Evil Beauties

Perrault was a prolific writer (his first work was the mock-heroic poem "The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque"), but his fiction, with the exception of his fairy tales, was soon forgotten. He entered literary history as the leading ideologist of the "modern" movement in the debate between the ancients and the moderns. Perrault's main programmatic texts are the poem "The Age of Louis the Great" and the dialogues "Parallels between the Ancients and the Moderns in Questions of Art and Science."

Perrault believed that the art of the Age of Louis had far surpassed that of antiquity and should continue to develop; he opposed the notion of an unchanging ideal with the idea of ​​the progressive progress of art, hand in hand with the progress of science and crafts. He favored prose over poetry and believed that the novel was the successor to the classical epic.

In 1697, Perrault published the collection "Mother Goose's Tales, or Stories and Tales of Old Times with Instructions." The collection contained eight tales, literary adaptations of folk tales (believed to have been learned from Perrault's son's wet nurse)—except one ("Riquet-of-the-Crest"), composed by Perrault himself. This book brought Perrault widespread fame beyond the literary establishment. Perrault effectively introduced the folk tale into the system of genres of "high" literature.

Fairy Tales contributed to the democratization of literature and influenced the development of the world fairy tale tradition (the brothers W. and J. Grimm, L. Tieck, H.C. Andersen).

The operas Cinderella by G. Rossini, Duke Bluebeard's Castle by B. Bartok, the opera buffa (operetta) Bluebeard by J. Offenbach, the ballets Sleeping Beauty by P. I. Tchaikovsky, Cinderella by S. S. Prokofiev, and others were created based on the plots of Perrault's fairy tales. According to French historians, some of the characters in the fairy tales had real prototypes from the owners of castles, including Ouaron.

Alsace chalet in Cabourg, Normandy region of France