Charles Perrault's Mother Goose Tales
compiled by
D. L. Ashliman
© 1998-2006
The Man
Charles Perrault (1628-1703) 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), 1688-1697, 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 1697
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.
Charles Perrault, in a symbolically significant gesture, did not
publish the book in question under his own name but rather under the name
of his son Pierre.
Perrault chose his stories well, and he recorded them with wit and
style. His narratives belong to a story-telling tradition that has been
shared by countless generations. He did not invent these tales -- even in
his day their plots were well known -- but he gave them literary
legitimacy.
Stories or Tales from Times Past; or, Tales of Mother Goose
(1697)
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Perrault's verse narratives
Perrault's fairy-tale legacy includes three additional titles -- verse
narratives published separately, in 1691, 1693, and 1694 respectively.
Links
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-
Perrault's Fairy Tales.
The texts of "Sleeping Beauty,"
"Blue Beard," "The Master Cat or Puss in Boots," "The Fairies,"
"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper,"
"Ricky of the Tuft," and "Little Tom Thumb," including illustrations by
Gustave Doré.
- The Tales of
Mother Goose by Charles Perrault. A Project Gutenberg ebook.
Includes "Cinderella; or, the Little Glass Slipper," "The Sleeping Beauty
in the Wood," "Little Thumb," "The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots," "Riquet
of the Tuft," "Blue Beard," "The Fairy," and "Little Red Riding-Hood."
- Les
contes de Perrault . A French-language site featuring Perrault's tales.
- D. L. Ashliman's folktexts, a library of folktales, folklore,
fairy tales, and mythology.
For more information about
folktale types see:
- Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale: A
Classification and Bibliography. FF Communications, no. 184. Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1961.
- D. L. Ashliman, A Guide to Folktales in the English Language.
New York; Westport Connecticut; and London: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Revised August 22, 2006.