• Aboriginals in North America
  • Beast Literature
  • Canadiana.1
  • Dances & Music
  • Fables and Fairy Tales
  • Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
  • Feasts & Liturgy
  • Great Books Online
  • Middle East
  • Molière
  • Nominations
  • Posts on Love Celebrated
  • Posts on the United States
  • The French Revolution & Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Voyageurs Posts
  • Canadiana.2

Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: kairos

Molière’s “Médecin malgré lui”

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by michelinewalker in Comedy, Molière

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

deus ex machina, Fear, kairos, Le Médecin malgré lui, Le Vilain mire, Satire on doctors, The Doctor in spite if himself, Three-Act Comedy

Sganarelle (Le médecin malgré lui)

Le Médecin malgré lui, Edmond Geoffroy

LE MÉDECIN MALGRÉ LUI

Our dramatis personæ are

Géronte, père (father) de Lucinde.
Lucinde, fille (daughter) de Géronte.
Léandre, amant (lover) de Lucinde.
Sganarelle, mari (husband) de Martine.
Martine, femme (wife) de Sganarelle.
M. Robert, voisin (neighbour) de Sganarelle.
Valère, domestique (servant) de Géronte.
Lucas, mari (husband) de Jacqueline.
Jacqueline, nourrice (wet-nurse) chez Géronte, et femme de Lucas.
Thibaud, père (father) de Perrin. (peasant)
Perrin, fils (son) de Perrin.

Le Médecin malgré lui is:

  • a three-act comedy;
  • rooted in Le Vilain Mire (mire = doctor), a 13th-century fabliau (most are obscene and some are scatological);
  • it was performed during the years Molière spent outside Paris, under different titles, and, before 1666, in Paris, under different titles;
  • it premièred in Paris, as Le Médecin malgré lui, on 6 August 1666, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal;
  • according to Maurice Rat[1], it was preceded by, or played along a version of La Médecin malgré lui written by Donneau de Visé, entitled La Mère coquette (1665);
  • in the Vilain Mire, the king’s daughter can no longer speak because she has swallowed a fishbone;
  • other antecedents are Italian stories and El Acero de Madrid (Lope de Vega) and Tirso de Molina‘s La Fingida Arcadia;
  • Voltaire called it “très gaie et très bouffonne;” 
  • much is borrowed or belongs to an oral tradition;
  • Henry Fielding‘s Mock Doctor is a translation and adaptation of Le Médecin malgré lui. 
  • French composer Charles Gounod wrote an opera based on Le Médecin malgré lui.
Le médecin malgré lui par F. Boucher

Le Médecin malgré lui, François Boucher

ACT ONE

  • Martine beaten
  • neighbour intervenes
  • Martine’s revenge

Molière’s Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in spite of himself) differs from Le Médecin volant (The Flying Doctor) and L’Amour médecin. Yes, mere clothes will transform Martine’s abusive husband into a doctor and will turn Léandre, our young lover, into an apothicary. But we have left the houses of well-to-do bourgeois to enter the dilapidated home Sganarelle shares with Martine and their children. He drinks away the money he earns as a woodcutter, while his wife takes care of four children.

J’ai quatre pauvres petits enfants sur les bras.
Martine à Sganarelle (I. I, p. 2)
[I have four little children on my hands.]
Martine to Sganarelle (I. 1, p. 4)

So he tells her to put them down:

Met-les à terre.
Martine à Sganarelle
(I. I, p. 2)
[Try putting them down.]
Sganarelle à Martine (I. 1, p. 4)

A neighbour, who has heard screams, tries to rescue Martine, but she and Sganarelle push him away, which may indicate fear on the part of Martine:

Mêlez-vous de vos affaires. 
Martine à Monsieur Robert (I. ii, p. 4)
[Mind your own business.]
Martine à Monsieur Robert (I. 2, p. 4)

Yet, Martine resents being married to Sganarelle and says so in I. iii, p. 5: I. 3, p. 9. Cocuage, cuckolding is used in mis-marriages. But Martine has a harsher revenge in mind and is mulling the question. 

