Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was a French writer whose Histoires ou contes du temps passé helped establish literary fairy tales in France. Its best-known stories include “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Puss in Boots.”

Cinderella: A folk-tale heroine whose story centers on hardship, a lost shoe, and transformation through marriage. Perrault’s version introduced the glass slipper and the fairy godmother to a celebrated telling.
Histoires ou contes du temps passé: A 1697 collection of French literary fairy tales published under the name of Pierre Darmancour. This collection contains the stories most closely associated with Perrault.
Charles Perrault's brothers: Claude and Nicolas Perrault were members of a prominent French family active in architecture, medicine, and literature. Charles’s family connections brought him into influential circles of seventeenth-century French culture.
Literary fairy tale: A written fairy tale shaped by an identifiable author rather than preserved solely through oral transmission. Perrault’s tales are among the best-known early examples of this literary form.
Grimm's Fairy Tales: A collection of German tales gathered and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, beginning in 1812. The Grimms’ collection offers a later national project that differs from Perrault’s literary French collection.
Little Red Riding Hood: A folktale about a girl who encounters a wolf while traveling to visit her grandmother. Perrault’s version ends with a moral warning and no rescue of the girl.
Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes: A French literary debate over whether modern writers could surpass the achievements of classical antiquity. Perrault championed modern literature in the controversy that shaped his literary reputation.
Madame d'Aulnoy: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy was a French writer whose late-seventeenth-century tales helped popularize literary fairy tales. Her fairy-tale publications formed part of the same French literary fashion as Perrault’s.
Oral tradition: The transmission of stories, knowledge, and customs through spoken performance across generations. Perrault drew on story traditions that circulated orally as well as in print.
Fairy-tale adaptation: The retelling of fairy tales in new forms, media, or cultural settings. Perrault’s stories became source material for generations of adaptations.

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