The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots / Der gestiefelte Kater (Bilingual Edition: English - German / Zweisprachige Ausgabe: Englisch - Deutsch) #100542

This edition contains the English translation and the original text in German.

"Master Cat; or, The Booted Cat" (Italian: "Il gatto con gli stivali"; French: "Le Maître Chat, ou Le Chat Botté"); commonly known in English as "Puss in Boots", is an European literary fairy tale about a cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master. The oldest record of written history dates from Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, who included it in his The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550-53) in XIV-XV. The tale was written at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the "Académie française". Another version was published in 1634 by Giambattista Basile with the title "Cagliuso". The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault called "Histoires ou contes du temps passé". The book was an instant success and remains popular. Perrault's "Histoires" has had considerable impact on world culture. The original French title was "Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités" with the subtitle "Les Contes de ma mère l'Oye" ("Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals", subtitled "Mother Goose Tales"). The frontispiece to the earliest English editions depicts an old woman telling tales to a group of children beneath a placard inscribed "MOTHER GOOSE'S TALES" and is credited with launching the Mother Goose legend in the English-speaking world. "Puss in Boots" has provided inspiration for composers, choreographers, and other artists over the centuries. The cat appears in the third act "pas de caractère" of Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty", for example, and makes appearances in other media.

"Der gestiefelte Kater" ist ein Märchen (ATU 545B). Es stand in den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm nur in der 1. Auflage von 1812 als Nr. 33 (KHM 33a). In der modernen, von Heinz Rölleke herausgegebenen Ausgabe findet es sich als Nr. 5 im Anhang.