At this point, she bumps into Valère and Lucas who are employees of Géronte, an older man, as the word suggests, and a well-to-do bourgeois. They are looking for a doctor who would cure Lucinde, Géronte’s daughter. She know longer speaks. Martine claims her husband is the man they need, but that he will resist and may have to be beaten.

La folie de celui-ci est plus grande qu’on ne peut croire: car elle va, parfois, jusqu’à vouloir être battu, pour demeurer d’accord de sa capacité: et je vous donne avis que vous n’en viendrez pas à bout, qu’il n’avouera jamais, qu’il est médecin, s’il se le met en fantaisie, que vous ne preniez, chacun, un bâton, et ne le réduisiez à force de coups, à vous confesser à la fin, ce qu’il vous cachera d’abord. C’est ainsi que nous en usons, quand nous avons besoin de lui.
Martine à Valère et Lucas (I. iv, p. 7)
[This one’s even crazier than you might think, because he will even let himself be beaten while denying who he is, and I advise you not to ask him point blank, because he will never admit he is a doctor, so great is his eccentricity, unless you take a stick and reduce him by repeated blows to admit to you at last what he denied before. That’s how we go about it when we need his services.]
Martine to Valère and Lucas (I. 4, p. 11)

So beating Sganarelle is what Valère and Lucas must do to convince him that he is a doctor.

V. Puisque vous le voulez, il faut s’y résoudre. Ils prennent un bâton, et le frappent.
Sg. Ah! ah! ah! Messieurs, je suis tout ce qu’il vous plaira.
Valère à Sganarelle (I. v. p. 11)
[V. Since you insist on having it this way, then, we must convince you.
(They each take a stick and beat him.)]
Valère to Sganarelle (I. 5, pp. 17-18)

Valère and Lucas threaten more blows, so Sganarelle ends up accepting to be a doctor.   

le-mc3a9decin-malgrc3a9-lui-par-ed.-hc3a9d. (2)
Le Médecin malgré lui, Edmond Hédouin

ACT TWO

  • Jacqueline to Géronte (marriage)
  • Sganarelle hits Géronte
  • meets Lucinde
  • flirts with the mild-maid
  • the young lovers
  • Léandre as apothecary
  • Sganarelle will help him

Sganarelle is about to be introduced to Géronte, but Jacqueline protests. All Lucinde needs is:  

… un biau et bon mari, pour qui elle eût de l’amiquié
Jacqueline à Géronte  (II. i, p. 13)
[a fine, handsome husband, one that she even likes.]
Jacqueline to Géronte (II. 1, p. 22)

 Géronte insists that Léandre is not what Lucinde needs. Léandre has no money.

Ja. Que ne preniais-vous ce Monsieu Liandre, qui li touchait au cœur? Alle aurait été fort obéissante: et je m’en vas gager qu’il la prendrait li, comme alle est, si vous la li vouillais donner.
Gé. Ce Léandre n’est pas ce qu’il lui faut: il n’a pas du bien comme l’autre.
Jacqueline à Géronte (II. i, pp. 13-14)

[Ja. Why could you not contract with Mister Leandre, who touches her heart? She would have been very obedient; and I’d bet that he’d take her – even as is – if you arranged to give her to him.
Gé. This Leandre does not have what it takes. He lacks the means of the other.]
Jacqueline to Géronte (II. 1, p. 22)

When Sganarelle meets Géronte, he hits him with a bat (un bâton), which turns him into a doctor. They make up. He notices Jacqueline, the wet-nurse, and would like to be the baby she is looking after. Lucas, Jacqueline’s husband, objects:

Avec moi, tant qu’il vous plaira: mais avec ma femme, trêve de sarimonie.
Lucas à Sganarelle (II. ii, p.16)
[With me, share as much as you like. But with my wife, drop the ceremony.]
Lucas to Sganarelle (II. 2, p. 27)

