From Comedy to Fable: the Frog and the Ox

23 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by michelinewalker in Æsop, Fables, Molière

Tags

archetype, Boasting, Cycles and Motifs, Dom Juan, Grenouille et Boeuf, La Fontaine, Molière, The Frog and the Ox

La Fontaine: site officiel

A few days ago, I attempted to write a short post on Jean de La Fontaine‘s La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le bœuf (The Frog Who Wished To Be As Big As The Ox). Although the genre and length differ, in both cases, boasting leads to devastating consequences. La Fontaine’s Site officiel no longer provides the text, in French and in English, of La Fontaine’s twelve books of fables. The new site may still be under construction, but it will be mostly for visitors to the Musée. At any rate, I decided to use les moyens du bord, sites such as Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, Wikisource, and other sources. I will update all my posts featuring a fable by La Fontaine.

La Fontaine’s La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le bœuf is one of Æsop’s Fables. It is number 376 in the Perry Index. Now, The Frog and Ox is, in its broadest terms, a fable version of Dom Juan. Fables often have a farcical ending. They tell us to think of the consequences, but wrap the truth in a lie: animals do not speak, yet they do. Animals speak, yet they don’t.

Wikipedia’s entries on La Fontaine’s fables often contain not only a translation, but also images. Gutenberg’s [EBook #24108] was illustrated by John Rae. The fables were translated by W. T. (William Trowbridge) Larned. It is an edition for children and it is beautiful!

John Ray [EBook #24108]

The Frog and the Ox

A Frog had an Ox in her view;
His bulk, to her, appeared ideal.
She, not even as large, all in all, as an egg hitherto,
Envious, stretched, swelled, strained, in her zeal
To match the beast in overall size,
Saying, “Sister, lend me your eyes.

Is this enough? Am I not yet there, in every feature?”
“Nope.” “Then now?” “No way.” “There now, as good as first?”
“You’re not anywhere near.” The diminutive creature
Inflated still more, till she burst.

The world is full of folk who are as far from being sages.
Every city gent would build chateaux like Louis Quatorze;
Every petty prince names ambassadors,
Every marquis wants to have pages.
c redit
http://lafontaine.mmlc.northwestern.edu/fables/grenouille_boeuf_en.html

La Grenouille qui se veut faire aussi grosse que le bœuf

Une Grenouille vit un Bœuf
Qui lui sembla de belle taille.
Elle qui n’était pas grosse en tout comme un œuf,
Envieuse s’étend, et s’enfle, et se travaille
Pour égaler l’animal en grosseur,
Disant : « Regardez bien, ma sœur,
Est-ce assez ? dites-moi : n’y suis-je point encore ?
— Nenni. — M’y voici donc ? — Point du tout. — M’y voilà ?
— Vous n’en approchez point. » La chétive pécore
S’enfla si bien qu’elle creva.
Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages :
Tout Bourgeois veut bâtir comme les grands Seigneurs,
Tout petit Prince a des Ambassadeurs,
Tout Marquis veut avoir des Pages.
credit: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grenouille_qui_se_veut_faire_aussi_grosse_que_le_b%C5%93uf

La Fontaine, Molière, etc.

La Fontaine and Molière were contemporaries and friends, close friends, it would seem. La Fontaine was a pallbeare r when Molière was buried under cover of darkness. Comedians were excommunicated. La Grange (Charles Varlet, sieur de la Grange) kept the books, le registre. We know, therefore, what fabric was used to make certain costumes, but we do not know why Jean-Baptiste Poquelin chose the name Molière. There are so many names. Molière did not say much about himself, nor did La Fontaine.

However, Dom Juan boasts, as does La Fontaine’s frog. No frog can be as large as an ox. It therefore bursts as do the bombastic characters of the commedia dell’arte and those of Greek and Latin comedy. The alazṓn of ancient Greece could be a senex iratus, an angry old man, or a miles gloriosus, a boastful character. Dom Juan is a miles gloriosus, un fanfaron.

Molière also depicted his century in a natural fashion, using correct but ordinary French. French is called “la langue de Molière.” As well, Alceste (The Misanthr ope) is an atrabilaire amoureux. There were four temperaments or humeurs. When discussing medicine and Molière, I mentioned the four temperaments or humeurs. Philinte is flegmatique. As for Dom Juan, who is “jeune encore” (still young), I believe he would be a sanguine temperament. These words are still used. I was told about the four “temperaments” as a child.

