Charles perrault fairy tales

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compiled by

D. L. Ashliman
©

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The Man

Charles Perrault () was a member of the Académie Française and a leading intellectual of his time.

Ironically, his dialogue Parallèles des anciens et des modernes(Parallels between the Ancients and the Moderns), , which compared the authors of antiquity unfavorably to modern writers, served as a forerunner for the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, an era that was not always receptive to tales of magic and fantasy.

The Stories

Perrault could have not predicted that his reputation for future generations would rest almost entirely on a slender book published in containing eight simple stories with the unassuming title: Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, with the added title in the frontispiece, Tales of Mother Goose.

The original title, in French, was Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l'Oye