Tag Archives: anthropomorphism

About Illustrator Félix Lorioux

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Animals in Literature, Beast Literature, Children's Literature, Fables

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Les Deux Nigauds par la Comtesse de Ségur, illustration de Félix Lorioux. (Pinterest)

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The cover of la Comtesse de Ségur‘s Les Deux Nigauds (The Two Silly Kids) is shown above, illustrated by Félix Loriaux. It has been on my bookshelves for about 70 years. It is a book intended for children written by La Comtesse de Ségur (1 August 1799 – 8 February 1874). La Comtesse de Ségur was Russian by birth. Sophie Rostophchine’s father, Count Fyodor Rostopchin, Saint Petersburg, reportedly set Saint Petersburg ablaze when Napoléon invaded Russia, in 1812. Rostopchin was accused of arson. La Comtesse and her family left Russia in 1814. They were aristocrats and, given her marriage to le Comte de Ségur, Sophie Rostopchine became a French countess. My copy shows Innocent, brother to Simplicie, wearing green pants and an olive jacket. The colours on photographs may not correspond to the original image. Lorioux is known for his use of colour. La Comtesse de Ségur‘s most famous book was Les Malheurs de Sophie (Sophie’s Misadventures), published in 1858.

Studies & Employment

Félix Lorioux (1872–1964) was born in Angers. He studied at l’École des beaux-arts de Paris, not knowing what he would design. First, it would be cars, publicity for cars, but he would work as an illustrator. He was employed by Hachette, a French publishing house, and became a notorious illustrator. Lorioux befriended Walt Disney, who hired Lorioux to illustrate Mickey and The Silly Symphony. Lorioux and Walt Disney parted ways in 1934. (See Félix Lorioux, Wikipedia). It may be that Félix Lorioux did not wish to move to the United States. By 1934, La Bande dessinée, often known as the Comics, quickly developed in France and Belgium, and thousands of Japanese prints flooded Europe. A man of his time. Félix Lorioux was therefore influenced by le Japonisme, Japanese woodblock prints, and Art nouveau. Moreover, illustrations were required when the fashion industry blossomed. They adorned La Gazette du Bon Ton and, later, fashion magazines. Artists also made posters, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is our best example. As for interior designers, they also became more numerous. Consummate artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel, of the Boutet de Monvel dynasty, was often employed by affluent citizens of Manhattan. Bernard Boutet de Monvel died in the Azores in the plane crash that also took the life of violinist Ginette Neveu and boxer Marcel Cerdan, Édith Piaf‘s lover. Finally, Félix Florioux was first employed by Citroën, a car company. Félix Lorioux lived in a world where design and publicity were combined and where design mattered. Cars are designed. So are aeroplanes. Moreover, the Arts and Crafts Movement swept the globe, bringing art to humbler homes.

Illustrations

Design spread. Yet, after working for Citroën, Lorioux joined Hachette, a publishing house, and became an illustrator. He was now entering a profession that dated back centuries or more. We have looked at medieval Books of Hours that celebrated the labour of the months, seasons, solstices, and equinoctial points. These are linked to the Canonical Hours. Hesiod‘s Works and Days is an almanach.

Fables de Jean de La Fontaine

Félix Lorioux illustrated a large number of books. However, we will start by focusing on his illustrations of the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine  (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695). His first fable is La Cigale et la Fourmi (The Cicada and the Ant).

La Cigale et la fourmi (I, 1)

La Cigale, ayant chanté
     Tout l’été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu’à la saison nouvelle.
Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l’août, foi d’animal,
Intérêt et principal.
La Fourmi n’est pas prêteuse;
C’est là son moindre défaut.
Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
Vous chantiez ? j’en suis fort aise :
Et bien! dansez maintenant.

La Cigale et la Fourmi (I, 1)
The Cicada and the Ant (I, 1)

The Cicada and the Ant (I,1)

The gay cicada, full of song
     All the sunny season long,
Was unprovided and brought low,
     When the north wind began to blow;
           Had not a scrap of worm or fly,
Hunger and want began to cry;
Never was creature more perplexed.
She called upon her neighbour ant,
And humbly prayed her just to grant
Some grain till August next;
“I’ll pay,” she said, “what ye invest,
Both principal and interest,
           Honour of insects –and that’s tender.”
           The ant, however, is no lender;
That is her least defective side;
“But, hark ye, pray, Miss Borrower,” she cried,
“What were ye doing in fine weather?”
“Singing . . .  nay, ! look not thus askance,
To every comer day and night together.”
“Singing! I’m glad of that; why now then dance.”

Comments

It is a little early to comment, but I must close this post. Loriaux’s illustrations of the fables of Jean de La Fontaine are anthropomorphic. Animals inhabiting fables are humans in disguise and, by and large, they are likeable, especially if the readers are children. Children who cannot read will be told about and shown an improvident animal and may say the animal is short-sighted or “silly.” However, they are unlikely to identify with the cicada or grasshopper. She should have prepared for the cold days of winter. Yet, children may prefer the improvident animal to a brighter companion. They do not like to be scolded when they make foolish mistakes and may not like the moral of our fable. It is located after the exemplum. This makes it an epimythium. The moral is a promythium if it precedes the myth or exemplum. The moral may also be the fable itself. In La Fontaine, ignoring the consequences of a certain action is a prominent lesson.

George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, by François-Hubert Drouais (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Le Buffon des enfants

Buffon, however, was not an illustrator. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. (See George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Wikipedia.) His animals are depicted faithfully. However, in illustrations of animals intended for children, animals be may be turned into humans. They may wear clothes, carry a watch or an umbrella, and seem disguised. Children are often attracted to camouflaged but recognizable animals. They may also expect the lion to be king and the fox to play his archetypal work as a trickster. Moreover, illustrators may give animals whose beak is long a longer beak and animals whose eyes are large, more prominent eyes, as do cartoonists. Illustrating le Comte de Buffon would not yield detailed portraits of animals who have made a mistake. It would be Le Buffon des enfants (Buffon for Children).

This conversation will be continued.

One can no longer copy texts contained in the Château-Thierry site. So, I have been very careful and I thank my colleagues.

Love to everyone 💕

RELATED ARTICLES

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Batany, Jean, Scène et Coulisses du « Roman de Renart », Paris : Sedes (1989).
Ziolkowski, Jan, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry 750-1150. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1993).
Zipes, Jack (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2000).

