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Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Topsy-Turvy World of Beast Literature

31 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Fables, Literature

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

beast literature, C. S. Lewis, fantasy, Harry Potter, J. R. R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, topsy-turvy

letters-1102110_1823203c
Mr Toad jailed because he stole a car.  The Telegraph  
The Wind in the Willows, by Arthur Rackham
Photo credit: The Telegraph 
 
MendozaW45
The Wind in the Willows, by Philip Mendoza, 1983
http://www.illustrationartgallery.com/acatalog/info_MendozaW45.html
(Photo credit: Philip Mendoza, Illustrations, Posters)
 
 
The Wind in the Willows
(see the video at the bottom of this post)
 

It would appear that animals are indeed everywhere.  We find mythological, mythical, zoomorphic and theriomorphic animals in the most ancient texts.  In this regard, India seems our main source.

But so is the Bible, where we find archangels, good angels and bad angels:  the Devil himself!  As well, the Bible also warns that we must not trust appearances.  In Matthew 7:15, we read:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Literature is home to an extraordinary number of ravenous wolves.  In La Fontaine’s fables, we have a wolf who eats a lamb, “Le Loup et l’Agneau.”  In fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood loses her grandmother to a wolf.

And, as strange as it may seem, literature is also home to the zoomorphic and theriomorphic (deified beasts) animals featured in mythologies, but reappearing along with new fantastic beasts in medieval Bestiaries, including Richard de Fournival‘s Bestiaire d’amour. 

arthur-rackham-the-wind-in-the-willows-1940-it-was-a-golden-afternoon-the-smell-of-the-dust-they-kicked-up-was-rich-and-sastifying
The Wind in the Willows, by Arthur Rackham
 

High Fantasy Literature 

Finally, literature is home to more or less recent high fantasy works featuring fantastic beasts:

  • J. R. R. Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) is the author of The Hobbit, 1937, the high fantasy The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written between 1954 to October 1955, and the mythopoeic Silmarillion, published posthumously, in 1977, by Tolkien’s son Christopher and Guy Gavriel Kay.  Tolkien taught English literature at Oxford and, among other works, he drew his inspiration from Beowulf for what he called his legendarium.
  • C. S. Lewis, a friend of Tolkien, is the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, written between 1949 and 1954.  Narnia is a fictional place, a realm.  Previously, Lewis had published a collection of letters entitled The Screwtape Letters, 1942.  Earlier still, Lewis had written his three-volume science-fiction Out of the Silent Planet, a trilogy written between 1938 and 1945 and inhabited by strange figures.  C. S. Lewis created Hrossa, Séroni, Pfifltriggi, new creatures who live in outer space, but his cosmology includes angels and archangels.
  • As for J. K. Rowling, she is the author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through the Ages (both supplements to the Harry Potter series, 2001), The Tales of Beedle the Bard  (supplement to the Harry Potter series, 2008) and the Harry Potter series, which contains several fantastic beasts.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

In these books, new lands are created as well as new beasts, but these works also feature beasts borrowed from antiquity and various medieval bestiaries.  The books I have mentioned were immensely successful, which shows the importance of fantasy in the human mind. We need imaginary worlds, worlds like the pays de Tendre, worlds with maps and topsy-turvy worlds.

Topsy-Turvy Worlds

What I would like to emphasize is this blog is the topsy-turvy world of beast literature and the comic text.  In Reynard the Fox, not only do animals talk, but they are an aristocracy. Humans are mere peasants.

As for the theriomorphic,[i] creatures of mythologies, as I mentioned above, they are deified beasts attesting that Beast Literature is indeed an the “upside-down” world, as Jill Mann mentions with respect to Reynard the Fox.[ii]  We also have underworlds.  In Greek mythology, we have an Underworld, whence one cannot escape, as Cerberus guards its entrance.  Tolkien created a “middle-earth” and C. S. Lewis, worlds in outer space.  The Judeo-Christian hell is also an underground world.  Moreover, how ironic it is that Richard de Fournival should use animals in praise of women.

