Rehabilitating the Wolf: Intertextuality and Visual Allusion in Geoffrey de Pennart's Picture Books
In recent years the rehabilitation of the Big Bad Wolf of folk and fairy tales is a common and popular motif in children’s books. Typically it has been affected either through role reversal, as in Trivizas and Oxenbury’s The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, or through a change in perspective which relates the tale from the point of view of the wolf. Both of these revisions not only respond to but also adhere to the traditional narrative. A third form of rehabilitation occurs in stories that while visually and verbally alluding to specific folk tales at the same time create textual and visual narratives distinct from those tales. For instance, the transformation of the wolf in Geoffroy de Pennart’s French picture books is brought about outside the context of the tales. Whether through persuasive argument, physical restraint, or wooing, the three pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, the lamb and the mother goat and her seven kids defy their fates and in the process reform the wolf. In this paper I explore the ways in which de Pennart combines textual and visual references to fables and folk and fairy tales with images and text situated outside those traditional narratives to rewrite those tales and transform the wolf from predator to friend.
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