Who are these Fables?

[BizarroBeachHead]

Can anybody tell me which fairy tales or stories the following characters are from?

Renyard the Fox
Britomart(the girl fighting with Robin Hood)
The Redcross Knight
Kay(the blind guy)

If I've ever heard of them before, I certainly don't remember them, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Puffy Treat]

Kay(the blind guy)

If I've ever heard of them before, I certainly don't remember them, any help would be greatly appreciated.


Kay comes from Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Snow Queen'. In it a demon made a mirror that twisted anything it reflected into evil. The mirror got shattered, and a sliver of it got caught in Kay's eyes.

While he lost the sliver in the story's happy ending, apparently this did not happen to the "Fables" Kay.

As a result, he sees all the evil acts (and _only_ the evil acts) those around him have ever done. As a result he blinds himself regularly.

There was a slightly altered version of the story in which the mirror was made by the Snow Queen herself...something Bigby tossed off to Kay makes me think that variant of the story is being used.

Reynard the fox is a character from old European folk tales. I believe he turns up in many stories.

[Gaz]

The redcross knight reminds me of St George...

[Royal]

Reynard is french loki character always playing tricks on King Lion & his court.

[JTLauder]

The Redcross Knight and Britomart come from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
They are knights while set on quests that really set then on a pilgramage examining Christian (moral) virtues.

In Book I, The Redcross Knight represents the knight of Holiness, fighting against evil. He represents the common man facing everyday temptations struggling to live a good life and achieve holiness. In the beginning, he is naive and full of pride and jealousy, which proves to be his downfall. Along the way, he learns from his mistakes, to distinguish between truth and deception, and becomes a virtuous knight. He gets his name from the red cross on his shield, but his actual name is George, then becoming St. George, the patron saint of England.

In Book 3, Lady Knight Britomart is a female virgin warrior representing Chastity on a quest to find love--her future husband that she sees in a vision. As with the Redcross Knight, her quests lead her to all sorts of encounters that challenge her chastity. But she is forgoes all until she finds her true love.

[Predator]

What about Feathertop from the text story in the first trade? Who is he supposed to be?

[Smuggletrain]

What about Feathertop from the text story in the first trade? Who is he supposed to be?

I don't have the trade so I'm not sure what the story is. It is probably the same Feathertop that's from Nathaniel Hawthorne.

[The Adventurer]

Feathertop is a scarecrow that becomes human whileever he smokes his enchanted tabacoo

I'm not sure what he's from exactly, but that's what he is.

[The Dosadi Experiment]

Reynard is french loki character always playing tricks on King Lion & his court.

Reynard the fox is a medieval figure that is most common in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, although Belgium did not yet exist at that time.

I remember him as I encountered the character and his adventures while still in school, where he had become part of Dutch literary history, in the book Van Den Vos Reynearde. (Of the Fox Reynard)

It was written down, perhaps even translated, way back in the thirteenth century by a man named Willem, of whom very little is known, only that he is the one "die Madocke maecte" (whom made Madoc).

I don't know if you are aware of the African literary figure of Anansi the Spider, but he shares similairities with that character.

The tale has become the most prominent part of a genre here, called the Animal Fable, in which animals fulfill the roles humans would otherwise fulfill.

The animals are dominated by characteristics that are common for their beastly form and shape. A noble man, or a king is transformed into a Lion, and a sly trickster becomes a fox.

I doubt that the authors took time with researching the character, after all, it's aimed at an american audience, which means that they'll end up with the English version of the character, which is about 300 years younger than the Dutch version.

William Caxton did not invent Reynard the Fox, he will never be the first to write the character down, and he is not the man who should be given credit for the creation of the character!