However my favourite underworld can be found in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.  The Mole and the Rat get lost in the woods during a snow storm.  They see a mat and beyond the mat a door which leads to the Badger’s underground residence.  After dinner, the Mole the Rat, the Otter, who arrives later, and Badger, their host, sit by the fire and the Badger praises his underground world where he is sheltered from both the cold and the heat:

The Badger simply beamed on him. ‘That’s exactly what I say,’ he replied. ‘There’s no security, or peace and  tranquillity, except underground. And then, if your ideas get larger and you want to expand–why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again! No builders, no tradesmen, no remarks passed on you by fellows looking over your wall, and, above all, no WEATHER.[iii]

 Detail-from-Arthur-Rackha-007

Mole and Rat meet the horned god Pan
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”
The Wind in the Willows 
(Photo credit: The Guardian)
 
______________________________
[i] “The animal form as a representation of the divine…”
Kurt Moritz Artur Goldammer, “religious symbolism and iconography.”  Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Aug. 2013.            
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497416/religious-symbolism>.
[ii]  Jill Mann, “The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus,” in Kenneth Varty, editor, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 11.
[iii]  The Wind in the Willows is the Project Gutenberg [EBook # 289]
 

—ooo—

The Wind in the Willows

 
mr_toad1Mr Toad,
by Ernest Shepard
(Photo credit: James Gurney)
 
 
© Micheline Walker
31 October 2011
Revised on 26 August 2013
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The Aberdeen Bestiary

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Bestiaries, Illuminated Manuscripts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Illuminated Manuscripts, Medieval Bestiary, Saint Isidore of Seville, Solinus

yale_det
The yale (F16v ). The yale is as large as a horse, is black, has an elephant’s tail and the jaws of a wild boar. Its horns are long and mobile: one can fold backwards while the other fights.
Photo credit: Aberdeen Bestiary Project
 
Part of text can be read online at Aberdeen Bestiary (Oxford, Bodleian)
 
 

The Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library, Univ Lib. MS 24) can be read online.  Just click on the link.  It is an illuminated (with pictures) bestiary.  The Aberdeen Bestiary is related to other bestiaries of the Middle Ages and especially the Ashmole Bestiary.  According to Wikipedia,

 [s]ome argue that the Aberdeen Bestiary might be the older of the two.

Among other animals, it features a Satyr, a Monoceros or Monocerus, and a pelican.

Other than The Physiologus, sources include:

  • Gaius Julius Solinus De mirabilibus mundi (The Wonders of the World) also known as Collectanea rerum memorabilium (Collection of Curiosities) and Polyhistor.  Solinus was a Latin grammarian who lived in the 4th century AD.
  • Saint Isidore of Seville’s (c. 560 – 4 April 636) Etymologiae.

—ooo—

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29 October 2011
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From Bestiaries to… Harry Potter

29 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Myths

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alienus, Aristotle, Herodotus, J. R. R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Physiologus, Pliny the Elder, theriomorphism, zoomorphism

treasures_z_19_1_MS__Ashmole_1511__fol_jpg1400x1222

Ashmole Bestiary
MS. Ashmole 1511, F78v
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
 
Online Manuscript:
http://treasures.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/The-Ashmole-Bestiary 
 

Beast Literature: other sources

Although Reynard the Fox remains in the collective memory of Europeans and is transformed into a rabbit in the Tales of Uncle Remus, beasts enter different narratives and stem from other sources.

The Physiologus

Since we have introduced Bestiaries, I must also reveal some of these other sources. Writers of Bestiaries find their main source in the Physiologus, an anonymous Greek–language text, probably written in the second century CE. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “The Physiologus consists of 48 sections, each dealing with one creature, plant, or stone and each linked to a biblical text.” Among animals featured in the Physiologus, many are borrowed from India, which attests, once again, to the universality of ‘stories.’

