Cats in literature
Cats in literature can be part of the plot or play the role of the protagonist.
poetry
The Talmud praises cats and recommends breeding them to keep the house clean.
The tragic passing of Selima, Horace Walpole's favorite cat , is commemorated in Thomas Gray's poem Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes .
During the Renaissance , Dante Alighieri , Francesco Petrarca and Torquato Tasso expressed sympathy for cats.
With Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , the cat Hinze is tricked by Reineke Fuchs .
Among the famous works of romantic include the views of life of the cat Murr . The last novel by ETA Hoffmann has a complex, multi-perspective plot and is largely told from the perspective of the cat. It illustrates student life in Königsberg and parodies the timeless philistine .
The fairy tale novel Spiegel, das Kitten by Gottfried Keller revolves around a tomcat that hunger forces him to sell his “pain” (his fat) to a sorcerer. In it, the cat friend Keller describes the relationship with his publisher Eduard Vieweg in encrypted form .
Also worth mentioning are the Cat That Walked by Himself created by Rudyard Kipling in one of his Just So Stories and the eerie title character of the story The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe , with whose help a murderer can be convicted.
Cat lovers are Charles Baudelaire ( Le chat ), Guy de Maupassant ( Sur les chats ) and Colette .
The collection of cat verses Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats , inspired by TS Eliot's cat "Jellylorum," was used as the basis of Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber .
James Joyce wrote a story in 1936 about a cat who thwarted the devil's soul-catching plan ( The Cat and the Devil ).
In Ich der Kater Japan , Natsume Sōseki looks at how things changed under Western influence after the Meiji Restoration .
In Cat in the Empty Apartment , Wisława Szymborska describes a cat waiting for its deceased owner.
Probably the “biggest” tomcat in world literature is Behemoth , the devil's assistant in The Master and Margarita .
Pop Culture
Examples in today's pop culture are the now five-part series Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield . It consists of picture books and describes everyday situations with cats. The fantasy series Warrior Cats by the author quartet Erin Hunter is about wild cats .
Wolfgang Hohlbein's novel Katzenwinter depicts cats as semi-intelligent, if not intelligent, beings who support the protagonist in the fight against a dark force. The main female character is a hybrid of cat and human and appears in changing shapes.
With his short story The Cats of Ulthar , HP Lovecraft invented a myth about a certain type of cat. This story and his dream search for the unknown Kadath attribute to the cats the ability to tread invisible paths between the worlds and to wander back and forth between the real world and dream realms. In the cosmos of the Cthulhu myth , which Lovecraft has devised, which has been expanded by other authors , the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet is one of the so-called Elder Gods .
In the magazine novel series Perry Rhodan , the kartan Dao Lin H'ay, an intelligent life form from the Hangay galaxy, a cat-like alien played an important supporting role over several cycles.
Children's books
Puss in Boots appeared in Grimm's fairy tale in 1812 . The fairy tale of the talking cat has been filmed several times.
The Cheshire Cat from the novel Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll can grin and make itself invisible from the tail. In the end, she's gone completely, just not her grin.
Contemporary German-language children's books are Cat with Hat and Felidae . In Felidae , Francis , Cave Canem , The Duel , Salve Roma! , Lewdness and Felipolis of Akif Pirinçci play Cats the lead role and a hangover dissolves as a detective exciting cases. In these books the cat owners are called "can openers". With the psychologist Rolf Degen Pirinçci wrote Das große Felidae Katzenbuch - What they love to think, think .
Probably the best known cat detective is Mrs. Murphy of Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie .
Picture books about cats are also popular with very young children: For the cardboard picture book I am the little cat , Helmut Spanner received the Premio critici in erba award in 1982 , which is awarded by children.
Memory of cats
Vicki Myron in Dewey and I describes the story of the library cat Dewey Readmore Books .
Cats in proverbs and sayings
Annette Behr and Claas Janssen: Let the cat out of the bag - fun and background information about cats in proverbs and sayings , Steffen Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95799-020-4
Anthologies
An anthology illustrated by Reinhard Michl collects poems and short stories about cats. Another anthology by Manesse Verlag with texts on the subject of cats shows 10 color and 27 black and white pictures by the artist Gottfried Mind .
Quotes
"Humanity can be roughly divided into two groups: cat lovers and those disadvantaged by life."
“... then the wonderful gift of expressing joy, pain, bliss and delight, fear and despair, in short all sensations and passions with the only word“ meow ”. What is the language of the people against this simplest of all simple means of making oneself understood! "
"Anyone who has harrowed the cat knows how it pulls."
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
- ↑ Spanner, Helmut. In: Authors. Ravensburger AG, accessed on December 10, 2011 : "For" I am the little cat "he received the" Premio critici in erba "in Bologna."
- ↑ Reinhard Michl, Christine Knödler (eds.), Schnurren und Kratzen: Tales of Cats , illustrated by Reinhard Michl, Hanser Verlag Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-24167-1
- ↑ Federico Hindermann (ed.): Katzen - A selection of texts from world literature , Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1997, 5th edition, ISBN 3-7175-1614-0