Sganarelle meets Lucinde and says:

Voilà une malade qui n’est pas tant dégoûtante: et je tiens qu’un homme
bien sain s’en accommoderait assez.
Sganarelle à tous (II. iv, p. 17)
[This patient’s not too terribly repulsive, and I think a good healthy man might well improve her condition.]
Sganarelle to all (II. 4, p. 28)

Sganarelle speaks Latin, states that the liver is on the left side and the heart, on the right side. He uses a Hebrew word. Everyone is impressed. But Géronte tells him that one thing shocks him. The heart is on the left side and the liver on the right side. Sganarelle explains that doctors are using a new method.

He then suggests that Lucinde be served bread dipped in wine. However, he would like to examine Jacqueline who says she is just fine. He suggests a little blood-letting and a clyster, an enema. People who look very healthy may be sick. Géronte gives him money which he refuses as he takes it.

Léandre walks in to ask for Sganarelle’s assistance. Sganarelle is as uncouth as ever, but having learned that Lucinde is feigning illness to avoid marrying a man she does not love, Sganarelle accepts to assist in bringing the lovers together.

ACT THREE

  • clothes make the man (doctor, apothicary)
  • Sganarelle will be a doctor
  • Lucinde speaks
  • Léandre takes Lucinde away
  • Sganarelle to be hanged
  • Martine returns
  • Lovers return, Léandre’s inheritance
  • Géronte will allow the lovers to marry

Léandre is dressed as an apothecary. He hopes he will not be recognized and would appreciate knowing a few medical terms.

Il me semble que je ne suis pas mal ainsi, pour un apothicaire: et comme le
père ne m’a guère vu, ce changement d’habit, et de perruque, est assez capable, je crois, de me déguiser à ses yeux.
Léandre à Sganarelle (III. i, p. 23)
[It seems to me that I wouldn’t make a bad apothecary; and as her father has barely ever seen me, these clothes and this wig should be enough, I think, to disguise me.]
Léandre to Sganarelle (III. 1, p. 37)

Sganarelle tells him that he was made into a doctor, putting the clothes on, and will remain a doctor because it pays. Léandre pays him and everyone believes he is “a gifted man.”

Je ne sais point sur quoi cette imagination leur est venue: mais quand j’ai vu qu’à toute force, ils voulaient que je fusse médecin, je me suis résolu de l’être, aux dépens de qui il appartiendra. Cependant, vous ne sauriez croire comment l’erreur s’est répandue: et de quelle façon, chacun est endiablé à me croire habile homme. 
Sganarelle à Léandre (III. ii, p. 23)
[I don’t know how this idea came to them; but when I saw that they would stop at nothing to have me be a doctor, I resolved to become one, at no matter whose expense. You wouldn’t believe how the error spread, and in what way each person was bound and determined to believe that I was a gifted man.]
Sganarelle to Léandre (III. 2, p. 38)

Thibaut and his son Perrin visit Sganarelle. Thibaut says that Perrin’s mother suffers from “hypocrisie,” (hypocrisy). Sganarelle will not hear Perrin until he is given deux écus. He then diagnoses hydropisie (dropsy).  It could be that Perrin’s mother suffers from dropsy. (III. ii, p. 23-24; III. 2, p.

 

Géronte cannot find his daugther, nor Jacqueline, her husband. (Sc. 4.) But Géronte finds Sganarelle. The remedy prescribed by Sganarelle has not worked. He then sees the apothecary, whom Sganarelle needs. (Sc. 5.)

Jacqueline notices that Lucinde is walking. Géronte believes this will do her good. Meanwhile Sganarelle pulls Géronte away and holds him preventing him from seeing what the apothecary and his daughter are doing.