Zoomorphic and Theriomorphic animals

  • Mythological animals.  In an earlier blog, I quoted Machiavelli who wished his prince were like the Centaur, half human, half beast. Greek mythologies’ Centaur is half horse and belongs to Greek Mythology as does the Minotaur, the son of Pasiphaë and a bull. The Satyrs are also part human. In Roman mythology, Satyrs are part goat. In this category, we also find animals that combine the features of many animals. Cerberus is a three-headed dog, used by J. K. Rowling. Pegasus is a winged horse. So mythologies are very rich source of animal figures.
  • Mythical animals.[i] Bestiaries also incorporate mythical animals, such as the Unicorn and the Dragon. As for the Griffin and the Phœnix (see Herodotus), they straddle the mythical (i.e. legendary and symbolic) and the mythological.  Mythologies are aetiological texts. They tell about origins.
  • http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/translat/1r.hti.
  • The dragon and the Unicorn are very popular in Western best literature, but they also appear in Eastern mythologies. In India, the Unicorn is a mythological animal and if Western dragons are feared, Oriental dragons are friendly. In children’s literature, the Unicorn literally missed the boat, Noak’s Ark.

Allegories or Animals as Symbols

These animals are not necessarily humans in disguise, but they can be used to represent humans. In Richard de Fournival‘s (1201-1260) courtly Bestiaire d’amour, an allegorical text, animals are used to symbolize women. Richard de Fournival was also the composer of love songs. These animals may also be used as emblems and in heraldry (blazons, coats of arms, etc.).

Le Blason de Saint-Lô

Historians and Naturalists

Finally, content is taken from historians and naturalists.

  • Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) wrote a History of Animals, De animalium. Herodotus (c. 484 BCE – c. 425 BCE) is the first historian, and he includes animals in his Histories.  For instance, he describes the hippopotamus, the crocodile and the phœnix.
  • Pliny the Elder or Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 BCE – 25 August 79 BCE) wrote a Natural History. Pliny the Elder died on 25 August 79 CE, trying to rescue a friend when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
  • Claudius Alienus, (ca. 175 – ca. 235  CE) a Roman author, wrote De Natura Animalium (in 17 books) and Historia.  On the Characteristics of Animals (De Natura Animalium) is still available, in 3 volumes.[ii]

Among historians and naturalists, not all have seen the animals they depict. They simply use descriptions given to them by travellers. For instance, in Greece, the monoceros is the Unicorn, not a rhinoceros. The existence of an animal having one horn had been reported to historians and from this report emerged the Unicorn. Similarly, Herodotus described the Phœnix and he made it ‘real.’  Yet, the Phœnix is as imaginary an animal, as the Chimera.

The Chimera

In modern literature, Latin American authors often introduce imaginary creatures into contexts that may be fictional, but not imaginary.  An example of “magical realism” is Jorge Luis Borges’s (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) El libro de los seres imaginarios, (The Book of Imaginary Beings), 1957.  J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is also deemed “magical realism.”

Bestiaries originate in many traditions and often feature imaginary or fantastical animals.  But later these animals will be found in high fantasy works, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s above-mentioned Lord of the Rings. As well, these animals will also be found in  J.K. Rowling‘s extremely popular Harry Potter series.We have a Harry Potter and the Order of the Phœnix (2003). However, I am looking a little too far in the future.

In short, animals are everywhere, telling what might otherwise have remained, or would remain, unsaid and when they inhabit mythologies, they also serve to give us a past. But there is more to tell…


[i] “Ælian.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online
. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011.
Web. 29 Oct. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/7081/Aelian>.

[ii] In certain cultures, mythical animals are mythological animals.

img9131The Antelope
The Ashmole Bestiary
F14r
 
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29 October 2011
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Respect for life: on anti-abortion extremism

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

anti-abortion extremism, education, Mississippi, the death penalty, the environment, WordPress

The Lady and an Ermine Leonardo da Vinci (Google Art Project)

It is rather perturbing to think that, in Mississippi, all abortions might be considered illegal on the grounds that a child is a human being from, just about, the very second an egg is fertilized. It is also perturbing to think that, on the same basis, the law would make certain forms of birth-control illegal. It seems that our anti-tax extremists are also anti-abortion extremists, people who oppose “big government” while playing “big government.”

A Case Story

Let me create a case story. A fourteen-year old girl, born to an impoverished family, is raped and gets pregnant. Because life begins the moment an egg is fertilized, under this new legislation, she would have to carry and to give birth to the child of her rapist.

