Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood

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Charles Perrault’s Short Biography:

Chalres Perrault was born on January 12, 1628 in France. Before setting his hand at writing, Perrault was a lawyer in the French court. After about 20 years of working there, he retired and spent the rest of his life writing and promoting literature. In 1697, he wrote Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, which included such famous fairytales as Cinderella, Mother Goose, and Little Red Riding Hood. Perrault was also famous for writing a piece which spurred a quarrel between those defending ancient writers and those defending modern writers. He died on May 15, 1703.

Claude_Perrault_gravé_par_Edelinck_après_Vercelin_-_Gallica_(oval)

Origins of Little Red Riding Hood

The story of Little Red Riding Hood has many ancient origins. Many believe that the story originated in East Asia and then spread out to Europe, however, this was recently disproven. Another theory had been that Charles Perrault, the first written author of the story, was actually the first one to think up of this story. Once again, this was proven false. It appears to be that the first mention of the story came in the 11th century in a Belgian poem and had probably been around much longer in oral history before then. Nevertheless, Charles Perrault was the first to fully write down the story of Little Red Riding Hood. After this, many takes on the tale were created but with different endings. In the Perrault version, Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten up by the wolf. Two hundred years later, the Grimm Brothers’ German version of the tale has Little Red Riding Hood saved by a huntsman who cuts open the wolf to take her out of the wolf’s belly. Most of the future translations/adaptations of this story kept these more gruesome elements of the story. In 1922, however, Walt Disney spun this tale to a much happier ending where Little Red Riding Hood is long saved before anything happens. From then on, many more adaptations have been created.

An extended look at different translations of the story can be found here and a more in depth look at the origins of Little Red Riding Hood click here.