Cela lui fera du bien. Allez-vous-en, Monsieur l’Apothicaire, tâter un peu son pouls, afin que je raisonne tantôt, avec vous, de sa maladie. (En cet endroit, il tire Géronte à un bout du théâtre, et lui passant un bras sur les épaules, lui rabat la main sous le menton, avec laquelle il le fait retourner vers lui, lorsqu’il veut regarder ce que sa fille et l’apothicaire font ensemble, lui tenant, cependant, le discours suivant pour l’amuser.)
Sganarelle à l’apothicaire (III. vi, p. 27)
[That will do her good. (To Leandre.) Go on then, Mister Apothecary, take her pulse, so that I can confer with you about her illness. (At this point, he pulls Géronte to one end of the stage, and putting an arm on his shoulders, he puts his free hand under his chin, which he directs towards himself, as Géronte would rather gain a glimpse of what his daughter and the apothecary are doing. In so doing, Sganarelle delivers the following distracting discourse.)]
Sganarelle to the apothecary (III. 6, p. 43)

Sganarelle has just liberated Lucinde. Her lover is leading her out of the house.

Géronte says he will make sure his daughter does not see Léandre and Sganarelle agrees. But Lucinde reappears and tells her father:

Non, je ne suis point du tout capable de changer de sentiment.
Lucinde à Géronte (III. vi, p. 27)
[No, I am not at all capable of changing my feelings.]
Lucinde to G
éronte (III. 6, p. 44)

Géronte’s first reaction is one of joy. His daughter can speak.

Voilà ma fille qui parle. Ô grande vertu du remède! Ô admirable médecin! Que je vous suis obligé, Monsieur, de cette guérison merveilleuse: et que puis-je faire pour vous après un tel service?
Géronte à Sganarelle (III. vi, p. 27)
[Look! My daughter’s talking! O great glorious remedy! O admirable doctor! How can I ever thank you for this amazing cure! And what could I ever do for you after such a service!]
Géronte to Sganarelle (III. 6, p. 44)

But now that she can speak, Lucinde speaks her mind. She will marry Léandre, not Horace.

Oui, mon père, j’ai recouvré la parole: mais je l’ai recouvrée pour vous dire, que je n’aurai jamais d’autre époux que Léandre, et que c’est inutilement que vous voulez me donner Horace. 
Lucinde à Géronte (III. vi, p. 27)
[Yes, father, I’ve recovered my speech; but I have recovered it in order to tell you that I will have no other husband than Leandre, and that it is useless for you to force Horace on me.]
Lucinde to Géronte (III. 6, p. 44)
Et je me jetterai plutôt dans un couvent que d’épouser un homme que je n’aime point. 
Lucinde à Géronte (III. vi, p. 28)
[And I would rather throw myself into a nunnery than marry a man I do not love at all.]
Lucinde to Géronte (III. 6, p. 45)
J’épouserai plutôt la mort.
Lucinde to Géronte
(III. vi, p. 28)
[I would rather marry death.]
Lucinde to Géronte (III. 6, p. 45)[2]

Sganarelle calls the apothecary and suggests “a purgative flight” and matrimonium (marriage). 

Pour moi, je n’y en vois qu’un seul [remède], qui est une prise de fuite purgative, que vous mêlerez comme il faut, avec deux drachmes de matrimonium en pilules.
Sganarelle à l’apothicaire (III. vi, p. 29)
For myself, I only see one way to do it, which is the taking of a purgative flight, that you will mix as you must with two grams of matrimonium and administer in pills.
Sganarelle to the apothecary (III. 6, p. 46)

Lucas reports that Lucinde has gone away with the apothecary. Sganarelle will be hanged.

