Angela Carter’s «Puss-in-Boots»: Commedia dell’arte meets the Bluebeard story

Abstract

In the short-story «Puss-in-Boots» Angela Carter rewrites Charles Perrault’s classic «Le Chat Botté». She enhances the comic element by constructing it in the vein of commedia dell’arte which at the end subverts the up-coming uxoricide and the «Bluebeard» Leitmotiv. The combination of humour and the terrible represents yet another form of the Carterian grotesque abounding in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.