The Four Temperaments (Psychologia.co)

Moreover, these characters, including our boastful frog, are archetypes. The miles gloriosus is an archetype. We associate archetypes with Jungian psychology, but the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte are also archetypes, as is Æsop/La Fontaine’s boastful frog. Literature has its genres, archetypes, themes, motifs, cycles, etc.

However, until André Villiers, Molière was seldom looked upon as a philosopher, or philosophe (thinker). The philosophes of the French Enlightenment discussed individual rights versus collective rights and other subjects. This discourse, freedom mostly, begins in ancient Greece, if not earlier. Montaigne takes it up. It crosses the seventeenth century in France and elsewhere. It includes le libertinage érudit (Dom Juan). It finds an apex in John Locke (see the Age of Enlightenment), and is finely articulated in the writings of the philosophes of the French Enlightenment, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, who met in the Salons. Rousseau‘s Le Contrat social was published in 1762. Freedom demands that certain freedoms be denied and some restored or instituted.

Dom Juan XII par Claude Weisbuch, circa 1990 (Galerie 125)

Conclusion

It is unlikely that in “Elfland”[1] a husband can abandon his wife. There may not be husbands and wives in Elfland. A small, but boastful frog is not a Dom Juan defying God, the devil according to some critics.[2] However, fables are anthropomorphic. So, boastful frogs are used to depict boastful human beings. Both our frog and Dom Juan pit themselves against the impossible, including Heaven … and burst. Bursting is a motif.

Our next play is Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin the Schemer). Scapin is the most ingenuous zanni before Figaro.

____________________
[1] G. K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (New York: Dood, Mead and Company, 1943 [1908]), pp. 81-118.
[2] Claude Reichler, La Diabolie: la séduction, la renardie, l’écriture (Paris : Éditions de Minuit, 1979), p. 17.

P. S. Please see David Nicholson’s comment, below. The remains, or what are believed to be the remains, of La Fontaine and Molière are side by side in the Père Lachaise cemetery

Love to everyone 💕

Hank Knox – Rameau, La Poule
Le Musée du Château Dufresne, Montréal, QC

Crispin et Scapin peinture d’Honoré Daumier, XIX^e siècle.

The Phantom of the Opera: Details

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Sharing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

André Castaigne, archetype, Bazar de la Charité fire, Charles Gounod's Faust, Gaston Leroux, Grange-Batelière, Opéra Garnier, Phantom of the Opera, the Grand Chandelier, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Photo credit: expositions.bnf.fr

André Castaigne: Leroux’s Illustrator

At least one edition, the first, of Gaston Leroux‘s Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera) was illustrated. Its illustrator, André Castaigne (21 January 1861 in Angoulême – 1929 in Paris), had been a student of academicist painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel.

French-born Jean Alexandre Michel André Castaigne, who spent twenty years in San Francisco, is known mainly for his illustrations. I will quote a post containing information about him as well as several illustrations, but none from The Phantom of the Opera. To access this blog, please click on Illustrations Art Solutions:

“André Castaigne first came to the United States in 1890 after a six-month stay in England and became a director of Baltimore’s Charcoal Club. His first of many illustrations appeared in The Century magazine around 1891.

In 1894 he returned to France and became a painting instructor in Paris, where he maintained a winter studio in addition to his summer studio in Angoulême.

He traveled extensively in Europe, and wrote and illustrated stories for The Century in Germany, Corsica, and Greece.

As the principal draftsman for French president Félix Faure, Castaigne was awarded the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.

In 1901 he returned to America as an official representative of the Imprimerie Nationale to study American printing plants in various cities.”

Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, illustration by André Castaigne

Photo credit: litteranet.blogspot.com

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

The Legend or “true” Story

It appears Gaston Leroux’s Fantôme de l’Opéra was inspired by real events which I will recount, except for a possible suicide by hanging. No rope was found. Moreover, a dancer fell to her death from a galery.

The River

The first event was an obstacle encountered by architect Charles Garnier during the building of the foundations of l’Opéra Garnier. Allow me to quote Wikipedia as I do not think I can provide an adequate account of the event.

According to Wikipedia (Opéra Garnier):

“The opera house needed a much deeper basement in the substage area than other building types, but the level of the groundwater was unexpectedly high. Wells were sunk in February 1862 and eight steam pumps installed in March, but the site would not dry up. To deal with this problem Garnier designed a double foundation to protect the superstructure from moisture. It incorporated a water course and an enormous concrete cistern (cuve) which would both relieve the pressure of the external groundwater on the basement walls and serve as a reservoir in case of fire. A contract for its construction was signed on 20 June. Soon a persistent legend arose that the opera house was built over a subterranean lake, inspiring Gaston Leroux to incorporate the idea into his novel The Phantom of the Opera.”