Félix Lorioux is the first artist discussed in this video. It is a brief excerpt.
Granville‘s (1803-1847) The Grasshopper and Ant
Afficher l’image source
Le Buffon des enfants de Félix Lorioux

© Micheline Walker
8 December 2021
WordPress

Reynard the Fox: various Facets

21 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Beast Literature, Grotesque, Middle Ages, Roman de Renart

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http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/arret/02.htm (BnF) 
http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/livre/ (the text) FR 

Beast Epics: Antecedents

  • Beast Fables
  • Beast Epics or “mock-epics”

Given their length and a dramatis personæ consisting of animals, the 12th-century Roman de Renart and its immediate predecessor, Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus (1148-1149), bring to mind Vishnu Sharma‘s Sanskrit Panchatantra and its best-known Arabic analog, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘s Kalīlah wa Dimnah, but the Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart are mock-epics, which was new. The Panchatantra and Kalīlah wa Dimnah contained fables told by a story-teller, the sage Bidpai (Bidpaï, Pilpay). Their purpose was to prepare the prince for his future role as king. The fables of Bidpai constitute inset tales, Innerfabeln, inserted in a frame story, le récit-cadre or an Ausserfabel. In other words, we have an author and a story-teller.

By the final quarter of the 16th century in England, Bidpai’s fables constituted Thomas North’s Morall Philosophy of Doni (1571).[1] In France, the Panchatantra and the Arabic Kalīlah wa Dimnah, or the Fables of Bidpai, culminated in Orientalist Gilbert Gaulmin‘s translation of the fables of Pilpay, Le Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des rois, les Fables de Pilpay FR, published in 1644. In 1678, the year Jean de La Fontaine published his second collection (recueil) of fables, books VII to XI inclusively, he drew some of his material from Æsop, but his fables were also rooted in Gaulmin’s Livre des lumières, ou la Conduite des rois, les fables de Pilpay. FR

The Middle Ages: the first of two Traditions

  • Marie de France
  • to delight and to instruct
  • Avianus and the Romulus

As of the publication of Paul the Deacon‘s Ægrum fama fuit and that of the reportedly anonymous Ecbasis cuisdam captivi,[2] didactic fables remained. They were written as Roman poet Horace (8 December 65 BCE – 27 November 8 BCE) suggested: to delight and to instruct.

Poetess Marie de France (fl. 1160 to 1215), wrote a sick-lion tale, “The Lion and the Fox.” Four centuries later, Jean de La Fontaine composed a sick-lion tale entitled “The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox” / “Le Lion, le Loup et le Renard” (2.VIII.3). These poems contained a lesson. In the Æsopic, “The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox,” number 258 in the Perry Index, the wolf attempts to defame the fox and pays the cost. He is flayed.

It should also be noted that students in their trivium used fables drawn from the Ysopet-Avionnet, a collection of Æsop’s Fables. In the 4th century, fabulist Avianus compiled a collection of fables that included not only fables set into written form by Roman author Phaedrus, but also fables removed from an oral tradition by Greek fabulist Babrius. Avianus set Babrius’ Greek Æsopic fables into Latin elegiac poems. The Ysopet-Avionnet, Avionnet from Avianus, endured until the first quarter of the 20th century. (See Ysopet, Wikipedia.) The Ysopet-Avionnet is an Internet Archive publication. Another 4th _century prose collection, entitled the Romulus, was also used widely.[3]

To sum up, the Reynard cycle (there are many Reynards), mock-epics featuring animals, did not ever eclipse fables written to instruct and to delight, many of which were short trickster tales belonging to the Æsopic corpus and included in the Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart. However, a new tradition emerged.

The Second Tradition

  • trickster tales
  • the grotesque
  • fabliaux

We are now leaving didactic fables. Henceforth, trickster tales will dominate in which beasts will be beasts, including anthropomorphic animals. The Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart are not edifying literature. The Middle Ages favoured the grotesque, from gargoyles (water spouts) to misericords (mercy seats in cathedrals and various monasteries). Moreover, we have entered the world of the fabliau. Fabliaux are mostly obscene and, at times, scatological. Paul the Deacon’s Ægrum Fama Fuit, the sick-lion tale, and the Ecbasis captivi therefore inaugurate the medieval mock-epics tradition, epitomized in the Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart, or the Reynard cycle, which includes Geoffrey Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale.

However, our beast epics are characterized by the use of sophisticated versification and by their length. For instance, using sophisticated versification to tell the story of a rather senseless calf who leaves the pack and is captured by a wolf is dissonant and ironic. The longer the beast fable, the greater its dissonance and irony. Paulus Diaconus’ 8th -century  Ægrum Fama Fuit contains 24 Latin distichs, which is relatively short, but the Ecbasis captivi runs 1,230 lines written in hexameters with, frequently, Leonine internal rhyme, Nivard de Gand’s Ysengrimus is a tour de force: 6,574 lines in elegiac couplets. As for the Roman de Renart, it is not entirely versified, but the poem contains 2,410 lines in eight syllables (octosyllabic) verses in rhymed couplets.

Clearly, superior versification and the length of these beast fables do not match the subject matter: the vendetta[4] between Reynard the fox and the wolf Ysengrin, born Reinardus and Ysengrimus in the Latin Ysengrimus. This discrepancy serves to mock chansons de geste, chivalry and courtly love. Beast epics are the underside of real epics and the courtly literature. They are parodies.

Epics and Courtly literature mocked

Mock-epics, or beast epics are a mundus inversus. They are the reverse of the chansons de geste (songs of deeds) such as the Carolingian (Charlemagne) Chanson de Roland / Song of Roland. Roland is the valiant knight who defeats the Basques at the Battle of Roncevaux, in 778. Roland is also Matteo Maria Boiardo‘s Orlando Innamorato, 1483 and 1495, and Ariosto Ludovico‘s Orlando Furioso (1516). The setting is the invasion of European countries by the Moors, Muslim inhabitants of Northern Africa. But Matteo Maria Boiardo had fought in the Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–1479). On 29 May 1453, the Byzantine Empire (and Anatolia) had fallen to the Ottoman Turks, separating Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity, the Near East.

In Medieval Literature, these romances originate in the Carolingian and Arthurian (King Arthur) cycles. Arthurian romances are part of the matter of Britain. Cycles are a group of literary works on the same subject, the Reynard narratives are a cycle, but under its entry on Mock-epic Britannica lists three “cycles:” the “matter of Rome the great,” the “matter of France,” and the “matter of Britain.”

