Perrault << peh ROH >>, Charles (1628-1703), a French writer, is best known for a book of fairy tales he collected, Tales of Mother Goose. The collection, published under his son’s name in 1697, includes “Sleeping Beauty,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Cinderella.” See Mother Goose.
Perrault was born on Jan. 12, 1628, in Paris. He became a high-ranking civil servant and a member of the French Academy under King Louis XIV. His older brother was the famous architect and scientist Claude Perrault. Charles was known for his progressive, evolutionary view of history. He helped start a famous literary battle called “The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.” In The Century of Louis the Great (1687) and Parallels Between the Ancients and the Moderns (1688), he argued that the culture of his own time was superior to the culture of classical Greece and Rome. He felt that the “Moderns” would win the battle through science, the rational philosophy of René Descartes, and progress in knowledge, culture, and literature. Perrault died on May 15 or 16, 1703.
