Pyrénée

Pyrénée with the bear and her teddy bear

Pyrénée is a 1998 French feral child graphic novel (bande dessinée) by Regis Loisel and Philippe Sternis, about a feral girl who is brought up in the mountains of the French Pyrenees by a bear.

Plot summary[]

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When a huge earthquake devastates a town in the French Pyrenees, a bear escapes from a circus in the confusion and later finds a small girl whose mother has been killed in the quake. The bear rescues the girl (and her teddy bear) and raises her as his own cub like a female version of Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, high in the inaccessible mountains, naming her "Pyrénée" after them. Later on she also learns philosophy and wisdom from a blind old eagle, learned to hunt and fishing, and eventually has to find her way back to human society.

Inspirations[]

The French Pyrenees were home to two people that may have served as inspiration for the story. The Girl of Issaux,^[1] lost in the snow at the age of 8 and captured at the age of 16 (circa 1719), and also La Folle des Pyrénées^[2] (captured 1807 at the age of about 40) who was not feral but lived with the bears. The story also draws some parallels to another story of a wild child of French origin -Victor of Aveyron.

See also[]

• List of fictional feral children

References[]

External links[]

• Pyrenee on nota-bene.org (in French)
• Official website of Regis Loisel (in French)
• Biography of Philippe Sternis (in English) on Lambiek.net
• Pyrenee fan-page (in English)