Medieval romance is classified into three major cycles: the “matter of Rome the great,” the “matter of France,” and the “matter of Britain” (“matter” here is a literal translation of the French matière, referring to subject matter, theme, topic, etc.). The matter of Rome, a misnomer, refers to all tales derived from Latin classics. The matter of France includes the stories of Charlemagne and his Twelve Noble Peers [Paladins]. The matter of Britain refers to stories of King Arthur and his knights, the Tristan stories, and independent tales having an English background, such as Guy of Warwick. (Mock-epic.)[5]

I should think that El Cantar de Mio Cid a chanson [cantar] de geste, is also a cycle and the celebration of heroic deeds (gestes). Epics such as the Chanson de Roland, feature noble knights in shining armour who belong to courtly literature. These valiant knights will submit to demeaning tasks to earn the love of an idealized woman, a précieuse avant la lettre. Medieval chansons de geste intersect chivalric and courtly literature, the Roman de la Rose, which constitutes courtly love’s literary pinnacle. The rape of Hersent cannot be associated with courtly love.

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Chivalry (BnF)

fr_1630_060v (3)

Ysengrin, Renart & Hersent (BnF)

http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/it/genese/05.htm (Chivalry)
http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/it/episodes/07.htm (Ysengrin, Renart & Hersent)

Anthropomorphism & Speech

In anthropomorphic literature, humanness isn’t so much a question of appearance as it is a matter of speech, or the ability to speak. Nivardus of Ghent named his characters, highlighting their humanness. We are reminded of T. S. Elliott’s (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and, in particular, of the Naming of Cats.

Jill Mann, who translated the Ysengrimus into English, compares the flayed wolf who survives the removal of his coat to the cats of cartoons. These cats are flattened by a steam-roller, but fluff up again, as though they were impervious to injury and pain:

The recrudescent power of the wolf’s skin is reminiscent of the world of the cartoon where the cat who is squashed flat by a steam-roller, say, is restored to three dimensions in the next frame. [6]

The cats of cartoons live every one of their nine lives as do the Lion-King’s mutilated barons. Neither the flayed wolf nor Bruin the bear, who “loses the skin off his nose,” seem to have sustained permanent and possibly fatal injuries.

We are in an other world where an animal’s fur seems a mere coat and where animals speak, a faculty perhaps denied humans. Lanfrey (Lanfroi), the forester, does not speak. His arrival forces Bruin to sacrifice his nose so his life is spared.

In Ramsay Wood’s translation and adaptation of Kalila and Dimna (Bidpai’s fables), a shaman tells a worried prince who will not believe his gazelle spoke to him and has fallen ill over this matter, that the gazelle did talk to him:

“[Y]our gazelle spoke to you! Don’t you realize that all animals can speak? But they never do so in the company of pitiful humans!”[7]

Moreover, Wikipedia describes the Ysengrimus as a Latin fabliau. Although Hersent (Hersant FR), Ysengrin’s wife, has made love with Renart consensually (Branche II, c. 1110, p. 265), Renart takes advantage of her when she is caught in a hole, her rear end protruding. Yet, Jean Dufournet writes that the Roman de Renart was a “divertissement de clercs” (clerics)[8] and Thomas Best (p. 34) comments that “Pierre de Saint-Cloud wrote [branches II -Va] for recitation to lay nobility, addressed at the very beginning of his poem as seigneurs [lords].” Renart’s short verses, eight syllables, could be read easily by an audience consisting of the nobility of its times.

Codex Manesse
Codex Manesse

Reynard’s Eloquence

In Reynard the Fox, both animalness and humanness can be a thin veneer. In fact, were Reynard flayed, would his eloquence lose any of its verve? Underneath Reynard’s red coat, lives one of literature’s most eloquent characters. Renard’s barat, or deceitful language, convinces Tiécelin the crow to open his mouth and sing, causing Tiécelin to drop his precious cheese. But most importantly, Renart’s eloquence is such that he can talk himself out of death sentence at least twice: at the end of his “jugement” (branche I) and after Maupertuis, his fortress, is besieged.

Jurisprudence: “you shouldn’t take more than you find”

In this regard, let us note that in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus, as the wolf is about to be flayed by the bear, Reynard “suddenly rushes forward with the plea that he [the bear] should ‘take no more than he finds:’ “I make one small request – let there be room for it – grant it – and I’ll show myself deserving: that you shouldn’t take more than you find! He himself never took more than he found. It’s right to take away what one has, but wrong to take away more than that!’ (III 931-4).” (Mann, p. 10.) I see the scales of Lady Justice.

There is no flaying episode in the Roman de Renart, but as he is about to be hanged, Renart uses his engin, his resourcefulness, and finds a ruse exceptionnelle. It occurs to him to argue that before being hanged, he must go on a pilgrimage and atone not to die a sinner. It is as though eternal damnation was too cruel and unusual a punishment for one who has merely eaten a few animals, tricked the greedy wolf, a Monk, and raped Hersent?[9]

The Pilgrimage

It works. Renart, who arrived tardily at the sick Lion-King’s bedside, because he was on a pilgrimage is sent on a pilgrimage, but Renart being Renart, he doesn’t leave for Syria. He simply returns to his fortress, Maupertuis. Molière’s Dom Juan will be called a “pilgrim.” As for Renart’s topsy-turvy defence, it is consistent with Tartuffe‘s casuistry. Moreover, Tartuffe takes no more than he has been given by Orgon.

Fuchs_margin_(MMW10F50_f6r)_detail

A studious fox in a monk’s cowl, in the margins of a Book of Hours, Utrecht, c. 1460 (Photo credit: Reynard, Wikipedia)

Comments

Renart does not always win. In the Æsopic “Le Chat et le Renart”/ “The Cat and the Fox”  [IX. 14] the fox cannot climb a tree. That is the cat’s only trick. But he can transform the grapes he craves, but cannot reach, into sour grapes (“Le Renard et les Raisins”/The Fox and the Grapes [lll. 11). That’s engin. There is, however, a gradual transformation of Reynard. In the “vendetta” opposing a greedy wolf and a smart fox, one starts wondering which of the two is the greater scoundrel: Ysengrin or Reynard?

Renart has become evil itself which is how he is depicted in Jacquemart Gielée’s Renart le Nouvel (1289) and the anonymous Renard le Contrefait (1319 – 1322), French avatars. In later iconography, the animals look almost human. The zoomorphic aspect of the beast featured in the image below is disturbing. These figures are neither animals nor human beings.

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Anthropomorphism (BnF)

http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/it/genese/07.htm (Anthropomorphism)

I will close here having been kept away from my computer by a multitude of events and fatigue. I still have the story to clarify but the Roman de Renart is both parcellaire and unitaire.[10] It is fragmented, piecemeal, yet coherent. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (the BnF) has divided Renart into nine episodes, which is the presentation I have chosen. The BnF uses Jean Dufournet’s authoritative translation (into modern French of the medieval Roman de Renart. (See Dufournet and Méline.)

