Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds by Malecrit

Thanks to Laxgoalierat

Title: Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds (Oh no, I have transfigured my feet)

Author: Malecrit

Publisher: not known 

Source book: Quidditch Through the Ages by JK Rowling 

Of course, Quidditch Through the Ages is a real book that started life as a fictitious book, so perhaps Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds qualifies as a fictional book within a fictional book? 

Honestly, I never imagined that researching fictional books would turn out to be quite so complicated. Books within books within books. After all, I started to make a list way back in my teens and even then there were lots of fictional books to discover. A project begun a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Extra complicated because Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds is a play and not a book. Remember, I’m OK with plays, but fictional film titles is taking things a bit too far. As are fictional magazines.

Do we suppose that this play is a sort of mediaeval version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids? But I don’t know in what respect this person’s feet have been transfigured or transformed. Whatever the problem is, it doesn’t sound good.

Quidditch sounds quite a terrifying game to play. I have never been much good at games, but I loved playing football when I was 7. Obviously, at school, football was forbidden to girls and we played rounders instead. I was utterly useless at rounders (US readers: think softball - well, kind of) and never once managed to hit the ball. And then, oh no! Even worse, I went to a school where we played lacrosse, (which in the UK is played by schoolgirls, not men) for which I had no talent whatsoever. Looking back, maybe Quidditch would have been easier. Apart from the vertigo of course.

Anyhow, Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds was written by a French wizard in the early 1400s. And it features an early reference to Quidditch showing how the game had spread to Europe. Although, from where, I do not know. 

So, a play about magic perhaps, written more than 100 years before Shakespeare, in la langue de Molière as the French say of anything written in French. Of course, if it’s written in English, it becomes la langue de Shakespeare. Pronounced Shak-speerrr.

Thanks to Laxgoalierat