From this event a legend also arose according to which there was an underground river called Grange-Batelière running under l’Opéra Garnier. In fact, Paris does have an underground river named Grange-Batelière, but it does not flow under l’Opéra Garnier. However, it would have been difficult for Leroux to resist the lure of an underground river. There have long been underworlds.

In Greek Mythology, the River Styx “formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld [Hades].” (See Styx, Wikipedia.) In fact, the Greeks also had the concept of Tartarus. Tartarus was an abyss used to torment and torture. Those who had committed evil deeds during their life were sent to Tartarus. Tartarus therefore resembles the Judeo-Christian hell.

The “Bazar de la Charité” Fire

The second event, a terrible tragedy, occurred on 4 May 1897. On that day, a fire destroyed the shed in which a yearly charitable event, called the Bazar de la Charité, was taking place. The Bazar was established in 1885 by British journalist and socialite Harry Blount. As a bonus, people could see, for a small fee, “moving pictures,” the latest from the frères Lumière. At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, there was a fatal accident. The projectionist asked his assistant to light a match, but neither the projectionist nor his assistant knew that ether was leaking from the projector lamp. Allow me to quote Wikipedia (Bazar de la Charité) a second time:

“On the afternoon of 4 May [1897], the second of the planned four days of the bazaar, the projectionist’s equipment (using a system of ether and oxygen rather than electricity) caught fire. The resulting blaze, and the panic of the crowd, claimed the lives of 126 people, mostly aristocratic women. Over 200 people were additionally injured from the fire.The disaster was reported nationally and internationally.”

In Leroux’s novel, the projector lamp may have been become the large chandelier that fell and killed a spectator whose seat was number 13.

The “real” Fantôme de l’Opéra

This is how the “true” story unfolds. On 28 October 1873, a pianist was disfigured during a fire at the conservatory, rue Le Peletier.[i] This same fire also killed the pianist’s fiancée, a ballerina. Our disfigured and devastated pianist started living underground, in the lairs of l’Opéra Garnier, then under construction. His name was Ernest and his underground home was near the reservoir located under the building. He stayed there for the remainder of his life, playing music. He billed l’Opéra 20,000 francs a month and demanded his own box, number 5. He died within the entrails of the Opéra, but his body was not recovered until later and it is unlikely that it was identified conclusively.

Confirming the existence of a fantôme was a young woman by the name of Christine Daaé, an orphan adopted by the wife of her singing teacher. She could hear someone call her name during the night and claimed to have seen the fantôme. In fact, The Phantom of the Opera‘s plot is about Christine’s growing fondness for the phantom. It is therefore a Beauty and the Beast narrative.

The Grand Chandelier and Gounod’s Faust

Then, on 20 May 1896, during a performance of Faust, by Charles Gounod (17 June 1818 – 17 October or 18 October 1893), a chandelier had fallen and, as mentioned above, had killed a spectator, occupying seat 13. Decades earlier, long before l’Opéra Garnier was built, Gounod’s Faust (1859) had been rejected by the Paris Opera, then located rue Le Peletier.[ii]

Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame

All of the above, true or false, may have influenced Leroux. These events and the legend it generated constitute powerful archetypes. However, I believe Victor Hugo‘s 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) is the Fantôme‘s birthplace. The phantom could be a reborn and rather mangled Quasimodo (the Hunchback), and Christine, the beautiful but doomed Esméralda.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, illustrations for Le Fantôme de l’Opéra are not easily available. But we have one, the main one. As for the lore surrounding our Fantôme, it gives the novel a context and tends to pin it down. At any rate, I thought I would pass on to my readers the information I had gathered.

Love to all of you,

Micheline

___________________________________

[i] This is the street where the former Paris Opera was located before l’Opéra Garnier was built.

[ii] See: Paris Zig Zag: http://www.pariszigzag.fr/visite-insolite-paris/fantome-opera-garnier

Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Valse de l’opéra Faust (Waltz from Faust)

Wiener Philharmoniker

Rudolf Kempe (14 June 1910 in Dresden – 12 May 1976 in Zürich)

Micheline Walker©

June 24, 2013

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Photo credit: www.greenriver-paris.fr

Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: an inspiration

07 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Canada, Comedy, Literature

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Tags

Anatomy of Criticism, archetype, comedy, deus ex machina, Les Arts Florissants, Molière, pharmakos, Tartuffe, William Blake, William Christie

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake’s work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies. (Caption and Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the area of literary criticism, few books have inspired me as much as Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.[i]

Northrop Frye

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays was published by Northrop Frye in 1957. In his Polemical Introduction, Frye notes the importance of approaching literature with “a conceptual framework,”[ii] so one can uncover a literary work’s organizing principles. In this regard, he refers to Aristotle’s Poetics.