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

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[1] See Panchatantra, Wikipedia for further details.

[2] In his Introduction to Reynard the Fox, Henry Morley tells that the author of the Ecbasis captivi belonged to the monastery of St. Evre, at Toul. Strict reforms among the brethren, in the year 936, cause his Ecbasis -his going out. He was brought back, and as sign of is regeneration wrote the poem, in which he figured himself “per tropologiam” as a calf, who, having gone out from safety, became captive to the wolf. (Introduction, A History of Reynard the Fox [London: George Routledge and Sons, 1889]), p. 1. The full title of the Ecbasis cuisdam captivi per tropologiam is “The escape of a certain captive, interpreted figuratively.”

[3] Harriet Spiegel, translator and editor, Marie de France: Fables (Toronto: the University of Toronto Press, 2000 [1987], Introduction.

[4] Thomas W. Best, Reynard the Fox (Boston: J. K. Hall & Company, 1983), p. 34.

[5] https://www.britannica.com/art/mock-epic

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

[7] Ramsay Wood (reteller) and Doris Lessing (introduction), Tales of Kalila and Dimna, Classic Fables from India (Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1980), p. 252.

[8] Jean Dufournet et Andrée Méline, traduction et introduction, Le Roman de Renart (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1985), p. 7.

[9] Jean Subrenat, “Rape and Adultery: Reflected Facets of Feudal Justice in the Roman de Renart,” in Kenneth Varty, ed. Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 17-35.

[10] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du «Roman de Renart» (Paris: Sedes, 1989), Chapitre II.

fr_1581_002v
http://classes.bnf.fr/renart/arret/02_1.htm (BnF)

Werkraum – Slâfest du, friedel ziere?
Ein Tagelied aus dem 12. Jahrhundert von Dietmar von Aist.

thIK7HC86O

© Micheline Walker
21 April 2017
WordPress

Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Art, Beast Literature, Myths

≈ 11 Comments

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knossos_fresco_in_throne_palace1Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age. (Photo credit:  Wikipedia)
 
528PX-~1
 
 
The Griffin  
 
The red Griffin “rampant” was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland.
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant” (ramping, crawling). 
 
 
 
 

Anthropomorphism

  • fables
  • beast epics
  • speaking animals

Animals in literature are, for the most part, humans in disguise, or anthropomorphic. As Jan M. Ziolkowski writes, “beasts override genre.”[1] Fables and fairy tales are genres, but beast literature is not.

Fables and Beast Epics

However, although beasts override genre, speaking animals are associated first with fables, such as Æsop’s Fables and Jean de La Fontaine’s, and, second, with beast epics, such as Reynard the Fox, or Le Roman de Renart, which narrows a much broader area of knowledge. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise. In the Roman de Renart, all animals have a name. In fact, Renart was so popular that foxes ceased to be called goupils in French. They became renards. Reynard the Fox is entitled Le Roman de Renart, where renard is spelled with a “t.” Renart is a trickster whose nemesis is the wolf named Ysengrin.

Le Roman de Renart, a French beast epic, is rooted in the Ysengrimus, a lengthy Latin mock-epic: 6,574 lines of elegiac couplets, written in 1148-1149 and attributed to Nivardus of Ghent. In the Isengrimus, Renart is Reinardus and will become the most famous and beloved animal in European beast literature. Renard is the fox of the “Fox and Crow” and other “fox” fables. In fact, the Roman de Renart, the first “branches” of which were written in the late twelfth century by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, is an outer fable containing inner fables (Ausserfabel and Innerfabeln), including Æsopic fables.[2] Æsopic fables preceded the Roman de Renart by a more than a thousand years.

Speech

  • “dire sans dire”
  • Aesopian
  • George Orwell

The main characteristic of anthropomorphic animals is their ability to speak a human language. Animals are very useful to writers because, when all said and done, animals have not said a thing. Jean de La Fontaine’s (1621-1695) fables have been described as a “dire-sans-dire” (to say without saying). They are “enveloped” tales, writes German scholar Jürgen Grimm. Therefore, anthropomorphism is an oblique literary discourse, a fiction within a fiction.

Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (27 January  1826 – 10 May 1889) first used the word Aesopian to describe a language unclear to outsiders, thereby allowing authors to say what they please with relative impunity. In 1945, George Orwell wrote an allegorical novella entitled Animal Farm. His animals are humans in disguise, hence their saying what they will not have said. Their own tongue is a language, but it is not a human language. Babe, the protagonist, a piglet, of a 1995 Australian film directed by Chris Noonan and produced by George Miller, is an anthropomorphic animal. The film is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith‘s 1983 novel: The Sheep-Pig.

The Story

La Fontaine did make each of his animals speak, but he also emphasized the power of fiction, in which he may have further distanced his speaking animals. In the Preface to his first collection of fables, books one to six, La Fontaine notes that Jesus of Nazareth spoke in parables. Parables are stories and, as such, they empower speech. To illustrate the power of stories, La Fontaine’s wrote a fable entitled Le Pouvoir des fables (VIII.4). It contains an inner fable about a speaker the people of Athens would not listen to until he turned to fiction, a story about Cerēs, the Roman goddess of agriculture. The moral of the “Power of Fables” is that we are all Athenians. La Fontaine writes that if Donkeyskin, a fairy tale, was told to him, it would give him enormous pleasure. The world is old, writes the fabulist, yet it is like a child we must amuse.

Moreover, a story is pleasurable and is not easily forgotten.

Nous sommes tous d’Athène en ce point, et moi-même,
Au moment où je fais cette moralité,
Si Peau d’âne m’était conté,
J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême.
Le monde est vieux, dit-on, je le crois; cependant
Il faut l’amuser encor comme un enfant.
Le Pouvoir des fables  (VIII.4)

We’re all from Athens in this point of view, And I myself, while moralizing too
If I the tale of the Ass-skin should hear, I’d listen to it with a well-pleased ear.
The world is old, they say; I own it-still
We must sometimes indulge its childish will.
The Power of Fables (VIII.4)

It should be noted, however, that La Fontaine believed in a “boundless universe,” where tout parle, everything speaks, which is anthropomorphism.

