"The Feathered Ogre" was first published in Italo Calvino's collection, Italian Folk Tales, in 1956. It is a transcription of a traditional story from the oral tradition in Italian culture. In this fairy tale, a man goes on a quest for a feather plucked from the body of a terrible ogre who lives in a cave on a mountain and eats every human being he sees. In his search for the ogre, the man stops four times and promises each of the people he meets to bring them back a feather from the ogre. When he reaches the ogre's cave, a beautiful girl, the ogre's wife, helps him to trick the ogre, so that they may both flee the cave with the desired feathers. On their way home, they give a feather to each of the parties the man had met along the way, and they share the ogre's solution to the predicament of each. When the man returns with a feather to cure the king, he is doubly rewarded, with a promise to marry the beautiful girl. In transcribing such folk tales, Calvino especially valued brevity, repetition and rhythm in the plot and structure of the tale. "The Feathered Ogre" is written with these stylistic concerns in mind, which lends the story a familiar feel to anyone who has been told fairy tales as a child. It contains familiar themes in which good triumphs over evil, the wicked are punished, and the brave hero is rewarded for his courageous good deeds with wealth and marriage to a beautiful girl.