As I like to say on such thorny issues,

… morality ends where inhumanity begins.

I can appreciate that taking a firm stand against abortion might get politicians a few more votes, but if that poor girl cannot obtain an abortion and, subsequently, when she is older, cannot use the form of birth control she, her husband, and her doctor think is best for her to use, we are facing callousness. Who would want to be elected into office using so narrow a view of abortion and birth control? And who would vote for such a person?

Gun control

American medical doctors who perform abortions may be killed by a deranged anti-abortion extremist. Is the life of a medical doctor so unimportant that he or she should be killed?

Let us also look at the right to bear arms. Guns kill. If you fear an enemy is lurking, phone 9-1-1. Besides, there’s self-defense and self-defense. Don’t shoot the person who is at your door because you do not know that person. Again, life is sacred.

The Death-penalty 

What baffles me is that anti-abortion extremists are frequently the persons who support the death-penalty and oppose social programs as well as any legislation that would curb pollution. If such people allow the execution of individuals who may be innocent, can they speak of respect for life. And if such people cut down entire forests and also let the planet melt, can they speak of respect for life. How can they be anti-abortion extremists?

Killing animals

I have also noticed that anti-abortion-extremists tend to trivialize the life of animals and cause the extinction of species: vegetation, fish, etc. For them, all is fair in the pursuit of money. That is Machiavellian.

Conclusion

In short, it would be my opinion that instead of contemplating passing tyrannical laws, we should provide young adults with an education that will allow them to act responsibly. There is more to an education than job-training. Make it possible for the young simply to think out everything. Chances are they will adopt values that will translate into a better world, a world where abortions are performed on the basis of medical issues, and where mothers and fathers spend more time looking after their little ones. There are several medical requirements that fully legitimize an abortion.

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Jātaka Tales & Bestiaries

28 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Aberdeen Bestiary, Beasts, Bestiaries, Jean de la Bruyère., Jātaka Tales, Mythical, Mythological, Richard de Fournival

An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

When he published his Caractères (1688), portraits, seventeenth-century French author, Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 – 10 May 1696) was using Theophrastus (371 – c. 287 BCE) as his main source. He noted that the Athenians (Theophrastus) depicted life two thousand years ago, but we would admire seeing ourselves.

…il y a deux mille ans accomplis que vivait ce peuple d’Athènes dont il fait la peinture, [mais] nous admirerons de nous y reconnaître nous-mêmes[.]

Human Nature

The link, in this regard, is human nature.  We invent new technologies, but human nature does not change, except that there is variety among human beings.  There is constant newness in texts as old as Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus, a literary masterpiece and the birthplace of Reynard the Fox, and newness in stories told in the Pañchatantra and retold in Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa’s Tales of Kalila wa Dimna.

We know that La Fontaine drew content for the second volume his Fables (1678) in a seventeenth-century book, Le Livre des lumières (1644), a translation of stories or fables told by a Dr Pilpay, the sage featured in the Pañchatrantra and in Kalila wa Dimna.  This translation may well find its origins in Kashefi’s fifteenth-century Persian Lights of Canopus.

Jātaka Tales

From the ancient texts, also stem parables, proverbs, exempla (plural for exemplum), Buddhist Jātaka Tales, etc.  In fact, in the Preface to the first volume of his Fables (1668), La Fontaine wrote that Christ spoke in “parables.” Parables do indeed resemble and fables.  These I will not discuss.

Bestiaries

Animals inhabit fables and beast epics, but they may also inhabit Bestiaries,
medieval and modern Bestiaries. Medieval Bestiaries belong, at times, to the
courtly love tradition. I believe that Richard de Fournival’s (1201- ?1260) Bestiaire d’amour is our finest example. In the anthropomorphic and allegorical Bestiaire d’amour women are looked upon as objects of worship.

But Bestiaries they may also be moralistic: ‘to improve the minds of ordinary people, in such a way that the soul will at least perceive physically things which it has difficulty grasping mentally: that what they have difficulty comprehending with their ears, they will perceive with their eyes’ (Aberdeen MS 24, f25v). The Aberdeen Bestiary is a  twelfth-century illuminated (illustrated) manuscript.