Car tout parle dans l’Univers;
Il n’est rien qui n’ait son langage.
(XI.Épilogue)

For in this boundless universe
Ther’s none that talketh, simpleton or sage
More eloquent at home than in my verse.
(XI.Epilogue)

Everything does speak. For instance, Milo Winter‘s illustrations for “The North Wind [Boreas] and the Sun” (“Phoebus and Boreas”) constitutes an example of elements, the wind and the sun, who speak as though they were humans. In short, anthropomorphism resembles a form of personification, which it is in “Phoebus and Boreas .”

the_north_wind_and_the_sun_-_wind_-_project_gutenberg_etext_19994

The North Wind and the Sun by Milo Winter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Zoomorphism: les Hybrides

  • composite animals or hybrid creatures
  • mythological and mythical animals
  • aetiological texts
  • symbolism
  • giving animal features to anything (e. g. furniture)

Zoomorphism is a more complex concept than anthropomorphism and may be the reverse of anthropomorphism. Mythologies and myths are home to zoomorphic animals that combine the features of a human and an animal or the features of many animals. The centaur of Greek mythology is part human and part beast. Centaurs have the lower body of a horse, but the upper body of a human.

The Minotaur is the offspring of Pasiphaë, the wife of Cretan king Minos and the Cretan bull. He is part human and part bull and so evil a creature that he is kept in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. He is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. These two hybrid creatures, the centaur and the Minotaur may hold a mirror to mankind’s duality. Humans possess a mortal body and an immortal soul.

However, mythology also features composite animals. Cerberus, the vigilant dog guarding the gates to the Underworld is a three-headed dog. J. K. Rowling used Cerberus in her Harry Potter series. Her fifth book in the Harry Potter series is entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mythological animals have long inhabited the human psyche and are therefore somewhat familiar to readers. To my knowledge, no one escapes Cerberus’ attention, except Psyche. (See Cupid and Psyche, Wikipedia.) Pegasus, the winged horse, is also a well-known mythological being.

Mythologies are origin myths or aetiological. The Bible itself, the Scriptures or “the Word,” could be described as an aetiological text. It features fanciful angels who are human-like but have wings. In Greek mythology, for instance, animals have a lineage or a pedigree, as is the case with the above-mentioned Minotaur. In the growingly popular area of children’s literature, aetiological tales are called “Pourquoi” tales. The most famous example of a “Pourquoi” tale is Rudyard Kipling‘s (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) Just so stories.

Zoomorphic beasts may also be symbols. As mentioned above, those who mix the features of a human being may reflect the fall of mankind. Besides, an anthropomorphic serpent talked to Eve.

Mythologies and Myths

J. K. Rowling used not only Cerberus but the Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth.  Symbolic beasts are mostly mythical rather than mythological, but readers and scholars tend to blur that line. The distinguishing criterion would be lineage. By and large, mythological beasts, such as the above-mentioned Minotaur and centaurs have a pedigree.

Mostly mythical animals are the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon, the griffin and the irresistible Sirens, mermaids mostly. Mermaids have the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish. These legendary beings may make an appearance in mythologies, but they are somewhat ubiquitous and often transcultural. The phoenix has often been described as a mythological animal and he has a story as does the Unicorn, but he does not possess the Minotaur’s lineage.

The dragon is our most ubiquitous imaginary animal and may be good or bad depending on his environment. In the West he is bad, but not so in the East. Unicorns and Sirens are also transcultural. These mythical animals are zoomorphic, but, in Medieval Bestiary, they are symbols.

  • The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
  • The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
  • The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.
  • Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.

The word zoomorphic is also used to describe pieces of furniture and architectural elements. For instance, the legs of wing chairs often imitate the feet of an animal. Besides wing chairs have wings. Among architectural element, the animal-like Gargoyle is a favourite. He is a waterspout with an open mouth. Bas-reliefs (shallow carvings on a flat surface, such as a wall) may also contain animal-like architectural elements. They embellish buildings. All animal-like creatures inhabiting the medieval bestiary are allegorical or symbolic.

500px-centaur_lekythos_met_51_163

Diophos Painter, white-ground  lekythos (500 BCE) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dragon_order_insignia

The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Other Beasts

  • metamorphosis
  • therianthropic beasts
  • lycanthropy

Both the terms anthropomorphism and zoomorphism include morphism. Morphism suggests a metamorphosis, or a transformation in a being’s appearance, which may be a wish human beings share, just as they share the wish to fly. Roman writer Ovid (20 March 43 BCE – CE 17/18) is the author of the extremely influential Metamorphoses and Berber Latin writer Apuleius (c. 124 – c. 170 CE) wrote The Golden Ass, which contains the lovely tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lucius, the protagonist of The Golden Ass, is mistakenly transformed into an ass when attempting to be transformed into a bird. 

Beast literature features therianthropic animals, who are the victims of a curse. Beast in Beauty and the Beast is a therianthropic being. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.

Animals as Types

In the Preface to his translation of Æsop’s Fables, John Fyler Townsend writes that animals are types, much like the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte.

The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. [EBook #21]

Zoomorphic animals are not types. However, there is a commonality between animals and humans,  Darwinism is a subject we will not discuss. Mythical and mythological animals may be up to no good, but they are not mutating. Moreover, I consider totemism, animal ancestry, the preserve of anthropologists.

Conclusion

Beast literature is a huge topic. We cannot escape any of the categories mentioned in this post. Yet, anthropomorphism is its chief characteristics because of the prominence of fables and the Roman de Renart, Reynard the Fox. One could define the usefulness of anthropomorphic animals by using Gertrude Stein‘s a rose is a rose is a rose.

Well, at the end of the day, a fox is a fox is a fox, therein the wizardry of a large part of beast literature. However, we remember the story. Dear La Fontaine.

RELATED ARTICLES

_________________________

[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 1.
[II] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris: Cedes, 1989), p. 57.

 
Oftheunicorn
The Unicorn
Photo credit: Wikipedia 
 
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel
 
  
untitledwhie-rabbit-alice-in-wonderland
 

© Micheline Walker
6 March 2017
WordPress

 
 

Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1795), by Kitagawa Utamaro

17 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by in Art, Japonisme

≈ 4 Comments

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midnight-the-hour-of-the-rat

Kitagawa Utamaro (ca. 1753 – 31 October 1806)

Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings) 

Love to every one ♥

These are Utamaro’s depiction of each of the twelve hours of the traditional Japanese clock. The Hours constitute a series of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints. Utamaro is the first of the three Japanese artists I have featured. His bijinga, or bi-jinga (“beautiful person picture”) earned him fame. 

Animals

Each hour is named after an animal. Japan has its bestiary, except that the symbolism attached to Oriental animals often differs from the symbolism attached to animals inhabiting the Western bestiary. The significance of each animal has little to do with the “real” or mythical animal.  These animals are anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise.

Hours

In the Western world, we have Books of Hours based on the Liber Usualis and the Rule of Benedict. The Liber Usualis is a compendium of Gregorian chants rooted in Western monasticism. There are eight Canonical Hours observed by monks.

