Perrault, Charles

(1623-1703)

   writer, political figure, author of "Mother Goose"

   Born in Paris, the brother of claude perrault, Charles Perrault, a high-level bureaucrat and protégé of jean-baptiste colbert, published parodies (L'Énéide burlesque, 1648; Les Murs de Troie ou l'Origine du burlesque, 1649) and love stories (Dialogue de l'amour et de l'amitié, 1660; Le Miroir ou la Métamorphose d'Orante, 1660) before taking part in the celebrated debate between the "Ancients" and the "Moderns" at the Académie Française, of which he was a member (1671). His polemic poem, Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (1687), then his Paralleles des Anciens et des Modernes (1688-89), debated by Nicolas boileau, presented and codified his arguments criticizing the principle of authority and affirming that progress is possible in art just as in the sciences, and he stressed the superiority of the "century of Louis" to the "century of Augustus." Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (called also Contes de ma mère l'Oye, "Mother Goose Tales," 1997) guaranteed his fame and contributed to the popularization of fairy tales as a literary genre.