Comment, m’assassiner de la façon. Allons, un commissaire, et qu’on
empêche qu’il ne sorte. Ah traître, je vous ferai punir par la justice.
Géronte à Lucas et Sganarelle (III. viii, p. 30)
Ah par ma fi, Monsieu le Médecin, vous serez pendu, ne bougez de là seulement.
Lucas à Sganarelle (III. viii, p. 30)
[What! Kill me in this way! Immediately, get me a Commissioner! And bar him from leaving! Traitor! I will have you punished by the letter of the law.]
Géronte to Sganarelle (III. 8, p. 48)
[Yes! Sir Doctor, you will hang. Don’t budge from the spot.]
Lucas to Sganarelle (III. 8, p. 48)

le médecin malgré lui par Granville

Le Médecin malgré lui, Grandville

Conclusion

  • deus ex machina (the inheritance)
  • kairos (at the opportune moment)

Martine, Sganarelle’s wife, has been looking for her husband and hears that he will be hanged. But Lucinde and Léandre return and Léandre asks for Lucinde’s hand saying that he has just come into a substantial inheritance. Hearing that Léandre has money convinces Géronte. His daughter may marry Léandre. All’s well that ends well.

Molière has used a deus ex machina and kairos so Sganarelle is not hanged. The young couple learns about Léandre’s inheritance and come to tell Géronte at exactly the right or opportune moment. Sganarelle is about to be hanged. Kairos is a device found in fairy tales, mainly. In ancient Greece, time had two dimensions: chronos and kairos. Moreover, it so happens that Martine, Sganarelle’s wife is looking for her husband. The Sganarelle Martine finds is not altogether the same as the husband who was tricked into blows. In fact, he has facilitated the young lovers’ marriage. He prescribed a quick flight and marriage, when Léandre was still an apothicary or disguised. Sganarelle is younger than Géronte, but Géronte is raising a baby. So, there also been a doubling of the father figure.

The conversation among doctors in L’Amour médecin is exemplary, but what Sganarelle has learned and told Léandre is also a good description of doctors. Doctors lack the means to cure most illnesses, but know that when a person is sick, he or she will seek the help of a doctor. Doctors get rich preying on the fear of death. They are parasites and impostors, or, simply put, hypocrites. They can only make believe they can help the sick.

My colleague Ralph Albanese Jr has written about the dynamism of fear in Molière. Lucinde would rather be dead than married to Horace. Sganarelle beats his wife; he is beaten by Valère and Lucas and he hits Géronte. Géronte fears Lucinde will not recover. This is genuine fear.

In short, Le Médecin malgré lui is a comedy, but it is farcical in that it includes physical humour: blows. But at the end of the play, the sticks have disappeared and Martine will be the wife of a respected doctor. The clothes fit and they make the man. They bring him patients and money. Most importantly, Léandre and Lucinde will marry, as comedy dictates.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Molière page

Sources and Resources

  • all images are from théâtre.documentation.com
  • Le Médecin malgré lui is a toutmoliere.net publication
  • The Doctor in spite of himself is a translation by Brett B. Bodemer, 2011
  • Le Vilain Mire is a Wikisource publication

____________________
[1] Maurice Rat, ed., Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, coll. La Pléiade, 1956), p. 945.
[2] Cf. Rabelais, Tiers Livre, chap. XXXIV, où la femme qui a retrouvé l’usage de sa langue parle tant et tant « que le mari retourna au médicin pour remède de la faire taire. Le médicin répondit […] remède unique estre surdité du mary contre cesty interminable parlement de femme. » (toutmoliere.net)
“where a husband returns to the doctor for a remedy that will shut up his wife. The doctor responds […] that the only remedy is deafness on the part of the husband against this endless chatting of women.”

Love to everyone  💕

Charles Gounod – LE MÉDECIN MALGRÉ LUI – Sextet: “Eh bien! charmante demoiselle”
Han, hi, hon, han, han, hi, hon is Lucinde’s language.

le médecin malgré lui par Horace Vernet (1)

Lucas, Horace Vernet

© Micheline Walker
25 April 2019
revised 26 April 2019
WordPress

 

45.410553 -71.910321

michelinewalker.com

  • Print
  • Email
  • Tweet
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Magical Cats: “Puss in Boots”

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Fairy Tales, French Literature

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

Basile, Fred Marcellino, kairos, learned tradition, oral tradition, Perrault, Salons, Straparola

Puss in boots, by Fred Marcellino

Puss in boots by Fred Marcellino

Animals play many roles in literature.  We have seen them in fables, beast epics, bestiaries, and high fantasy literary works, but we haven’t looked at animals inhabiting fairy tales.