As for Books of Hours, they are religious in spirit, but were made for lay Christians. Les Riches Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry features exquisite illuminations, from enluminures (FR), and fine calligraphy. The Fitzwilliam Book of Hours is also an exceptional work of art.

Human beings have chronicled time, beginning with hours. However, months are also chronicled as are seasons: soltices and equinoxes. Meisho (“famous places”) prints show not only famous places, but people going about their everyday activities or domestic duties and some are divided according to seasons. Utagawa Hiroshige‘s series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons.

  1. The Hour of the Rat: 23 – 1h
  2. The Hour of the Ox: 1 -3h
  3. The Hour of the Tiger: 3 – 5h
  4. The Hour of the Hare: 5 – 7h
  5. The Hour of the Dragon: 7 – 9h (alternate image)
  6. The Hour of the Snake: 9 – 11h (alternate image)
  7. The Hour of the Horse: 11 – 13h (altermate image)
  8. The Hour of the Sheep: 13 – 15h (alternate images)*
  9. The Hour of the Monkey: 15 – 17h
  10. The Hour of the Rooster: 17 – 19h (alternate image)
  11. The Hour of the Dog: 19 – 21h
  12. The Hour of the Boar: 21 – 23h
 
The Hour of the Ramin
(Twelve Hours of the Green House)
*Twelve Hours of the Yoshiwara (to my knowledge, an alternate title)
& Twelve Hours of the Yoshiwara
 

Image at the foot of this post

‘Midori of the Hinataka’
from The Hour of the Rat
 

RELATED ARTICLES 

1. (above) 2. 3. 4. (below)

the-hour-of-the-oxxthe-hour-of-the-tigerthe-hour-of-the-hare

5. 6. 7. 8.the-hour-of-the-dragon (1) 9. 10. 11. 12.

hour-of-the-snake-1794.jpg!Blog

the-hour-of-the-horse-1126r37d

the-hour-of-the-monkey

the-hour-of-the-cock

the-hour-of-the-dogthe-hour-of-the-boar

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 midori-of-the-hinataka-from-the-hour-of-the-rat
© Micheline Walker
17 July 2013

Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by in Art, Beast Literature, Myths, Symbols and Emblems

≈ 3 Comments

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Knossos_fresco_in_throne_palace

Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 528PX-~1The Griffin

 

The red Griffin “rampant” (crawling) was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant.”

 

Anthropomorphism

  • Æsopic, Libystic and Sybaritic fables

Anthropomorphism was defined in my post on Vaux-le-Vicomte. Moreover, Milo Winter’s illustrations for “The North Wind and the Sun” provide examples of elements disguised as human beings. Fabulist Jean de La Fontaine used anthropomorphism: animals, elements, vegetation, mountains. In some fables, he featured humans and who were viewed as morally inferior to animals. The Man and the Snake (The Man and the Adder or L’Homme et la Couleuvre [X.1]) is an example of the use of an inferior human being in a fable. Fables featuring beasts only are called Æsopic. Those featuring human beings interacting with beasts are called libystic, and those featuring humans only are sybaritic fables.[I] 

The Use of Anthropomorphism

  • a fox is a fox is a fox

The word Æsopian refers to a language that can only be understood by people other than  insiders. Nineteenth-century Russian satirist Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedri  was the first to use the term æsopian language. Animals speak and do no speak. In the end, as eloquent as he may be, a fox is a fox is a fox. Gertrude Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose” captured the spirit of anthropomorphism. Whether they are used as a carpe diem or a memento mori, roses are roses are roses.  

In 1997, in his review of Marc Fumaroli‘s Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son temps, Charles Rosen wrote that “[w]ith La Fontaine’s Fables, we do not have to burrow far under the surface to recognize a discreet opposition to the grandeur of style and the servile obedience wanted by the court, an opposition never openly expressed but manifest on every page.” (The New York Review of Books, “The Fabulous La Fontaine,” (18 December 1997.)[II] Fables feature speaking animals, but readers know that animals do not speak just as Louis knows he is not a lion. Therein lies the wizardry of beast fables.

Animals as Types

In the preface to his translation of Aesop’s fable, Townsend writes that

“The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient” and all of this, “by mutual consent.”

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_PREF

500px-Centaur_lekythos_Met_51_163

 

 

Zoomorphism: Hybrid Anthropomorphic Creatures

However, certain legendary or mythical animals as well as mythological animals are hybrid creatures who combine the features of humans and those of an animal or combine the features of several animals. Zoomorphic animals are also anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise.

Well-known animals that combine human and animal features are centaurs and the Minotaur. Centaurs have the torso of a man or a woman, but their lower body is that of a horse. The Minotaur, he is the son of Pasiphaë and a bull. He is therefore a hybrid animal that is kept in a labyrinth built by Dædalus. The Minotaur is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. Theseus also slays a centaur. Zoomorphic animals may belong to a mythology, in which case they have lineage and ancestors. Interestingly, angels have wings, but they are otherwise identical to human beings.

Usually, mythologies tell a story that explains origins. They are etiological  narratives. In children’s literature, etiological narratives are called “pourquoi” (why) stories. Rudyard Kipling‘s Just So Stories (1902) are “pourquoi” narratives. However, some legendary creatures, such as the phoenix, appear to straddle both categories, the mythical and the mythological. The distinguishing factor could be the degree of symbolism attributed to the animal. The more symbolic the animal, the more mythical. By and large, mythical animals are zoomorphic and have no lineage. Relatively few are not featured in etiological narratives, such as the Bible and and many inhabit the medieval bestiary. Bestiaries are allegorical.

Zoomorphic Beasts

The dragon, the griffin, and the unicorn are zoomorphic animals combining the features of many animals. They are legendary or mythical animals, rather than mythological beasts. However, both the griffin and the phoenix do belong to certain mythologies. It may be legitimate to separate the dragon, the griffin, the phoenix and the unicorn from other zoomorphic animals in that all four are likely to appear as symbols, but so do other legendary animals. The phoenix, who rises from his own ashes, is a symbol of rebirth. The unicorn appears in the Bible, but he is not listed in Donald Ray Schwartz’s Noah’s Ark, the Hebrew Bible.[III] The Western unicorn cannot be captured by a person other than a virgin. He is therefore emblematic of chaste love. In children’s literature, he is often described as an animal who missed the boat: Noah’s Ark. (See Unicorn, Wikipedia.)