The Aberdeen Bestiary

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Obstructionism: the Consequences

26 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in United States

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

investing, jobs, Middle East, President Obama, rapprochement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the consequences, WordPress

18548102_1365691656_1110

— La Guirlande de Julie (Photo credit: Google Images)

I would like to congratulate President Obama and, particularly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for putting the US back on the map as a country deserving admiration.  The current rapprochement between the US and countries located in the Middle East bodes well for the future.  Back in 2008, I did not think so much progress could be made in so little time.

Unfortunately, there are problems within the United States, problems I deplore because they amount to plain and rather ugly obstructionism.  Tea Party members and hardline Republicans seem to be saying no for the sake of saying no, not taking into consideration the needs of the nation.

Can they not see that people need jobs and that in order to create jobs one has to invest.  Investing and spending are two different entities.  Put America to work.  Do not force people to wait nervously for the next and insufficient unemployment cheque to come.  Not only do people have to put food on the table, but they must also educate their children and feel that they are fully-fledged citizens of a country they love.

And do not let selfish politicians impede action on the part of the administration only to turn around and blame the current administration for not doing what they, selfish politicians, have prevented the administration from doing.  Sabotage is no way of conducting a campaign.  Could it be that they have no other recourse?

Under Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, the nobility did not pay taxes.  The poor did.  I need not mention the consequences.

—ooo—

26 October 2011

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The Story-Teller & Related Topics

26 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Roman de Renart

≈ Comments Off on The Story-Teller & Related Topics

Tags

archetype, barat, Donkeyskin, Ernest Griset, folklore, motif, narreme, Winnie-the-Pooh

Reynard-the-fox

The Legacy

As we have seen, Reynard the Fox is a literary work which, despite its dating back a very long way, will not only inspire other authors, but also prove central to Western jurisprudence.  His judgment is a masterpiece.  As a lawyer, Reynard doesn’t meet his match until Barry C. Scheck (born 19 September 1949), one of the lawyers, the dream team, who managed to save O. J. Simpson from a lengthy stay in prison.  In Molière’s Tartuffe (1664-1669), Tartuffe is a pious individual who knows how to take sinfulness away from sin, in which he is very precious to a pater familias, or heavy father, Orgon, who wants to be a tyrant. Dom Juan (1665) also turns into a faux-dévot.  Both Tartuffe and Dom Juan use the same ruse: they fake devotion.

Folklore

However, we have not mentioned folklore. Folklore is an oral rather than written
tradition.  Many tales have been handed down by storytellers and there are times when one doesn’t know where to draw the line between the oral and the written traditions.  The Ysengrimus (c. 1150) and Reynard the Fox are literary works.  But Reynard the Fox  incorporates tales that have been handed down by word of mouth:  tales of ruse and cleverness.

Reynard is a rascal, but he rates very high on the EQ scale (emotional intelligence).  In fact, in his role as Columbo, Peter Falk resembled Reynard.  He knew how to trap his suspect, except that he never caused a wolf to be flayed and survive his injuries.  This happens in comics  only.

So, some of the content of Reynard the Fox is material that has belonged and sometimes returns to an oral tradition.  Moreover, Reynard the Fox contains motifs that recur.  In the Mi’kMaq Glooscap, we find a rabbit who loses his tail, which explains why rabbits have short tails.  Such tales are called pourquoi (why) tales.  Besides the severed tail motif recurs in the Roman de Renart itself, during the siege of Maupertuis.  In A. A. Milne’s (author) and Ernest H. Shepard’s (illustrations) Winnie-the-Pooh, Eyeore loses his tale, but gets it back.

