Many of us read Puss in Boots and Cinderella as children. Then we thought that the children's writer Charles Perrault is an extraordinary person because he writes such amazing stories.
The tales of this French storyteller are loved by adults and children all over the world, despite the fact that the writer lived and worked almost 4 centuries ago. In his own creations, Charles Perrault is alive and popular to this day. And if he is remembered, then he lived and created creations for a reason.
Despite the fact that the works of Charles Perrault were able to exert a strong influence on the work of Ludwig Johann Thieck, the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, during his lifetime this author did not manage to feel the full scale of his contribution to world literature.
1. Charles Perrault had a twin brother who passed away at the age of 6 months. This storyteller also had sisters and brothers.
2. The father of the writer, who expected accomplishment from his sons, independently chose for them the names of the French kings - Charles IX and Francis II.
3. Charles Perrault's father was a lawyer for the Parliament of Paris. According to the laws of that time, the eldest son was also supposed to become a lawyer.
4. Charles Perrault's brother, whose name was Claude, was a famous architect. He even participated in the creation of the facade of the Paris Louvre.
5. Charles Perrault's paternal grandfather was a wealthy merchant.
6. The writer's mother had aristocratic roots, and before marriage she lived in the village estate of Viri.
7. From the age of 8, the future storyteller studied at the University College Beauvais, near the Sorbonne. Out of 4 faculties, he chose the Faculty of Art. Despite this, Charles Perrault did not graduate from college, but left it without completing his studies. The young man received a lawyer's license.
8. After 2 trials, the writer quit his law firm and started working as a clerk in the architecture department of his older brother Claude. Charles Perrault then began to do what he loved - writing poetry.
9. The first work written by Charles Perrault was the poem "The Walls of Troy or the Origin of Burlesque", which he created at the age of 15.
10. The writer did not dare to publish his own fairy tales under his real name. He named his 19-year-old son Pierre as the author of the tales. By this, Charles Perrault tried to maintain his own authority as a serious writer.
11. The originals of the tales of this writer were edited many times, because from the very beginning they had a lot of bloody details.
12. Charles Perrault was the first to introduce the genre of folk tales into world literature.
13. The only and beloved wife of the 44-year-old writer - Marie Guchon, who at that time was a 19-year-old girl, made the writer happy. Their marriage was short. At the age of 25, Marie contracted smallpox and died. The widower has not married since then and has raised his daughter and 3 sons on his own.
14. From this love, the writer had 4 children.
15. For a long time, Charles Perrault was in the position of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Arts.
16. Having influence in high society, the storyteller had weight in the policy of the French king Louis XIV in relation to the arts.
17. Russian translation of Charles Perrault's fairy tales was first published in Russia in 1768 with the title "Fairy Tales of Sorceresses with Moralities."
18. In the USSR, this writer became the 4th foreign writer in terms of publishing, yielding the first 3 places only to Jack London, H.H. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm.
19. After his wife Charles Perrault died, he became a rather religious person. In those years, he wrote the religious poem "Adam and the Creation of the World."
20. His most famous fairy tale, according to TopCafe, is, of course, Cinderella. Its popularity did not fade or fade over the years, but only grew. The Hollywood studio The Walt Disney has filmed more than one version of the film adaptation of this tale.
21. Charles Perrault really got carried away with literature as a tribute to fashion. In secular society, together with hunting and balls, the reading of fairy tales was considered fashionable then.
22. This storyteller always disdained the classics of ancient times, and this caused discontent among the official representatives of classicism of that time, especially Boileau, Racine and La Fontaine.
23. Based on the stories of Charles Perrault's fairy tales, it was possible to create ballets and operas, for example, "Castle of Duke Bluebeard", "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty", which were not even awarded to the Brothers Grimm.
24. The collection of this tale also contains poems, for example, one of them "Parnassus Sprout" was written for the birthday of the Duke of Burgundy in 1682.
25. Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" was written by him as a warning that men are hunting girls walking in the forest. The writer concluded the end of the story with the moral that girls and women should not be so easy to trust men.
26. The son of the writer Pierre, who helped his father collect material for essays, went to prison for murder. Then the great storyteller used all his connections and money to free his son and get him the rank of lieutenant in the royal army. Pierre died in 1699 on the fields of one of the wars that were then waged by Louis XIV.
27. Many great composers have created operas based on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. And Tchaikovsky was even able to write music for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty.
28. The writer himself in his old age repeatedly argued that it would be better if he never composed fairy tales, because they destroyed his life.
29. There are two editions of Charles Perrault's fairy tales: “children's” and “author's”. If the first parents can read to babies at night, then the second will amaze even an adult with its own cruelty.
30. Bluebeard from Charles Perrault's fairy tale had a real historical prototype. This is Gilles de Rais, who was considered a talented military leader and associate of Jeanne d'Arc. He was executed in 1440 for killing 34 children and for practicing witchcraft.
31. The plots of the tales of this writer are unoriginal. Stories about the Boy with a Thumb, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rick with a Tufted and other characters are found in European folklore and in the literature of their predecessors.
32. Charles Perrault called the book "The Tales of Mother Goose" to anger Nicolas Boileau. Mother Goose herself - a character of French folklore, “the queen with a goose foot” - is not in the collection.
33. In the Chevreuse Valley, not far from Paris, there is the "Estate of Puss in Boots" - Charles Perrault's castle-museum, where wax figures with characters from his fairy tales are everywhere.
34. Cinderella was first filmed in 1898 as a short film by British director George Albert Smith, but this film has not survived.
35. It is believed that Charles Perrault, who is known for his own serious poetry, was ashamed of such a childish genre as a fairy tale.
