Ogre illustrations: Caricatures

Ogres were very, very frequently used in social or political caricatures. Here is a little selection.

In this caricature, the ogre is an embodiment of the "Infant Industries", armed with a club on which is inscribed "Dingley Tariff" - the knight facing the ogre is actually the president Roosevelt.

Here, Daniel O'Connell is depicted, in an 1843 issue of "Punch", as the "Irish ogre fattening on the finest pisantry".

In this caricature, which retells the evacuation of children to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War, Russia is depicted as an ogre stealing the children of Spain, while "Carlist youth" tries to "rescue" them.

An 1902 caricature by Achille Lemot for an issue of the newspaper "Le Pélerin" depicting Emile Combes as an ogre.

A caricature by Charles Léandre of Edouard Drumond as an ogre, in the context of the Dreyfus case.

A caricature by Grandville published in 1835, entitled "The big and fat ogre"

A 1914 caricature of a French soldier entering the mouth of the German ogre

Another caricature of Emile Combes as an ogre, devouring various freedoms depicted as dishes

A Georges Lafosse caricature of 1878 depicting Napoleon III and his "liberal empire" as an ogre

While I'm at it, I want to precise something about the language of these 17th century fairytales like Perrault and d'Aulnoy.

There is something that might be confusing to foreigners not speaking French - that is confusing even to modern-day French folks unaware of the 17th century complexities - but that might be even more confusing for Americans and other people used to a very specific word... "Race".

Race pops up regularly in Perrault's and d'Aulnoy's fairytales, and I do not know how the word was translated in English, but the word "race" of these tales does NOT translate as modern day "race". Yes, race in the racist sense of today did exist by the 17th century... But it was a minor usage not very widespread nor common. What the French word "race" actually refers in these stories is... bloodline.

"Race" was for example used very regularly when princes or princesses speak of their family or ancestors. A princess' "race" means her royal house and royal ancestors. To "perpetuate the race" simply means "having an heir", as simple as that. It is by extension that "race" went from "a specific family or bloodline" to "a specific ethnicity or species". Think of the old house of "house". Like... House Lannister in Game of Thrones? In Perrault's text, it would have been written "the race of the Lannisters".

This is a point I myself came across when doing my paper about ogres, because when talking about the mother of the prince from Sleeping Beauty, Perrault specifies she is "de race ogresse". Today we can understand it as "she was an ogress" or "she was of the ogre species" and it does work since ogres are not human beings in popular culture... But Perrault's original text is much more subtle than that - because remember, in Perrault's fairytales ogres are ambiguously humans or half-humans - and what he actually meant was "she was of ogre bloodline".

By extension, and that was another point of my paper, it is a common part of ogre lore that ogres are always about family. This is why for example the mad clan of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a good example of modern-day ogres: ogres always have a wife, sons, daughters, brothers or sisters somewhere. Perrault's ogres are a bloodline that seemingly mixes and mingles itself with nobility and royalty, and we have an ogre who has seven daughters ; madame d'Aulnoy presents us clans of ogres also with half a doen kids and who are focused on getting grandchildren. And this is even present in the uerco/orco lore of Basile's Pentamerone - for example in "The Golden Root" where the heroine has to fight or win the heart of an entire clan of ogres, mother, aunt, son and daughters (plus baby cousin thrown in a burning oven).

What makes an ogre? (9): The Italian uerco

Now that I made brief recaps of the Pentamerone stories, let’s make a portrait of the “uerco” of these tales! Note that, since this isn’t part of my actual university study, I won’t be as thorough and certain as I was with the French ogre - this is mostly a superficial accumulation of details and remarks I collected throughout reading the stories. 

[Again, in terms of illustrations, I am forced to use non-Italian ones, except for the picture right below which does depict an “orco”, even though it isn’t a “uerco” from the Pentamerone. It is rather the Orco from the Orlando Furioso, which is probably the second most famous literary apparition of an orco/uerco in Italian literature]

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The persistence of porcine features among uerco in these stories -and the use of "porco" in Italian as an insult meaning a greedy, gluttonous, violent person- makes me wonder if Italians made a connection between the two words in these stories? 'Orco/uerco' and 'porco' are pretty similar, so maybe it was a sort of pun thing to give them boarish features, or maybe it was the other way, with the concept of the magical creature growing out of this idea of a porkish person. Just baseless speculation on my part but it's interesting.

I wonder if THIS is where the idea of the piggish orc came from too!

the what now

Me: "No see, the frog contains the universe and the frog is god."

Group of Ogres who will eat me the moment they remember I can be killed: "s'just Brahman innit?"

Literally why are y'all tagging this as Homestuck

One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater

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