Classification of Folktales

Anti Aarne and Stith Thompson [i] have collected folktales from around the world and made a répertoire of elements such recurring motifs.  It was quite the undertaking, but we have a repertoire of motifs and related elements.  Other scholars have found the narreme, the small unit of a narrative.  And still others have focused on archetypes, such as the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte: il dottore, the braggart soldier, or soldat fanfaron, clever domestics, zanni, etc.  But as Stith Thompson, “the scholar runs the risk of too subtle analysis.”  (p. 7)

Animals as Superior to Humans

Having reflected on folklore, motifs, narremes, archetypes, etc.  I would also like to emphasize that, in animal tales, animals are not only humans in disguise but also superior to humans.  Noble is King and Renart a connestable, an important officer, the origine for the word constable.  As for the people (vilains), they are mere peasants.  It is therefore a topsy-turvy world, or, as Jill Mann notes, a “world-upside-down.”[ii]  However, what is particularly ironic in Reynard the Fox is that he “talks” himself away from the gallows.  Letting animals talk is just fine, but Reynard’s barat is eloquence and persuasive.  The King’s wife, Fière (proud), actually believes that Reynard is remorseful.

The Siege of Maupertuis and the Continuing Judgement

Yes, having returned to Maupertuis, instead of leaving for the Crusades, Maupertuis,  Reynard’s castle and fortress is besieged by the animals he has fooled.  Reynard is  once again about to be executed when he decides to put on the mask of a devout individual.  Fière, the lion’s wife, is again deceived and Reynard remains at Maupertuis.

Resource

  • Caxton’s translation of a Flemish the History of Reynard the Fox is online
  • Le Roman de Renart, Wikisource

 

[i] Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:  University of California Press, 1977 [1946]), p. 7.

[ii] Jill Mann, “The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus ” in Kenneth Varty, editor, Reynard the Fox, Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 11.

 


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Reynard the Fox: the Judgement

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Reynard the Fox: the Judgement

Tags

barat, hypocrisy, Jan M. Ziolkowski, Maupertuis, the gallows, the Lion's court, the would-be Crusader, WordPress

fr_1579_001-2

In an earlier post, I mentioned a favourite version of the Sick Lion tale, but I could not find where I had read this version. Destiny was kind. There it was in Jan M. Ziolkowski’s Talking Animals.[1] Professor Ziolkowski teaches at Harvard University and he has been my best guide through a maze of beast stories.  It would appear that the Sick Lion tale may go back to “an ancient Babylonian tale.” (p. 63)

Jan M. Ziolkowski writes that the

 “The Sick Lion” is not content merely to tell a straightforward fable and to tack onto it the usual sort of moral. […] it approaches being a riddle because it rests its claim to value and attention on a hidden meaning.  But a poem that begins with the “Once upon a time” quality of a fairy tale (“Ægrum fama fuit quondam …”) should not be racked to fit a Procrustean bed of historical allegory. (p. 66)

In the meantime, monks are not only transcribing beast poems and beast stories, they are also writing their own. They may have drawn their material from Roman Antiquity, but some were poets in their own right. According to Jean Dufournet, transcribing and writing beast poems and beast stories was entertainment for monks:  “un divertissement [entertainment] de Clercs.”[2]

—ooo—

But let’s go back to our scoundrel. We know he travels to Georgia (US), but, in the
meantime, in Europe, he is branching out in many ways. Machiavelli would like his prince to be like a fox. But from the Roman de Renart also emerges inspiration for two of Molière’s plays:  Dom Juan but, particularly, Tartuffe.  In both cases, false piety is the tool used to deceive those who wish to be deceived. Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606) is also a Renart.

Bruin the Bear goes to Maupertuis

This is a tool they have inherited from Reynard. Our fellow rapes Hersent, Ysengrin the wolf’s wife, when she gets caught in a hole in one of the walls of her house, hind side exposed. Ysengrin being a connetable or a baron, as is Reynard, at the Lion’s court, he must seek “justice.” The Lion, Noble, first sends Bruin, the bear, to fetch Reynard.  However, Reynard tricks the bear into believing there is honey inside a log. Bruin believes Reynard and nearly loses his muzzle when ‘vilains’ (peasants) had put wedges at both ends of the log, which they remove. Bruin returns to court in a sorry state.

Grimbert the Badger goes to Maupertuis

So the King turns to Grimbert the badger, Reynard’s cousin, and asks him to go to Maupertuis, Reynard’s fortress.  Through entreaties Grimbert is successful in bringing the fox to court, the King’s court and a judicial court. The decision to hang him has already been made, but given Reynard’s rank and his willingness to present himself at court, Grimbert feels he deserves a trial. However, despite his barat (talkativeness), Reynard is condemned to be hanged. All the animals he has tricked into various predicaments are so outraged that Noble, the Lion, decides that Reynard must die.