By and large, in animal fairy tales, a witch, or a fairy godmother has transformed a prince or a princess into a frog or a toad.  Usually, if three conditions are met, the curse is lifted and there appears a prince or a princess.  There are exceptions to this scenario, yet it remains a common narrative.

Magical cats

However there are other narratives.  For instance, we have magical cats, and our best example is Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots.  In Puss in Boots, the protagonist, or main character, is the third son of a miller.  One of his brothers has inherited the mill, the other a donkey, but Puss’ master has inherited a mere cat, nothing more.  His fate could be worse. He’s not a prince who has been turned into a frog or toad, but he feels he has been cheated.  However, proud Puss does not consider himself an inferior inheritance and sets about to take his master from rags to riches.

ANTECEDENTS

Puss in Boots has made earlier appearances in Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1480 – c. 1557).  Straparola is considered the father of the literary form of the fairy tale in Europe, but fairy tales constituting Charles Perrault‘s Tales of Mother Goose (1697) are the versions we know and belong to literature.  Between 1550-1555, Straparola wrote Le piacevoli notti or The Facetious nights.  

Charles Perrault also drew his content from Giambattista Basile (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), the author of Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Neapolitan for “The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones”), a work also known as the Il Pentamerone, published posthumously in two volumes, in 1634 and 1636.  But this is a story that may date back a thousand years or more and has been transmitted orally.  A fairy tale enters literature, or the “learned tradition,” when it is presented in writing.[i]

Fairy tales and seventeenth-century French salons

To recapitulate, although Puss in Boots may date back thousands of year, the immediate known sources of French 17th-century fairy tales are Italian.  However, these fairy tales could not be told to children, unless they had been translated and  refined to meet the expectations of salonniers and salonnières (see Salons, Wikipedia).

Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots is a well-written Puss in Boots, a product of late seventeenth-century French salons.  As we know from earlier blogs, Charles Perrault had worked at Versailles, he was an habitué of salons and a member of the French Academy.

—ooo—

Summary of the story

The third son of a miller is disappointed because all he has received as his inheritance is a cat.  However, he will soon know otherwise. First, Puss asks the third son to provide him with a sack and with boots.

Deep within the human psyche lies the wish to travel quickly and, particularly, to fly.  In Puss in Boots, no one has wings.  But fairy tales also feature magical boots called bottes de sept lieues, or seven-league boots.  They allow extraordinary mobility.  It could be therefore that Puss has been provided with bottes de sept lieues, but I doubt it.  The boots seem a prop befitting the genre, a signature.  Puss does not need them, except to appear human.

The Marquis de Carabas

Yet, Puss does put on the boots, but what he shows is exceptional ingenuity, which is a characteristic of Reynard the Fox who succeeds in talking himself out of a death sentence.  As for Perrault’s Puss in Boots, he starts killing game, putting it in his sack, and offering it to the King on behalf of a his renamed master.

Puss has therefore transformed the third son a miller into the Marquis de Carabas.  But this is not an instance of metamorphism, but one of ingenuity.  It is Puss, a clever cat, and not a fairy godmother, who has turned the third son of a miller into an aristocrat.

Puss in Boots, by Fred Marcellino

The River

Next, when Puss in Boots hears that the King and his daughter will ride along a river, he asks the new Marquis to get into the water. He then screams out that the Marquis is drowning.  So the King stops, the Marquis de Carabas is saved, he is given appropriate clothes, and the King’s daughter falls in love with him.  Clothes make the man.

