Thursday, December 8, 2011

La Belle et La Bête

Disney's version may be the first one that comes to mind these days, but artists have envisioned the Beast in a wide variety of ways:

At last he turned to her and said, "Am I so very ugly?"
by Walter Crane, 1845-1915
New York Public Library

Beauty and the Beast
by Eleanor Vere Boyle

Beauty and the Beast by Marie LePrince de Beaumont (originally published in 1757), translated by Richard Howard
illustrations by Hilary Knight

from Beauty and the Beast by Marianna Mayer
illustrations by Mercer Mayer

Beauty and the Beast
by Arthur Rackham

Beauty being brought to the castle by her father
by Edmund Dulac

And some music:

La Belle et la Bête by Philip Glass


Ravel's Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête (from Ma mère l'oye)


Links:

* Beauty and the Beast: A Fractured Fairy Tale by A.J. Jacobs (as seen on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle Show), and Cutie and the Beast, also a Fractured Fairy Tale.

* A gender-reversed story: The Mouse-Hole And The Underground Kingdom

* A Beauty and the Beast history by Terri Windling

* Tales of Faerie analyzes the meaning of Beauty and the Beast.

* An annotated version of the fairy tale at Sur La Lune. Sur La Lune also offers a list of tales similar to Beauty and the Beast.

* Beauty escorted by apes and monkeys as pages by Walter Crane

* Beauty in her Prosperous State from Beauty and the Beast or A Rough Outside with a Gentle Heart, 1813

1 comment:

  1. "Lovely" topic this week.

    Most of these look like real beasts, which makes the story more interesting but perhaps less palatable to a general audience.

    The television version of the beast was less beast-like, but more palatable, I suppose.

    The de Beaumont cover makes the beast more menacing, but the cover is *very* nice.

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