Reynard talks himself out of the death-penalty

But, as Reynard is about to climb the stairs to the gallows, the clever character starts expressing remorse for the evil tricks he has performed. He claims he wishes to atone for his sins and will leave for the Crusades if he is not executed. Fière, the Lion’s wife, is so touched that having used his barat , Reynard is released and instead of leaving for the Crusades, he returns to Maupertuis.

_________________________

[1] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals:  Medieval Latin Beast Poetry 750-1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1993), pp. 61-66 and Appendix 26, pp. 295-297.

[2] Jean Dufournet and Andrée Mélina, translators and editors, Le Roman de Renart (Paris : Garnier Flammarion, 1985), p. 7.

 

images-reynard-black

© Micheline Walker
25 Octobre 2011
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Importance & Relativity

24 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ Comments Off on Importance & Relativity

Tags

importance, Jean Racine, Phèdre, relativity of importance, sub specie aeternitatis, WordPress

Suzor-Coté: Apples

I receive many notes about my posts. They help me navigate “blogland.”

This morning, I received a valuable note. My reader wrote to tell me that I should write about something important. She was commenting on my blog on the idea of “absolute music.”

Well, many years ago, one of my students commented that studying Jean Racine‘s Phèdre was not important.

I told her that sub specie æternitatis, studying Phèdre was not important and that, in fact, despite what psychologists tell us, we are both important and not important and then asked the class to look out the window. We could see a cemetery in the distance.

They did and then returned to their respective chair.

It was a small class of about twelve students, a nice mixture of people. So, to continue the narrative, I invited them to discuss the idea of “importance” as it was an “important” idea and, therefore, that it had to be addressed. Our discussion of Phèdre would simply have to wait.

Suddenly, they turned into “philosophers.”  You’ve no idea how impressed I was.  I had of course withdrawn into the role of moderator. When the class was over I thanked them for what had been a great discussion.

They had spoken about relativity. What was important to one person was not important to another. Some like tea, some prefer coffee. But, but more importantly, they had talked about the big questions:  life and death.

I ended up telling them that, for me, what was important was to give meaning to my brief journey on earth and make it pleasurable, not only for me, but also for those who are journeying with me.

Some will like my posts and some will not. It depends on my reader’s tastes, needs, and goals in life.

As for seventeenth-century French literature, one reads Phèdre and/or another play by Racine. He is one of three major playwrights in seventeenth-century French literature. Racine is on the programme and in the context of the course, Phèdre is important.  I had to teach Racine.

I have fond memories of my students.

—ooo—

24 October 2011

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Reynard the Fox, the Itinerant

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Roman de Renart

≈ 5 Comments

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Goethe, Jill Mann, Nivardus of Ghent, Reinhart, Reynaerde, Roman de Renart, Uncle Remus, Ysengrimus

Reineke

Reineke Fuchs 

Photo credit: Wikipedia and Google Images (all)

Born as Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent‘s Ysengrimus, c. 1150, Reynard the Fox, our sometimes adorable but wicked rascal, is a traveller (un itinérant).[1] We have seen him appear in, at least, two medieval (before the 12th century) beast poems: the anonymous  Ecbasis Captivi, a 1229-line poem in hexameters about a calf stolen by a wolf and rescued by other beasts, and Paul the Deacon’s (c. 720-799) Ægrum Fuit Fama (Once upon a time). But the Sick Lion tale reaches its maturity in the above-mentioned Ysengrimus, a 6,574-line elegiac distich Latin poem translated into English by an admirable scholar: Jill Mann (1984-1985).

Le Roman de Renart :  c. 1170 – 1250

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century

 

About twenty years later, Reinardus migrates to France. In c. 1170, Pierre de Saint-Cloud wrote the first “branches” of the Roman de Renart  (yes, with a ‘t’). However, our hero was particularly successful in the Low Countries as Van den Vos Reynaerde, the Reynaert Historie, and other works.

van den vos Reynaerde

Title credit: About Reynard the Fox. (Nederland Film, 1943)
Courtesy Nederland Filmmuseum (frame enlargement Ole. Schepp).