  • The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
  • The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
  • The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is, as mentioned above, “emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.”
  • Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.
Dragon_order_insignia
The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
Phoenix-Fabelwesen
A phoenix depicted in a book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch (1747-1822).
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

Other Zoomorphic Animals

Other relatively well-known zoomorphic animals, combining animal features only, are Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, or Cerberus/Kerberos, the three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld. In The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche is told how to avoid him, which enables her to fetch beauty from Persephone without dying. Locksmiths and businesses that provide alarm systems often name their store or company Cerberus/Kerberos.

There are medieval love bestiaries, such as Richard de Fournival‘s Bestiaire d’amour (ms 12469 Bibliothèque nationale de France). In medieval bestiary, animals are used allegorically. In fact, animals inhabiting medieval bestiaries are allegorical figures and they are usually the same from author to author. They are as described by Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 25 August 79 CE), Isidore of Seville, etc. or as described in the 2nd century CE Physiologus. (See Physiologus, Wikipedia.) However, the unicorn and the griffin are often featured on coats of arms, shields, helmets, and blazons in heraldry. (See Zoomorphism, Wikipedia.)

High Fantasy Literary Works and other Literary Works

The phoenix appears in J. K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix  (2003), in which we also find the griffin Albus Dumbledore. As well, the Harry Potter series features Cerberus/Kerberos. The griffin, however, had been used previously. For instance, he appears in Dante Alighieri‘s (c. 1265–1321) Divine Comedy and in John Milton‘s Paradise Lost. In C. S. Lewis‘ popular Chronicles of Narnia, we find a centaur.

They are also featured in children’s literature. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is a children’s novel, but such works are best understood by adults if poorly illustrated.

Werwolf.png

Werewolf by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Gotha, Herzoglishes Museum)

 Other Roles

  • metamorphosis
  • the werewolf, le loup garou
  • animal ancestry

Therianthropic animals, humans that transform themselves into beast and vice versa can be looked upon as zoomorphic creatures. There are therianthropic beings in fairy tales, which is usually the result of a curse. A fine example is Beauty and the Beast. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.

Beast literature is not an animal counterpart of fairy-tales.

The above shows, among other factors, to what extent humans see commonality with animals, but not as in Darwinism.

_________________________
[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 18.
[II] Marc Fumaroli, Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son siècle (Éditions de Fallois, 1997).
[III] Donald Ray Schwartz, Noah’s Ark, an Annotated Encyclopedia of every Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible (Jason Aron Inc.: Northvale, New Jersey, Jerusalem, 2000). 
Oftheunicorn

Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) 

Le Carnaval des animaux   
Camille Saint-Saëns (Thomas/Doumène)
physiologus

The Yale, The Bern Physiologus 

© Micheline Walker
25 August 2013
WordPress

The North Wind and the Sun

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Æsop, Fables, Jean de La Fontaine

≈ 4 Comments

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+The_North_Wind_and_the_Sun_-_Wind_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_19994

The North Wind and the Sun, Æsop’s Fables 
Illustrated by Milo Winter (7 August 1888 – 15 August 1956)
Gutenberg [EBook #19994] (p. 109) 
La Fontaine: Phoebus and Boreas; Phébus et Borée (VI.3)
Photo credit: Wikipedia and Gutenberg
 
Perry Index 46 (Æsop’s Fables)
Aarne-Thompson (Aarne-Thompson-Uther) type 298 (Wind and Sun)
or ATU type 298
Alishman: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0298.html
 
title_th 
Milo Winter
(Photo credit: Gutenberg)

The Wind and the Sun: Æsop  

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said, “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin.”
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
 
Kindness effects more than severity.[i]
 

Gentleness does more than Violence

This seems a very innocent fable to which La Fontaine has given a lovely moral: “Plus fait douceur que violence.” (“Gentleness does more than violence.”)

“The North Wind and the Sun” is not so innocent a fable and it constitutes good advice to parents, to individuals who interact with other individuals, i.e. all of us, and to nations. It is the diplomatic approach. According to Wikipedia, South Korea’s Sunshine Policy was rooted in this Æsopic fable. I rather like Walter Crane‘s “True strength is not bluster.” (See The North Wind and the Sun, Wikipedia)

But in Wikipedia, one can also read a story according to which Sophocles (497/6 BC – winter 406/5 BC) asked a boy to have sexual intercourse with him. The boy did as he was told. He laid on his cloak but, after the act, he fled with Sophocles’ cloak which Sophocles had used to cover himself and the boy.[ii] Euripides (c. 480 – 406 BC), who had also engaged in sexual intercourse with the same boy, made a joke out of this event. The joke reached Sophocles who ridiculed Euripides in an epigram mentioning Euripides’ indiscretions with a woman other than his wife and alluding to the North Wind (Borée FR), and the Sun (Phébus FR).

It was the Sun, and not a boy, whose heat stripped me naked;
As for you, Euripides, when you were kissing someone else’s wife
The North Wind screwed you. You are unwise, you who sow
In another’s field, to accuse Eros of being a snatch-thief.[iii]
 

The above story is probably apocryphal. But given that Sophocles and Euripides, two dramatists, lived in the 5th century BCE, we know that “The North Wind and the Sun” is an old fable. Æsop lived in c. 620–564 BCE. This fable is probably of Eurasian provenance.

As for the illustrations, they provide us with a good example of anthropomorphism. The elements, the wind and the sun, are humans in disguise. They speak.

Phébus&Borée 
Phébus et Borée, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry
(Photo credit: Wikipedia) 
 
Professor D. L. Alishman lists five tellings of this fable, under Wind and Sun (ATU type 298) 
  1. The Wind and the Sun (Æsop)
  2. Phœbus and Boreas (Jean de La Fontaine) Phébus et Borée (VI. 3) or The North Wind and the Sun (VI.3)
  3. The Wind and the Sun (India) Folklore of the Santal Parganas
  4. The North Wind and the Sun, in Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), p. 181.
  5. Brer Rabbit Treats the Creatures to a Race (Joel Chandler Harris, The Tales of Uncle Remus)
______________________________
[i] Joseph Jacobs, translator, The Fables of Æsop (London and New York: Macmillan and Company, 1894), no. 60, pp. 142-143.
[ii] See Greek Love, Wikipedia.
[iii] Eros is the Greek god of love and Cupid, the Roman god of desire. Venus is the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
 
The North Wind and the Sun:
http://www.nfb.ca/film/north_wind_and_sun_fable_by_aesop/
 
 
   
i107_th (1)
 
© Micheline Walker
23 August 2013 
WordPress

Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1795), by Kitagawa Utamaro

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonisme

≈ 3 Comments

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midnight-the-hour-of-the-rat

Kitagawa Utamaro (ca. 1753 – 31 October 1806)

Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
 

These are Utamaro’s depiction of each of the twelve hours of the traditional Japanese clock. The Hours constitute a series of ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints. Utamaro is the first of the three Japanese artists I have featured. His bijinga (“beautiful person picture”) earned him fame. 

Animals

Each hour is named after an animal. Japan has its bestiary, except that the symbolism attached to Oriental animals often differs from the symbolism attached to animals inhabiting the Western bestiary. The significance of each animal has little to do with the “real” or mythical animal.  These animals are anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise.

Hours

In the Western world, we have Books of Hours based on the Liber Usualis and the Rule of Benedict. The Liber Usualis is a compendium of Gregorian chants rooted in Western monasticism. There are eight Canonical Hours observed by monks.

As for Books of Hours, they are religious in spirit, but were made for lay Christians. Les Riches Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry features exquisite illuminations, from enluminures (FR), and fine calligraphy. The Fitzwilliam Book of Hours is also an exceptional work of art.

Human beings have chronicled time, beginning with hours. However, months are also chronicled as are seasons: soltices and equinoxes. Meisho (“famous places”) prints show not only famous places, but people going about their everyday activities or domestic duties and some are divided according to seasons. Utagawa Hiroshige‘s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons.

  1. The Hour of the Rat: 23 – 1h
  2. The Hour of the Ox: 1 -3h
  3. The Hour of the Tiger: 3 – 5h
  4. The Hour of the Hare: 5 – 7h
  5. The Hour of the Dragon: 7 – 9h (alternate image)
  6. The Hour of the Snake: 9 – 11h (alternate image)
  7. The Hour of the Horse: 11 – 13h (altermate image)
  8. The Hour of the Sheep: 13 – 15h (alternate images)*
  9. The Hour of the Monkey: 15 – 17h
  10. The Hour of the Rooster: 17 – 19h (alternate image)
  11. The Hour of the Dog: 19 – 21h
  12. The Hour of the Boar: 21 – 23h
 
The Hour of the Ramin
(Twelve Hours of the Green House)
*Twelve Hours of the Yoshiwara (to my knowledge, an alternate title)
& Twelve Hours of the Yoshiwara
 

Image at the foot of this post

‘Midori of the Hinataka’
from The Hour of the Rat
 

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© Micheline Walker
17 July 2013

Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in Beast Literature

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Renart.reading

A studious fox in a monk’s cowl, in the margins of a Book of Hours, Utrecht, c. 1460
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Sources: the Sick Lion tale

The fox is beast literature’s foremost trickster and, as we will see below (Townsend), he is a stock character, much as commedia dell’arte characters: the jealous, the boastful, tricksters, etc. As a trickster, he is as cunning as Machiavelli would want his prince to be.

In Western European literature, we find him first in the

  • Ecbasis Captivi, an anonymous Latin poem, written in verse, hexameters, which can be described as a fable (Innerfabel) within a fable (Außerfabel).[1] The Ecbasis Captivi contains the Sick Lion tale. We also find him, i.e. the fox, in Paul Diacre’s or Paul the Deacon’s;
  • Ægrum fama fuit (Paul the Deacon), FR a Carolingian (under King Charlemagne) text that also comprises the Sick Lion tale. The Ecbasis captivi and the Ægrum fama fuit culminate in Nivardus of Ghent’s
  • Ysengrimus (c. 1150), the birthplace of Reinardus who soon becomes Renart in the early “branches” of Pierre de Saint-Cloud’s
  • Roman de Renart (c. 1170). Other authors will write further “branches” or episodes of Le Roman de Renart.

However, the trickster as archetype is as ancient as the Sanskrit Pañcatantra and Persian scholar Abdulla Ibn al-Muquaffa’s Arabic rendition of the Pañcatantra, Kalīlah wa Dimna. In Kalīlah wa Dimna, a sage, Dr Pidpai or Pilpay, gives advice to King Dabscheleim.  The Tales of Kalīlah and Dimna have been translated by Ramsay Wood. In these ancient texts, the trickster figure, or archetype, is a jackal.

Anthropomorphism, or a fox is a fox is a fox

What is most important with respect to beast epics and fables, beast literature’s main genres, is the concept of anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise and therefore inhabit a comic discourse where the formulaic “all’s well that ends well,” makes comedy’s traditional marriage possible.Whatever the obstacles, in comedy, the young couple marries.

Similarly, in beast literature talking animals are animals. So, given that real animals do not talk, this allows the author to write the truth with impunity.The lion may be a king, but the King, vanity forbids, is not a lion.

There also exist zoomorphic animals who, like the Centaur we met in Chapter XVIII of Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century’s The Prince are half beast and half human, which the prince should be, given the corrupt world in which he lives. Like the Centaur, angels are zoomorphic. Zoomorphic creatures may also combine features borrowed from several animals. They are not anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise. In fact, they are not talking animals.

Renart is a talking animal, and talking animals protect authors because animals do not talk despite considerable eloquence, particularly in the case of Reynard. Reynard’s barat, or clever talkativeness, can pull him out of the worst possible circumstances. As we will see, the fox can talk himself out of raping and, thereby escapes the gallows. A modern example of anthropomorphism in literature is George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Also central to beast literature are the archetypes. The trickster is an archetype. In his Preface to Æsop’s Fables, George Fyler Townsend states that “[t]he introduction [in fables] of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient.” This statement reflects an anthropomorphic vision of animals and expresses literary conventions (archetypes: ‘by universal consent.’)

The Sick Lion tale

In my favourite version of this tale, not a Æsopic fable, the Fox overhears the Wolf tell the Lion, already a king, that the fox has been remiss in not visiting the sick lion. So the fox goes looking for old shoes and returns to the lion’s den. He tells the Lion-King that he has travelled the world in search of a cure to the king’s illness and that he has the worn shoes to prove he has not only travelled in search of a cure, but that he has also found it. To get better, the King must wrap himself inside the skin of a wolf whose characteristics are those of the future Isengrim, the wolf on whom Renart will play all kinds of tricks.

 —ooo—

There is so much more to tell about Reynard, but now that we have the founding story, we can tell more. However, I should mention that Renart is a traveller. He is born in Ghent, migrates to France, goes to the Low Countries (Van den Vos Reinaerde) and then to Germany. He is Goethe’s Reinecke Fuchs (c. 1794) DE.

But I will close by emphasizing the popularity of the Roman de Renart. In French, a fox used to be called a goupil, so Renart was a goupil. However, le goupil became le renard (spelled with a ‘d’). Everyone knew Renart, the literary Renart.

—ooo—

[1] Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris : Sedes, 1989), p. 57.