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A Book Of Creatures
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Happy birthday! Here’s a jewel!
A GEMSTONE FOR ME!!! WEALTH AND RICHES APLENTY???
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can't stop thinking about that one tweet that says "there's starbucks in egypt?" in response to the news of egypt's success in boycotting starbucks
#i remember when starbucks first opened back home#and mcdonalds#and coca cola#hehe#fun stuff#mcdonalds was such a disappointment
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You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.
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Appreciation for underrated children’s horror books
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he Hates it
Polistes fuscatus ♂
8/31/23
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Spideerse daanceee
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Did you know? Tetracerus quadricornis means "Four-horns four-horns" in Greek and Latin!
post four-horned antelope right now
images (x) (x)
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biologist here! why are plants green? well they suck up air from the sky (blue) and mix it with the sunlight (yellow) i fucking love science.
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I know people are (rightly) horrified at the US's stance on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but have you seen the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women?
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This might sound stupid, but what are the characteristics of fairytale ogres, particularly how Charles Perrault describes them?
There is no stupid question on this blog! (Except if someone really pisses me off, then all their questions will be stupid)
It is quite easy to answer this because we only have three ogres in all of Perrault's fairytales, so identifying the main traits is fast. They come from "Puss in Boots", "Little Thumbling" and "Sleeping Beauty". I'll recap shortly.
Eat humans. That's the main trait of an ogre. They eat human flesh, though they don't eat all the humans they see on the spot, mind you. Ogres prefer the flesh when it is young, tender, fresh and pretty. So they prefer pretty young people (Sleeping Beauty) to ugly old ones (that's what spares the ogre's wife, her age, she is too old to be edible). And this is why they go crazy over children, which for them is the most delicious meat. Literaly: the ogres are repeatedly said to be literaly jumping on children as soon as they see them, and to always want to eat them on the spot. (Another ogre trait: they are not very patient beings, and they have a hard time waiting)
Even outside of eating humans, they tend to be food-obsessed people - ranging from Little Thumbling's ogre who eats enormous quantities of food (entire animals to himself), to the ogress-queen who insists on having the most fashionable and delicious sauces with her meals.
Ogres are wealthy, and powerful in a social or political way. People tend to forget this, but the ogres of Perrault range from a literal queen (who was married by the king because of her immense wealth) to a lord who owns so many lands even the king is amazed. We don't know the social class of Little Thumbling's ogre, but he still lives in a large mansion and owns a huge treasure. Insert your joke of "the rich eat the poor" (except ogres also eat the rich - see the Sleeping Beauty case)
Ogres have something magical to them, ranging from owning magical items (Little Thumbling's seven-league-boots) to having actual magical powers (Puss in Boots' ogre is a shapeshifter)
Ogres are wicked and bad people who collect all sorts of vices, but they are all painted as brutal bullies, and as cruel beings who delight in scaring people or making them suffer. Oh yes, and if you cross an ogre, they will hunt you down mercilessly to enact their revenge, because ogres are very vengeful (see the ogre's hunt for Little Thumbling and his brothers, or the ogress' decision to have everybody executed for deceiving her)
When ogres have a family, they have a... very bizarre and complicated set of relationships mixing fear and love and abuse and familial respect. On one side, we have an ogre who is an abusive husband (and yet told to be a good husband enough that his wife loves him very much), and adores his daughters (he only eats them by accident) ; on the other, an ogress who lives peacefully with her husband, who refuses to harm or upset her son (son who both loves her a lot and still fears her), but who wishes to kill on the spot her daughter-in-law and grandkids... Oh and they are known to apparently regularly invite over friends to share their meals (at least if they don't end up devouring the planned meal before the guests arrive)
Are ogres giants? In Perrault's fairytales, no. Everybody knows of Gustave Doré's famous illustrations depicting ogres as giants, but this comes from A) other authors depicting ogres as giants and B) oral/popular/folkloric fairytales and legends mixing ogres and giants. So by the time Gustave Doré illustrated the fairytales, ogres were thought of as giants - but Perrault never writes anything about them being giants, and in the first illustrations of his fairytales they are depicted human-sized. At most he implies that the ogres are big/large/tall/heavy beings, but no different from a big, tall man.
Unlike the modern idea that ogres are inhuman monsters - in Perrault's fairytales, everything indicates that ogres look a lot like humans, and are very close to them. They are inserted in the human society as kings and queens (unlike fairies for example who are "outside" elements), they can crossbreed with humans (and if Sleeping Beauty is any clue, half-ogres looks so much like humans you can't tell they're ogres), and in the case of the ogress-queen, only her intimates know about her ogress nature - the rest is just unconfirmed rumors running around the court. (And Gustave Doré had caught on this, which is why he had his ogres looking like almost regular people). Perrault himself defines ogres in his notes as "wild men/savage men".
The only physical traits Perrault indicates about ogres (beside them having booming voices, and possibly being quite large and big people), are facial traits. They all come from the little ogresses' descriptions in Little Thumbling. Three of them are said to make ogresses "ugly" by 17th century standard - a hooked nose, round grey eyes, and a very large mouth filled with long, spaced-out sharp teeth. A fourth however is said to make them pretty by those same standards - because their diet of meat and flesh gives them a "pretty skin tone/beautiful colors/a healthy skin color".
If the same Little Thumbling fairytale is to be believed, ogre-children start their cannibalistic diets by sucking up the blood of little children. Then they presumably move to eating the children - but in their early years they just bite like vampires.
Oh yes and how could I forget. THE other main defining trait with their gluttonous cannibalism: their sense of smell. Ogres can smell "fresh meat" (la chair fraîche is the consecrated French expression). It is how the ogre of Little Thumbling guesses there are children hiding in his house, he smells them, and the ogress-queen is also said to go randomly go in the courtyard to sniff out animals like a wild beast.
I think these are pretty much the big defining traits of ogres in Perrault's fairytales. Of course, I simplified stuff, but this is the core knowledge to have about what ogres ~ Perrault style ~ are.
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🦏 Naaukeurige en uitvoerige beschryving van kaap de Goede Hoop;.
Amsterdam: By B. Lakeman, 1727.
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-> "I like you much, but not enough to eat you unnecessarily".
-> "They are nothing but mouth and teeth."
-> "I am ready to do anything for the general safety."
-> "How delightful this oxygen is!"
Out-of-Context "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" Quotes to Put on Shirts:
-> "To be frank, I think that we're seeing things here that God wished to hide from man's eyes."
-> “Terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred.”
-> “I declare it is easy to lead a snail's life.”
-> “I will not be eaten without protest!”
-> “The human mind enjoys impressive visions of unearthly creatures.”
-> “This precious carnivore, hunted and tracked by fishermen, is becoming extremely rare."
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🦇 Prosperi Alpini Marosticensis, philosophi, medici, in celeberrimo Lyceo Patavino pharmaciae professoris ordinarii, hortique medici praefecti, Historiæ Ægypti naturalis
Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Gerardum Potuliet, MDCCXXXV [1735]
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... the Lord is testing me.
(Specifically, the Getty Museum shop is testing me)
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