Reading Notes Week 15 EC: Lang’s European Fairy Tales 1, Part A

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Reading Notes Week 15 EC: Lang’s European Fairy Tales 1, Part A

Puss in Boots:

· Apparently talking cats in this world are normal, but if I have learned one thing in this class it is that myths often do not include much description in the form of explanation

· Puss in Boots would have been a cool trickster to have Reynard go up against.

· Monsieur Puss has a very funny sound too it

· Insane also that they just let this magic cat right in to see the king

· This is an interesting story for a trickster though as it appears the cat is only performing tricks to the benefit of his master, will be interesting to see if this changes. Typically tricksters work for their own self gain, maybe an altruistic trickster? But I suppose he would also benefit if his master became rich

· Kind of aggressive for the cat to threaten these people into supporting his cause, seems out of turn from what he had been doing. Maybe a little more of the evil trickster is showing

· Interesting that an ogre own a castle and some lands, I wonder if this means simply that the figure was an ugly guy or truly that he was an ogre

· I have never heard of ogres with the ability to shapeshift before, lot of potential for retelling with that. Also really funny to imagine the cat slipping when trying to run in his boots.

· Ultimately it appears the Trickster benefited greatly from his own deception. I am not sure what the moral of this story is though, possibly that deception and deceit pay off if performed correctly? The story would feel a lot better if the ogre that they killed was at least terrible to the people of the land he ruled over or something of the like. This would actually be a cool story to retell that could be made into a kind of “buddy adventure” between Puss in Boots and his master, almost even like the story of Ted from the movies.

Bibliography
The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford