The Moderns were superior to the Ancients, declared Perrault and his camp. Whereas the Ancients, headed by a poet and critic called Boileau, were adamant that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were superior to all – the very apex of human achievement, which none in later eras could surpass – Perrault dared to proclaim that ‘even Homer nods’ (a translation of a line from ‘Ars Poetica’ by the Roman poet Horace in reference to Homer, the Ancient Greek poet it means that even the most expert in a field is not immune to error). In what has come to be known as the ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns’, in England and in France men of words debated hotly whether literature should be new and exciting and imaginative (said the Moderns), or should strictly follow in the footsteps of Classical literature, intimating, not innovating (said the Ancients).Ĭharles Perrault was at the forefront of the Moderns, arguing their case passionately in the Académie française. Many of his peers were impressed, as well they may have been: for Perrault had not simply written some stories, but carved out an important new genre in literature and laid the foundations for so many more writers who would come after him, notably the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson.īut the world may never have had the fairy tale (imagine no ‘Cinderella’, no ‘Beauty and the Beast’, no ‘Little Red Riding Hood’!), were it not for Perrault and a group of other intellectuals challenging the status quo in literature in the 17th century. Though today fairy tales are often deemed children’s stories, back in the 17th century children’s literature did not exist in fact, Perrault was writing these tales for his peers who frequented the literary salons of Paris.
The stories, published as Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals ( Histoires ou contes du temps passé), and subtitled Tales of Mother Goose, were based on old folk tales.
It was Charles Perrault who wrote these fairy tales, back in the 1690s.
Have you heard of the 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault? If the name is unfamiliar, I have no doubt that the following will strike a chord:
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