Some Old-Dutch for you all to read:

'O wy, Tybeert, twi sidi bloode?
Wanen quam uwer herten desen wanc?'
Tybeert scaemde hem ende spranc
Daer hi vant groet ongherec,
Want eer hijt wiste, was hem een strec
Omme sinen hals harde vast.
Dus hoende Reynaert sinen gast.
Alse Tybeert gheware wart
Des strecs wart hi vervaert
Ende spranc voert. Dat strec liep toe!
Tybeert moeste roupen doe
Ende wroughede hem selven dor den noot.
Hi makede een gheroup so groot
Met eenen jammerliken ghelate,
Dat Reynaert hoerde up der strate
Buten, daer hi alleene stoet,
Ende riep: 'Vindise goet
Die muse, Tybeert, ende vet?
Wiste nu dat Martinet,
Dat ghi ter taflen satet
Ende dit wiltbraet dus atet,
Dat ghi verteert, in weet hoe,
Hi sauder u saeuse maken toe.
So hovesch een cnape es Martinet!
Tybeert, ghi singhet als ghi et.
Pleecht men tes coninx hove des?

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Feathertop is a scarecrow that becomes human whileever he smokes his enchanted tabacoo

I'm not sure what he's from exactly, but that's what he is.

Which is intresting, cause I sometimes feel like a scarecorw when I smoke my "enchanted tabacco".

[Gaz]

The Redcross Knight and Britomart come from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
They are knights while set on quests that really set then on a pilgramage examining Christian (moral) virtues.

In Book I, The Redcross Knight represents the knight of Holiness, fighting against evil. He represents the common man facing everyday temptations struggling to live a good life and achieve holiness. In the beginning, he is naive and full of pride and jealousy, which proves to be his downfall. Along the way, he learns from his mistakes, to distinguish between truth and deception, and becomes a virtuous knight. He gets his name from the red cross on his shield, but his actual name is George, then becoming St. George, the patron saint of England.

In Book 3, Lady Knight Britomart is a female virgin warrior representing Chastity on a quest to find love--her future husband that she sees in a vision. As with the Redcross Knight, her quests lead her to all sorts of encounters that challenge her chastity. But she is forgoes all until she finds her true love.
Interesting. More info on the books please, time of writing, concept, opinion...

[BizarroBeachHead]

I don't know if you are aware of the African literary figure of Anansi the Spider, but he shares similairities with that character.
Actually, yes I am familiar with her. And thanks to everyone for all the helpfull information! If I find any others that I don't recognize, expect to hear from me again.

[Karl J. Barnes]

Which is intresting, cause I sometimes feel like a scarecorw when I smoke my "enchanted tabacco".

What coincidence!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like coyote when I eat a special button. The miracles of nature!

[JTLauder]

The Redcross Knight and Britomart come from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.Interesting. More info on the books please, time of writing, concept, opinion...
Edmund Spenser lived from 1542-1599, born in London and went to Cambridge. He was considered a genious and regarded as the "poet's poet" because he experimented with different forms of verse in his writing and developed the rhyme scheme of the Spenserian sonnet that many subsequent writers later copied. He greatly admired Chaucer and the antiquity so he deliberately used archaic (apparently considered archaic even at that time) language, favoring the past over his present.

He started work on The Faerie Queene around 1580 but it wasn't until 1590 that the first 3 books were published. He had planned 12 books for the whole work, but was only able to complete 6, published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is really just a giant romantic epic poem.

Spenser was influenced by the renaissance, celebrating physical beauty but also maintaining a strong moral that wasn't rigid but based on the right actions and the temptations that hinder those actions. So that's what the The Faerie Queene is about. He wanted to show qualities of a noble person, and of the 6 books he wrote, he exhibited the virtues of holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy. The characters are shown to undergo everyday tempatations that the ordinary person encounters that hinder them from achieving their virtue.

He wanted to create a fictional story with characters and events that very obviously represented and symbolized historical persons and events. As was the political-religious struggle at the time between Protestantism and Catholism, Spenser was especially critical of the Roman Catholic Church and they are represented as corrupt and evil throughout his work.

You can read it online here, but I think you'll need to find some kind of commentary to be able to understand it.

THE FAERIE QUEENE (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/fqintro.html)

Gotta hand it to Bill Willingham. The guy has to be pretty well-read to be able to gather so many different literary characters from so wide an array of works and make them work well together. It certainly has us talking about literature!