“A Conceptual framework”

Of course! So I started examining how archetypes were used in the various works of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, or Molière, France’s foremost comic dramatist.

Comedy: the characters as archetypes

Frye describes comedy as a genre where a young couple, or young couples, have to overcome obstacles, in order to marry. They are usually opposed by a pater familias, a descendent of the heavy father of Roman New Comedy (Plautus [c. 254–184 BCE] and Terence [195/185–159 BCE]) to the more buffoon-like stock characters of the commedia dell’arte. Usually the young lovers are helped by servants, suivant-e-s, valets, confident-e-s, friends, and, at times, a mother or an avuncular (good uncle) figure.

The Plot: all’s well that ends well

Comedy has its archetypal figures and it is an “all’s-well-that-ends-well” narrative, but theories can be reductive. We require “a conceptual framework,” but must also acquire a degree of eclecticism and develop personal theories. In the case of Molière, one has to analyze if and how he uses the “all’s-well-that-ends-well,” rather than simply state that he does or does not use customary narrative and archetypal characters.

Molière’s Tartuffe: the hypocrite

For instance, in Molière’s Tartuffe, Tartuffe who feigns piety, has so bewitched a vulnerable Orgon, the heavy father, that members of his family have to put on a little play-within-the-play to show Orgon that Tartuffe is a hypocrite and that, far from turning his back on the pleasures of the flesh, he in fact covets Orgon’s wife Elmire.

Hidden under a table, Orgon, the pater familias is made to see his “friend” trying to seduce his wife and realizes, too late, that he has been fooled. Orgon’s daughter will not have to marry Tartuffe, but Orgon cannot get rid of the impostor, because Tartuffe is privy to knowledge that could cause Orgon to be thrown in jail.

The Deus ex machina or divine intervention

Fortunately, an exempt or deus ex machina arrives just in time, an instance of kairos as in fairy tales, to tell the family that Tartuffe is a villain and save Orgon. So, here is a play, where characters opposing the traditional marriage of comedy have very little power. It is therefore a problematical play because it stretches the “all’s-well-that-ends-well” to its limits. Molière’s problematical plays are the ones I analyzed.

I am thankful to Northrop Frye because he gave me my starting-point: “The pharmakos is neither innocent nor guilty.”[iii] Pharmakos is the Greek word for scapegoat, the characters who are vilified but somewhat unjustly, which is, to a certain extent, Tartuffe’s case.

Other authors inspired me, (Sir James Frazer, Erich Auerbach, Paul Bénichou, etc.), but that precious seminal idea, I culled from Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism.

Urizen, William Blake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Herman (“Norrie”) Northrop Frye, CC, FRSC (14 July 1912 – 23January 1991) was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, my hometown. He was raised in New Brunswick, studied in Toronto (Victoria College, University of Toronto) and at Oxford (Merton College), became a minister in the United Church, and then spent most of his life teaching at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), where he was an inspiration to his students as he had been to me.

Frye is the author of The Anatomy of Criticism.[i]

He wrote his thesis on William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827), one of English literature’s most fascinating figures. Entitled Fearful Symmetry, Frye’s thesis was published in 1947, but he has published numerous other studies, all of which are listed in Wikipedia’s entry on Northrop Frye.

Needless to say, literary critics often find their own personal path to analysing a work of literature. In my own humble writings, I have strayed from early mentors, but I would still recommend Anatomy of Criticism as compulsory reading to students of literature. Where Canadian literature is concerned, Frye’s Bush Garden, a short book, is an excellent way to enter the domain, particularly if one also reads Margaret Atwood‘s Survival, another short book.

Sources and Resources

Heilebrunn Timeline of Art History (Metropolitan Museum, NY)

[i] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1973 [1957]).

[ii] Frye, op. cit., p. 15.

[iii] Frye, op. cit., p. 41.

Portrait of William Blake

Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809)

The Creation (Die Schöpfung)

Les Arts Florissants

William Christie, director

Blake’s Bedroom (Photo credit: Google images)

7 January 2012

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revised 19 July 2014

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

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.