PERRAULT, CHARLES

born Jan. 12, 1628, Paris died May 15/16, 1703, Paris French poet, prose writer, and storyteller, a leading member of the Acadmie Franaise, who played a prominent part in a literary controversy known as the "quarrel of the ancients and the moderns." He is best remembered for his collection of fairy stories for children, Contes de ma mre l'oye (1697; Tales of Mother Goose). A lawyer by training, Perrault first worked as an official in charge of royal buildings. He began to win a literary reputation in about 1660 with some light verse and love poetry and spent the rest of his life in promoting the study of literature and the arts. In 1671 he was elected to the Acadmie Franaise, which soon was sharply divided by the so-called quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Perrault supported the modern view that as civilization progresses, literature evolves with it and that therefore ancient literature is inevitably more coarse and barbarous than modern literature. His poem Le Sicle de Louis le Grand (1687; "The Age of Louis the Great") set such modern writers as Molire and Franois de Malherbe above the classical authors of Greece and Rome. His chief opponent in this controversy was Nicolas Boileau-Despraux, who on the whole had the better of the argument. Nevertheless, Perrault's stand was a landmark in the eventually successful revolt against the confines of the prevailing tradition. Perrault's charming fairy stories in Mother Goose were written to amuse his children. They include "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Puss in Boots," and "Bluebeard," modern versions of half-forgotten folk tales, which Perrault retold in a style that is simple and free from affectation.