Karabossa
Karabossa or Carabosse is the name of a mythical creature that mainly appeared in the 17th / 18th centuries. Century popular French and English fairy tales plays a role. The French word bosse means 'bump, bump'.
Literary figure
Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (syn. Baronne d'Aulnoy, Madame d'Aulnoy) (1651–1705) was a French writer who was known for her fairy tales. Her stories were less intended for children than for reading to adults in the Parisian salons of the time. In her fairy tale La Princesse Printanière (English Princess Mayblossom ), the young princess Spring gets into all sorts of difficulties due to the evil fairy Carabosse .
In his novel, first published in 1764, about The Victory of Nature Over Enthusiasm or the Adventures of Don Sylvio von Rosalva, Christoph Martin Wieland noted: “As is well known, there are two kinds of fairies, good and bad. Ordinarily they are the most beautiful women in the world, and these are the ugliest freaks one can imagine. Of the latter, Karabosse is one of the most excellent. In the fairy tale La Princesse Printannière she is portrayed as an ugly animal, with crooked legs, a large hump, squinting eyes, a coal-black skin, and a very short, fat body with a head so large that her knees hit her chin. She arrived in a wheelbarrow pushed by two ugly little dwarfs to propose to the queen mother of Princess Printanniere to nurse; and all the follies which this good princess subsequently committed, with all the accidents that arose from them, were the effects of the negative answer that had been given to such a lovable nurse. "
In Pierer's Universal Lexikon , 100 years after Wieland's novel Carabosse is referred to as “… cross-eyed, black of skin, with crooked legs, large humps, short, fat body, etc. very large head, so that her knees hit the chin ... ”.
In the ballet Sleeping Beauty with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , based on the fairy tale La belle au bois dormant by Charles Perrault from 1696, one of the main characters is Carabosse .
source
- Christoph M. Wieland: The adventures of Don Sylvio von Rosalva , Reclam Stuttgart, 2001, p. 29
- Madame d'Aulnoy: La Princesse Printanière , Paris 1697