Reynard in England:  Caxton 1481

In the fifteen century, a version of Le Roman de Renart is translated into English by printer and writer William Caxton (c. 1415-1422 – c. March 1492) who entitles his beast epic the Historie of Reynart the Foxe (1481). In 1884, Ernst Voigt publishes an edited translation, into German, of Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus. Jill Mann writes that

Ernst Voigt, the editor of the only critical edition of the poem, called it ‘comprehensive, systematically planned, wittily and artfully executed work of one of the greatest poets of the middle Ages.’ (Voigt 1884)[2]

Renart in German-language Countries

Our itinerant Renart also travels to German-language countries. Among German language works, he is the protagonist of a Middle High German poem entitled Fuchs Reinhart (c. 1180), a masterpiece of 2,000 lines, written by Heinrich der Glïchezäre. Later, in 1498, a Low German translation of Reynard the Fox, entitled Reynke de Vos, is published. In 1752, J. C. Gottsched publishes his High German prose translation of Reynard the Fox. This is the translation Goethe used to write Reineke Fuchs (1792), in which Reineke has a “treacherous heart.” According to Roger H. Stephenson,

Goethe was also dismayed by the incompetence and fecklessness of the aristocracy at the head of the counter-revolutionary forces.[3]

As Jill Mann states, “[i]t is the comedy of this satiric vision that should be emphasized, since it is this that saves the poem from narrow vindictiveness.” (Mann, in Varty, p. 15.) It would otherwise be somewhat unpalatable. For instance, when the wolf of the Sick Lion tale is divested of his coat, it does not hurt him and he does not die. “The animals talk as if the wolf’s skin was only a garment, easily and painlessly removed.” (Mann, in Varty, p. 10). The comic mode is a self-redeeming discourse. It is an “all’s-well-that-ends-well” narrative.

The Tales of Uncle Remus

Reynard in America:  The Tales of Uncle Remus (1880)

In Joel Chandler Harris’ 9 December 1845 – 3 July 1908) Tales of Uncle Remus, Br’er Fox is in Georgia, US. The manner in which the fox as trickster crosses the Atlantic and journeys to Georgia is difficult to determine. However, one can hypothesize that Renart was brought to the Black population of Georgia by deported Acadians (1755). One can also hypothesize that the Acadians’ status as deportees put them on an equal footing with the black population. Moreover, Chandler Harris had married French-Canadian Mary Ester LaRose.

But in the Tales of Uncle Remus, the fox ceases to be a trickster. He is metamorphosed into a rabbit and, later, the trickster figure is the coyote.

Reynard the Fox also goes in and out of beast epics (unitaires) and fables (parcellaires), Jean Batany’s[4] distinction. For example, there are many fables featuring a fox or another animal that has lost his/her tail. The severed tail motif is very popular in beast literature. In the Aarne-Thompson Motif Index, it is AT 2. However, Reynard is not the Æsopic fox who visits the sick lion’s den and walks away when he notices that the footprints are those of animals walking into the den.This fox may not be our Reynard, but he is a cunning fox, which is his literary role.

Fishing with one’s tail through a hole in the ice

But let us tell one of Renart’s nasty deeds. He says to the wolf that he can catch fish, eels in particular, if he puts his tail down a hole though the ice. Ysengrin is very naïve and does as Reynard suggests.The water freezes so the tail is caught in the ice. Ysengrin loses his tail running away from the people.

 

[1] Kenneth Varty, ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000) p. XIII.

[2] Jill Mann, The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus, in Varty, p. 1.

[3] Roger H. Stephenson, The Political Import of Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs, in Varty, p. 191.  The revolution Goethe bemoaned is the French Revolution (1789 – 1794).

[4] Jean Batany, Scène et Coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris : Sedes, 1989), pp. 48-49.

Reineke Fuchs

Reineke Fuchs

© Micheline Walker
23 October 2011
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