Soriano: Le Dossier Charles Perrault. Hachette, Paris 1972.

Web links

Wikisource: Charles Perrault  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: Charles Perrault  - Sources and full texts (French)
Commons : Charles Perrault  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Correct French title after the 1697 edition, see full French text on Wikisource
  2. ^ Cultural transfers with eerily beautiful facets in FAZ from June 9, 2017, page 45
personal data
SURNAME Perrault, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1628
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1703 or May 16, 1703
Place of death Paris