The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. Charles Perrault

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The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault - Charles Perrault


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       Charles Perrault

      The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664120335

       INTRODUCTION

       Little Red Riding-Hood

       Little Red Riding-Hood

       The Moral

       The Fairy

       The Fairy

       The Moral

       Another

       Blue Beard

       Blue Beard

       The Moral

       Another

       The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

       The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

       The Moral

       The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots

       The Master Cat or Puss in Boots

       The Moral

       Another

       Cinderilla; or, The Little Glass Slipper

       Cinderilla or The Little Glass Slipper

       The Moral

       Another

       Riquet with the Tuft

       Riquet with the Tuft

       The Moral

       Another

       Little Thumb

       Little Thumb

       The Moral

       The Ridiculous Wishes

       The Ridiculous Wishes

       The Moral

       Donkey-skin

       Donkey-skin

       The Moral

       THE YEAR'S AT THE SPRING

       Table of Contents

      "Avec ardeur il aima les beaux arts."

      Griselidis

      harles Perrault must have been as charming a fellow as a man could meet. He was one of the best-liked personages of his own great age, and he has remained ever since a prime favourite of mankind. We are fortunate in knowing a great deal about his varied life, deriving our knowledge mainly from D'Alembert's history of the French Academy and from his own memoirs, which were written for his grandchildren, but not published till sixty-six years after his death. We should, I think, be more fortunate still if the memoirs had not ceased in mid-career, or if their author had permitted himself to write of his family affairs without reserve or restraint, in the approved manner of modern autobiography. We should like, for example, to know much more than we do about the wife and the two sons to whom he was so devoted.

      Perrault was born in Paris in 1628, the fifth son of Pierre Perrault, a prosperous parliamentary lawyer; and, at the age of nine, was sent to a day-school—the Collège de Beauvais. His father helped him with his lessons at home, as he himself, later on, was accustomed to help his own children. He can never have been a model schoolboy, though he was always first in his class, and he ended his school career prematurely by quarrelling with his master and bidding him a formal farewell.

      The cause of this quarrel throws a bright light on Perraults subsequent career. He refused to accept his teacher's philosophical tenets on the mere ground of their traditional authority. He claimed that novelty was in itself a merit, and on this they parted. He did not go alone. One of his friends, a boy called Beaurain, espoused his cause, and for the next three or four years the two read together, haphazard, in the Luxembourg Gardens. This plan of study had almost certainly a bad effect on Beaurain, for we hear no more of him. It certainly prevented Perrault from being a thorough scholar, though it made him a man of taste, a sincere independent, and an undaunted amateur.

      In 1651 he took his degree at the University of Orléans, where degrees were given with scandalous readiness, payment of fees being the only


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