The Land

Puss then reflects that a Marquis has to be a landowner.  He sees peasants mowing a meadow and does so at the right moment: kairos – explained further down –  and asks them to tell the King, when he passes by, that these fertile fields are the property of the Marquis de Carabas.  Puss uses a ruse worthy of Reynard, the cunning fox.

The Ogre’s Castle

Puss in Boots and the Marquis de Carabas then come to a castle, kairos as opposed to chronos.  In this castle, resides the landowner: an Ogre.  This Ogre claims he can transform himself into other animals and, to prove it, he turns himself into a lion.  Puss being very clever quickly asks the Ogre to turn himself into a mouse.  The Ogre, who is not very clever, does as he is asked and Puss in Boots eats him up.

The Banquet

Just then, at the opportune moment, kairos, the King happens to come to the beautiful castle.  The moment is in fact all the more opportune since the Ogre has a banquet ready for guests.  When the Ogre’s guests arrive and see the King’s carriage, they flee.  Consequently, a banquet is ready for the King.  The King is so delighted with the events of the day that he tells the Marquis de Carabas that if he, the Marquis, says the word, he, the King, will take him for his son-in-law.

So, after renaming his master and three ruses: the river, the land, the castle, the third son of the miller has become a rich landowner who lives in a beautiful castle, and will marry the King’s daughter.  Fairy tales end as comedies do.  There is a marriage.  The banquet is the dénouement or outcome.

A few comments

Note that the number three is important.  The miller has three sons.  As for events, the first could be the river, the second, the ruse concerning ownership of the land, and the third, the acquisition of the castle.  But the first could also be renaming the third son of the miller, except that renaming his master perhaps encompasses the three events, or the name of the strategy.

Moreover, it should be pointed out that, in Ancient Greece, time was seen in both its vertical, kairos, and chronological, chronos, dimensions.  Æon (Latin for the Greek word koine) was time eternal, which was sometimes represented by the same figure as chronos.  In Buss in Boots, as in most fairy tales, things are there when they are needed and events happen at the opportune moment.  That is kairos, time in its vertical dimension and time which could be called magical.  We have finally shed light on the word kairos.

It is also true that the Ogre can transform himself, which is the stuff of fairy tales.  But Puss in boots can’t.  Puss is not an Ogre, he is simply very smart and resourceful.  And it is because of these qualities that Puss can be considered a magic wand or fairy godmother, which gives this one fairy tale a lovely new twist.

______________________________

[i] I am using Malcolm Arthur’s translation of Le Chat botté, illustrated by Fred Marcellino (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990).

—ooo—

 
Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757)
Sonata L.366/K.1  
Ivo Pogorelić (born 20 October 1958)
 
Puss in boots, by Fred Marcellino

Puss in boots by Fred Marcellino

© Micheline Walker
9 November 2011
Revised on 21 March 2013
WordPress
0.000000 0.000000

michelinewalker.com

  • Print
  • Email
  • Tweet
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Europa

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,274 other followers

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Merciless Fatality
  • Dom Garcie de Navarre, details
  • Molière’s “Dom Garcie de Navarre ou le Prince jaloux”
  • Belaud (2008 – 2019)
  • More Support for Meghan
  • Le Bourgeois gentilhomme: “Je languis…”
  • Meghan. She’s not OK
  • The Princesse d’Élide’s Récit de l’Aurore
  • Lully’s “Dormez, dormez …”
  • Comments on “La Princesse d’Élide”

Archives

Categories

Calendar

December 2019
M T W T F S S
« Nov    
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • WordPress.org

  • michelinewalker

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker

Social

Social

  • View belaud44’s profile on Facebook
  • View Follow @mouchette_02’s profile on Twitter
  • View Micheline Walker’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View belaud44’s profile on YouTube
  • View Miicheline Walker’s profile on Google+
  • View michelinewalker’s profile on WordPress.org

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker
Follow Micheline's Blog on WordPress.com

Powered by WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: