Tag Archives: Jean de La Fontaine

And what about Perrin Dandin?

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Comedy, Fables, Molière

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l huitre et les plaideurs

L’Huître et les Plaideurs, illustration de Calvet-Rogniat (informations.documents.com)

Rabelais’ Perrin Dandin

There have been many Dandins. I remember François Rabelais‘ Perrin Dandin (Pantagruel, Third Book XLI), perhaps an early Dandin. Given the oral tradition, this Perrin Dandin may not be the first.

However, there is a Perrin Dandin in Racine’s Les Plaideurs (1668) and in La Fontaine’s “L’Huître et les Plaideurs” (“The Oyster and the Litigants”). La Fontaine’s “Oyster and the Litigants” was published in his second volume of fables (1678), but may date back to the early 1670s.

Perrin Dandin is a simple citizen in the “Pantagruel” of Rabelais, who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and passes off hand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures similarly in a comedy of Racine’s, and in a fable of La Fontaine’s.

The Nuttall Encyclopædia(en.wikisource.org) (see James Wood [encyclopædist], Wikipedia.)

Jean Racine’s Perrin Dandin

Ironically, Jean Racine‘s Les Plaideurs was first performed in November 1668, at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris’ most prominent venue. It therefore premiered, in Paris, the same month as Molière’s George Dandin. Molière’s George Dandin is not a judge, but whenener he runs to his in-laws, he brandishes a contract. I have pointed out that in Paris, George Dandin was no longer a comédie-ballet and pastoral. It was a three-act farce in which a peasant lived the consequences of a marriage which, he thought, would elevate him to gentilhommerie. George Dandin’s Gentilhommerie is the Sotenvilles. “Sot” means stupid (and related adjectives).

A sotie is classified as a medieval farce and morality. Some argue, however, that it is a separate genre. Marrying Angélique, whom he had not courted (galanterie), was une sottise (foolish or silly) on the part of George Dandin. Could he not see sot in her parents’ name? They are Monsieur and Madame de Sotenville (from sot), and Madame de Sotenville was born a La Prudoterie, from prude. In Molière’s Le Misanthrope, Arsinoé is the opposite of Célimène. The prude is the opposite of the mondaine. Moreover, names such as Sotenville do not seem real. They seem and may be allegorical.

Whereas the characters in a farce would be distinguished individuals with proper names, the characters in the soties were pure allegories. The characters had names such as “First Fool” and Second Fool”, or “Everyman”, “Pilgrim” etc. Sometime there would be a leader of the fools, called “Mother Fool” (Mère Sotte).[1]

(See Sotie, Wikipedia.)
[1] Mère Sotte was the papacy. Soties were banned.

Geroge Dandin par J.M. Moreau (2)

Perrin Dandin, illustration de Moreau le Jeune (théâtre.information.com)

The above Dandin is not Molière’s George Dandin. It is Jean Racine’s Perrin Dandin featured in Les Plaideurs (1668). Racine’s Dandin is a besotted judge who has to judge at all times. While judging dogs, he allows his son Léandre to marry Chicanneau’s daughter Isabelle.

DANDIN : judge,
LÉANDRE : son of Dandin, fils de Dandin.
CHICANNEAU : bourgeois.
ISABELLE : Chicanneau’s daughter, fille de Chicanneau (chinanery).
LA COMTESSE. PETIT JEAN : portier. L’INTIMÉ : secrétaire. LE SOUFFLEUR (prompt).

LA FONTAINE

L’Huître et les Plaideurs

In my opinion, the best-known Dandin is Jean de La Fontaine’s. He is featured in L’Huître et les Plaideurs (The Oyster and the Litigants). Two pèlerins find an oyster. They both claim ownership of the oyster. Perrin Dandin walks by our pèlerins who decide he should judge who is the owner of the oyster. Perrin Dandin eats the oyster and takes our pilgrims’ money.

L’Huître et les Plaideurs

Un jour deux Pèlerins sur le sable rencontrent
Une Huître que le flot y venait d’apporter :
Ils l’avalent des yeux, du doigt ils se la montrent ;
A l’égard de la dent il fallut contester.
(read more)

Pendant tout ce bel incident,
Perrin Dandin arrive : ils le prennent pour juge.
Perrin fort gravement ouvre l’Huître, et la gruge,
Nos deux Messieurs le regardant.
Ce repas fait, il dit d’un ton de Président :
Tenez, la cour vous donne à chacun une écaille
Sans dépens, et qu’en paix chacun chez soi s’en aille.
Mettez ce qu’il en coûte à plaider aujourd’hui ;
Comptez ce qu’il en reste à beaucoup de familles ;
Vous verrez que Perrin tire l’argent à lui,
Et ne laisse aux plaideurs que le sac et les quilles.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Livre 9, fable 9
1678

Jean de La Fontaine.PNG

Jean de La Fontaine par Hyacinthe Rigaud, en 1690 (Wiki2.org)

The Oyster and the Litigants

Two pilgrims on the sand espied
An oyster thrown up by the tide.
In hope, both swallowed ocean’s fruit;
But before the fact there came dispute.
(read more)

Amidst this sweet affair,
Arrived a person very big,
Ycleped Sir Nincom Periwig.
They made him judge, to set the matter square.
Sir Nincom, with a solemn face,
Took up the oyster and the case:
In opening both, the first he swallowed,
And, in due time, his judgment followed.
“Attend: the court awards you each a shell
Cost free; depart in peace, and use them well.”
Foot up the cost of suits at law,
The leavings reckon and awards,
The cash you’ll see Sir Nincom draw,
And leave the parties—purse and cards.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Book 9, Fable 9
1678

L’Huître et les Plaideurs, illustration de Gustave Doré gravée par Louis Édouard Fournier, édition Louis Hachette, 1868 (informations.documents.com)

L’Huître et les Plaideurs, illustration de Jean-Baptiste Oudry (site officiel)

Conclusion

I wrote that comedy has redeeming mechanisms, such as the deceiver deceived, or trompeur trompé. In l’École des femmes, despite raising a wife, Agnès, Arnolphe loses her when she meets young Horace. Her instinct leads Agnès to fall in love with Horace and find safety in his presence. Yet, one sympathizes with Arnolphe. He loves Agnès, but he doesn’t know galanterie. The comedy ends in the traditional marriage. But comedy has more than one plot formula. Farces are circular. Dandin will forever plead his cause, but what if he had opened the bolted door when Angélique was desperate, and comforted her. Beauty loves Beast.

But suddenly I remembered the medieval soties, not to mention Reynard the Fox, its comic trial and Bruin losing the skin of his nose when it gets wedged in an opening in a log. But it’s “no skin off my nose,” as it grows back. It’s like a cartoon. Jill Mann,[2] who translated the Ysengrimus, the birthplace of Reynard the Fox, into English, compares this phenomenon to the flattened cat of cartoons who fluffs up again. In the world of cartoons, injuries may be reversible.

George Dandin lived before cartoons, but Molière knew the sotie and the cartoonish Reynard the Fox (Le Roman de Renart).

The Wikipedia entry on sotie compares the genre to carnivals. Mikhail Baktin, who studied Rabelais, identified the carnivalesque in Rabelais, a world upside down. Molière has not broken any rule. The carnivalesque is a constante in literature. However, Molière has a way of humanizing fools and vice versa. The Misanthrope is the epitome in this æsthetics.

I will make these words, my last words on George Dandin who is both right and wrong. But he is less a fool than the Sotenvilles, or is it the reverse?

By the way, “se dandiner” means to waddle and Dandin is a family name. George Dandin’s name is not allegorical.

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

____________________
[1] Mère Sotte was the papacy. Soties were banned.
[2] 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.

Love to everyone 💕

 

The Carnival of the Animals — Camille Saint-Saëns

L’Huître et les Plaideurs (Creighton University)

© Micheline Walker
5 June 2019
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La Fontaine’s “The Two Doves”

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Art, Beast Literature, Jean de La Fontaine, Wedding

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“Les Deux Pigeons,” Gustave Doré [EBook 50316]

Les Deux Pigeons
Recueil 2(IX,2)

Amants, heureux amants, voulez-vous voyager ?
Que ce soit aux rives prochaines ;
Soyez-vous l’un à l’autre un monde toujours beau,
Toujours divers, toujours nouveau ;
Tenez-vous lieu de tout, comptez pour rien le reste [.]

The Two Doves
Vol. 2 (Book IX, Fable 2)

Ah, happy lovers, would you roam?
Pray, let it not be far from home.
To each the other ought to be
A world of beauty ever new;
In each the other ought to see
The whole of what is good and true.

Prince-Harry-Meghan-Markle-Wedding-Pictures

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex

“Les Deux Pigeons,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine finds its source in The Fables of Bidpai, Les Fables de Pilpay ou la Conduite des Rois. As we have seen in other posts, after publishing his first volume (recueil) of fables, based on Æsop’s Fables, La Fontaine drew much of his material from Gilbert Gaulmin’s Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys, a translation of Bidpai’s Fables, published in 1644. These tales are rooted in the Sanskrit  Panchatantra (300 BCE) and were translated from Middle Persian into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa’, at which point they became The Tales of Kalīla wa Dimna.

Frame Stories & Obliqueness

These works feature a story teller (Pilpay or Bidpai). They are frame stories. The characters are animals and the stories are told by a story teller, not the author. Such a structure serves two purposes. First, it engages the reader by leading him or her to a storyteller: Pilpay. It is as though the author stepped aside spelling a cast. Second, Pilpay’s characters are animals, whose eloquence is based on silence. Animals do not speak. They may say nearly everything. This literary device is often called obliqueness.

Interestingly, Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 1721, Les Lettres persanes, feature Usbek and Rica, Persian noblemen visiting France. Their comments are the comments of strangers. As such, they may be dismissed, freeing the author to be critical of the land he inhabits, but in a discreet manner and with impunity.

Whatever the origin of Les Deux Pigeons, the lines I have quoted have no source other than the poet’s soul. La Fontaine gives his two pigeons/doves fine advice: be everything unto one another. There’s always a person who makes all the difference and whom we must always cherish.

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources 

André Messager:  “Les Deux Pigeons,”  1889

cover

La Fontaine’s Fables Thornbury & Gustave Doré (Courtesy: Gutenberg)

© Micheline Walker
24 May 2018
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“The Frogs Who Desired a King,” a Fable for our Times

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Election, Fables

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grenouille-demandent-roi-1

Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi (La Fontaine)
The Frogs Asking [for] a King (La Fontaine)
Photo credit: La Fontaine’s Site officiel

Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi is the fourth fable in book three of La Fontaine’s first volume of Fables (1668) (IX.2). His second volume, containing five books, was published in 1678. The twelfth book was published in 1694, shortly before his death. The same fable is also one of Æsop’s Fables, classified as number 44 in the Perry Index (the classification of Æsop’s Fables).

Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi tells the story of “silly and frightened” frogs who live in a democracy, but, tired of democracy, ask Jupiter for a monarch. Jupiter acquiesces. From the skies descends a peace-loving king who makes a huge noise as he lands. This king is often represented as a beam or log.

Frightened by the din, the frogs go into hiding, only to return slowly to look at the king. The peace-loving king is a beam, which is not very kingly. The frogs start jumping on the beam-king, which the king tolerates as Jupiter grumbles. The beam-king is a kindly monarch, but he does not move.

Dissatisfied, the people go back to Jupiter to ask for a king who moves. So Jupiter sends them a crane that starts eating them up. In Æsop’s telling of this fable, the crane is a stork.

In Phædrus‘ Latin translation of this fable by Æsop, a second king is sent to the frogs. It is a water snake. There is no second king in La Fontaine.

Our silly frogs complain, and Jupiter tells them, first, that they should have kept their government (a democracy), second, that they should have been pleased to be sent a gentleman-king, the beam-king, and, third, to settle for the king they have for fear of encountering a worse one, La Fontaine’s celui-ci (this one) pointing to the voracious crane.

In Æsop, as noted above, the crane is a stork.

KING LOG & KING STORK

The Frogs prayed to Jove for a king:
“Not a log, but a livelier thing.”
Jove sent them a Stork,
Who did royal work,
For he gobbled them up, did their king.

DON’T HAVE KINGS

ranae_et_rex

An art nouveau illustration by Charles Robinson from an 1895 edition
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To read the fable in French, click on Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi
To read the fable in English, click on The Frogs Asking [for] a King

012

The Baby’s Own Aesop by Walter Crane

The Moral

One of the morals of this fable is the eternal “Leave well enough alone,” but we are also reading a “Beware-of-your-wishes-as-they-may-come-true” narrative. The moral of this fable is also a defence of the status quo, the state of affairs.

If all is well, a change is not necessary. If forewarned of possible dangers, a change may be dangerous. Knowing there are very real dangers, one does not jump into uncertainty. In a serious election, one cannot say “I’ll give him or her a chance.” Acting in such a manner reflects a somewhat flawed understanding of democracy. As I wrote above, La Fontaine calls the frogs who are not pleased with the good king log, a beam: “gent fort sotte et fort peureuse,” very silly and very frightened people.

We do not know the exact origin of this fable. Æsop retold fables told in the Near East, Middle East and India, including Buddhist tales. The most likely source is the Sanskrit Panchatantra by Vishnu Sharma, written in the 3rd century BCE. The storyteller is Pilpay or Bidpai. Bidpai’s stories were translated by Persian scholar Ibn al-Muqaffa as Kalīlah wa Dimnah. Moreover, Æsopic fables translated into Latin, by Phædrus, or Greek, by Babrius, were retold several times after Phædrus and Babrius. There are modern references to the Frogs Who Desired a King or King Log & King Stork. Under The Frogs Who desired a King, Wikipedia quotes New Zealand author James K. Baxter who wrote:

A democratic people have elected
King Log, King Stork, King Log, King Stork again.

Because I like a wide and silent pond
I voted Log. That party was defeated.

Howrah Bridge and Other Poems, London, 1961

These words will be my conclusion.

RELATED ARTICLES 

  • La Fontaine’s « Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi » (see Fables by La Fontaine, Pages)
  • Anthromorphism and Zoomorphism (25 August 2013)
  • other posts under revision

Sources and Resources

Wikipedia’s The Frogs Who Desired a King is our best source of information on this fable.

La Fontaine’s Site officiel (all the fables in French and English, images, etc.)

La Fontaine’s Fables

Æsop’s Fables
Perry Index #44 (a complete classification)

Ladislas Starevich, 1922

091

Arthur Rackham

© Micheline Walker
12 November 2016
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“… the humble pay the cost.”

29 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Animals in Literature, Fables, The Middle East

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Plate_facing_page_130,_An_Argosy_of_Fables

“The Frogs and the Fighting Bulls” by Paul Bransom (Photo credit: An Argosy of Fables)

   “While the mighty quarrel, the humble pay the cost.”

I chose today’s subject matter, an Aesopian fable entitled “The Frogs and the Fighting Bulls,” because it brings to mind the plight of Syrians seeking refuge in a reticent Europe.

Four million Syrians have fled their country because their homes, if they are still standing, are not habitable and their government is no longer operative. Syria is a battlefield.

Where have the Mighty been? And will the Mighty now sit at a table and do their very best to fix the problem. I fear they may be politicians first and statesmen second, if ever they become statesmen, and “let the humble pay the cost.”

My kindest regards to all of you. ♥

5334-004-290F36C5

Aesop, with a fox, from the central medallion of a kylix, c. 470 BCE; in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatican City. 600 BCE – 501 BCE (Photo credit: the Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The Perry Index of Aesopian Fables

In the Perry Index of Aesopian fables, “The Frog and the Fighting Bulls” is fable number 485 and is entitled: “The Frogs Dread the Battle of the Bulls.” Its source is Phaedrus (1st century CE) but I borrowed the text from An Argosy of Fables, 1921 (p. 130), selected by Frederic Taber Cooper (1864 – 1937) and illustrated by Paul Bransom (1885 – 1979). However, this post includes Jean de La Fontaine’s[1] “Les Deux Taureaux et une Grenouille” and its English translation: “The Two Bulls and the Frog.” 

You may remember that Phaedrus (1st century CE)[2] is the Latin author who versified Aesop‘s[3] fables, thereby removing them from an oral tradition. (See Oral-formulaic composition, Wikipedia). Babrius (2nd century CE) also took Aesopian fables away from oral literature but he wrote Aesop’s fables in the Greek language.

Subsequent writers of fables have used both Phaedrus and Babrius to publish Aesopian fables in Latin or Greek, or French, or English, or other languages. We are reading a translation of Phaedrus’ Latin collection, but Frederic Taber Cooper has not provided his readers with the name of a translator.

The Frogs and the Fighting Bulls

A FROG, sitting at the edge of a swamp, was watching a battle between two Bulls in an adjoining field. “Alas! what deadly danger threatens us,” he said. Another Frog, overhearing him, asked what he meant, when the Bulls were merely fighting to decide which should lead the herd, and the cattle passed their lives quite apart from the home of the Frogs. “It is true,” rejoined the first Frog, “that they are a different race and live apart from us. But whichever Bull is beaten and driven from his leadership in the woods will come to find some secret hiding place; and I fear that many of us will be trampled to pieces under his hard hoofs. That is why I say that their battle means death and destruction to us.”

When the mighty quarrel, the humble pay the cost.

(Phaedrus, Fables, Vol. I, No. 30.)
 An Argosy of Fables, p. 100

Les Deux Taureaux et une Grenouille

Deux Taureaux combattaient à qui posséderait.
Une Génisse avec l’empire.
Une Grenouille en soupirait:
« Qu’avez-vous ? se mit à lui dire
Quelqu’un du peuple croassant.
Et ne voyez-vous pas, dit-elle,
Que la fin de cette querelle
Sera l’exil de l’un ; que l’autre, le chassant,
Le fera renoncer aux campagnes fleuries ?
Il ne régnera plus sur l’herbe des prairies,
Viendra dans nos marais régner sur les roseaux,
Et nous foulant aux pieds jusques au fond des eaux,
Tantôt l’une, et puis l’autre, il faudra qu’on pâtisse
Du combat qu’a causé Madame la Génisse. »
Cette crainte était de bon sens.
L’un des Taureaux en leur demeure
S’alla cacher à leurs dépens :
Il en écrasait vingt par heure.
Hélas! on voit que de tout temps
Les petits ont pâti des sottises des grands.

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Livre 2, fable 4

The Two Bulls and the Frog

Two bulls engaged in shocking battle,
Both for a certain heifer’s sake,
And lordship over certain cattle,
A frog began to groan and quake.
“But what is this to you?”
Inquired another of the croaking crew.
“Why, sister, don’t you see,
The end of this will be,
That one of these big brutes will yield,
And then be exiled from the field?
No more permitted on the grass to feed,
He’ll forage through our marsh, on rush and reed;
And while he eats or chews the cud,
Will trample on us in the mud.
Alas! to think how frogs must suffer
By means of this proud lady heifer!”
This fear was not without good sense.
One bull was beat, and much to their expense;
For, quick retreating to their reedy bower,
He trod on twenty of them in an hour.
Of little folks it often has been the fate
To suffer for the follies of the great.

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Book 2, Fable 4

RELATED ARTICLE

Sources and Resources

____________________
[1] “Jean de La Fontaine”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 28 Sep. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-de-La-Fontaine>.

[2] “Aesop”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 27 Sep. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Aesop>.

[3] “Phaedrus”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 27 Sep. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Phaedrus-Roman-fabulist>.

—ooo—

“Agnus Dei,” Mass in C (The Coronation), K 337
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Kathleen Battle (soprano), Herbert von Karajan (conductor)

imagesKQQK6UE7© Micheline Walker
28 September 2014
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Aesop’s “The Boy Bathing”

05 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Fables

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The Boy Bathing Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: [EBook #11339]

The Boy Bathing, V. S. Vernon Jones (translator), G. K. Chesterton (introduction) Arthur Rackham (illustrator), 1912 (Photo credit: Gutenberg [EBook #11339])

The Boy Bathing

A Boy was bathing in a river and got out of his depth, and was in great danger of being drowned. A man who was passing along a road heard his cries for help, and went to the riverside and began to scold him for being so careless as to get into deep water, but made no attempt to help him. “Oh, sir,” cried the Boy, “please help me first and scold me afterwards.”

Give assistance, not advice, in a crisis.

The Boy Bathing

A BOY bathing in a river was in danger of being drowned. He called out to a passing traveler for help, but instead of holding out a helping hand, the man stood by unconcernedly, and scolded the boy for his imprudence. ‘Oh, sir!’ cried the youth, ‘pray help me now and scold me afterwards.’

Counsel without help is useless.

184

The Boy Bathing, G. F. Townsend, translator, Harrison Weir, illustrator, 1867 (Photo credit: Gutenberg [EBook #21])

Æsop’s Fables : c. 620 – 564 BCE

Æsop (c. 620 – 564 BCE)
Phædrus (c. 15 BC – c. 50 CE)
Babrius (c. 2nd century CE)
 

Fables[i] are a source of wisdom and La Fontaine‘s, little jewels. There are several sources of fables, but the above, A Boy Bathing is an Æsopic or Æsopian fable retold by translators of Phædrus (Latin) and Babrius (Greek). Babrius, however, was a Roman.

Æsop, assuming there was an Æsop, was a freed Greek slave who did not write fables. We do not have a manuscript of Æsop’s fables. The fables told by Æsop were therefore transmitted through an oral tradition. They were not written down until Phædrus and Babrius committed them to paper in Latin and in Greek, at which point they entered the learned tradition.[ii]

Doubt lingers as to whether or not there ever lived an Æsop. La Fontaine wrote a life of Æsop and so did other writers. In the case of La Fontaine, writing a biography of Æsop was a way of negating authorship of his own fables.

Under Louis XIV, a friend of Nicolas Fouquet could not chronicle the excesses of his century in a direct manner. To protect himself, La Fontaine borrowed the subject matter of fables and usually featured anthropomorphic animals, humans in disguise. Never would Louis XIV, Sun King, have suggested that he was the lion king of La Fontaine’s Fables.

Ben Edwin Perry (1892–1968) : the Perry Index

There may not have been an Æsop, but there is a body of fables called Æsopic or Æsopian. An index of Æsopic fables was compiled by Ben Edwin Perry (1892 – 1968), a teacher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from 1924 to 1960.

The Wikipedia entry on the Perry Index lists 584 fables, but Wikipedia provides a list of “extended,” fabulists (585, etc.), three of whom are Paulus Diaconus (Paul the Deacon; c. 720s – 13 April probably 799), Odo of Cheriton (c. 1185 – 1246/47), and Romulus FR. 

Characteristics of Fables

  • they usually feature talking animals;
  • in ancient Greece, fables that featured animals were called Æsopic and those that featured humans, Sybaritic;
  • for Isidore of Seville, fables were Æsopic (animals [souls], or “cities, trees, mountains, rocks, and rivers” [no souls]) or Libystic, “Libystic fables are those in which there is a verbal interchange of men with animals or animals with men.”[iii]
  • fables are an example, but there is a genre called Exemplum;
  • the example is the story. Humans remember stories because they illustrate. We are reminded of illuminated manuscripts;
  • the animals used in fables are anthropomorphic. They are humans in disguise, as animals;
  • anthropomorphism both shows and hides human behaviour;
  • children may think that the animals are quite foolish and believe that the manner in which they behave is just fine;
  • many authors have written fables but are not known as fabulists;
  • beast literature overrides genres; &c

Conclusion

I have posted a complete list of the fables discussed on this blog, but there is so much more to say. Fables are very complex and may have several morals.

I must close, but not without saying that I am so sorry we lost Steven Sotloff. His poor family! Next, they will kill a British citizen.

My kindest regards to all of you.

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

____________________

[i] “fable.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 04 Sep. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/199714/fable>.

[ii] Ben Edwin Perry, translator, Babrius and Phædrus, Fables (Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library 436, 1965). (scroll down a little)

[iii] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 18 -19.

 —ooo—

Bach / Marcello Adagio – Concerto in D minor

Sensitiva, Miquel Blay

Sensitiva, Miquel
Blay

© Micheline Walker
September 4, 2014
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La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane, 2nd Edition

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Art, Fables

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5_4crane-babys-own

The Baby’s Own Æsop, illustrated by Walter Crane  (London, New York: Routledge, 1887)
Photo credit: http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/crane/
 
Crane_toybook
Crane’s interest in Japanese art is evident in this 1874 cover of a 
toy book, printed by Edmund Evans. 
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

Illustrator: Walter Crane

I have endeavoured to collect all my posts on Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695), most of which are also discussions of Æsop‘s Fables. We have now discussed many fables by La Fontaine and Æsop. My list may therefore be incomplete.

The ‘Golden Age’ of British book illustration

The illustrations shown in this post are by Walter Crane (1845–1915) who illustrated Æsop‘s Fables adapted for children. Crane lived during the ‘Golden Age’ of British book illustration. His contemporaries were Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Sir John Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland), and other celebrated illustrators. (See The Golden Age of Illustration.)

Japonism of Toy Books

Crane was influenced by Japonisme: ukiyo-e prints. In England, Japonism was called the Anglo-Japanese Style. The Alphabet of Old Friends, shown above, one of Crane’s toy books, is an example of Japonism both from the point of view of subject matter (e.g. the heron or crane, the oranges) and style: flat colours, etc.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Healthy and Artistic Dress Union

However, Crane is usually associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (middle of 19th century) and the Arts and Crafts Movement (1860 and 1910), movements that incorporated the decorative arts and design. William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896), a leading member of both movements, designed wallpaper and tiles.  Interestingly, Walter Crane designed not only wallpaper, etc., but clothes for women, looser-fitting clothes. He was in fact a Vice President of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union. This, I would not have suspected.

At first sight, Walter Crane’s moral for the “Fox and the Grapes” seems rather negative, if one focuses on the word disappointment: “The grapes of disappointment are always sour.” However, this moral may serve to lessen cognitive dissonance, if the grapes are deemed sour. Since Æsop‘s Fables are for anyone to retell, morals may differ from author to author.

La Fontaine’s illustrators

Walter Crane was a fine artist. He is the creator of “Neptune’s Horses,” an artwork that is somewhat reminiscent of Hokusai‘s Great Wave off Kanagawa. “Neptune’s Horses” is featured at the very bottom of this post. However, although Crane illustrated Æsop‘s Fables, and, by extension, some of La Fontaine’s Æsopic fables, the most famous illustrators of La Fontaine’s Fables are Jean-Baptiste Oudry, François  Chauveau, Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, Gustave Doré, and others, some of whom I have already mentioned and some I will mention in future posts.

The Video

YouTube has a lovely video featuring Walter Crane’s art.  However, it does not show his illustrations of fables.  It does not fully belong to this post.  The music is Franz Schubert‘s (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) Ständchen, D. 957.

FABLES by Jean de La Fontaine (& Æsop)
(listed in alphabetical order: Boy, Cat, Cock, Fox…
 

11_600

The following list is mostly alphabetical (cha, che, coq, bel). It simply provides the title La Fontaine gave to his Fables. My post are written in English. Sometimes the fable is named in both French and English. They are listed as book (of XII [12]) and number (XII.14)

9_600606px-Can't_please_everyone2

Franz Schubert: Ständchen, D. 957

  
Crane© Micheline Walker
September 24, 2013 
WordPress
 
Neptune’s Horses, Walter Crane, ill., 1892
Photo credit: Google Images
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

“The Cock and the Pearl,” La Fontaine cont’d

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by in Art, Fables

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010 
The Cock and the Pearl & The Wolf and the Lamb
(Photo credit: Gutenberg eBook 25433)
Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695)
Le Coq et la Perle (I.20)
The Cock and the Pearl  (I.20) 
Perry Index 503 (Æsop) The Cockerel and the Pearl
 
 

THE COCK AND THE PEARL

A rooster, while scratching for grain,
Found a Pearl. He just paused to explain
That a jewel’s no good
To a fowl wanting food,
And then kicked it aside with disdain.
[EBook #25433]

IF HE ASK BREAD WILL YE GIVE HIM A STONE?

4
Photo credit: Walter Crane
[Gutenberg EBook #25433]
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 

“The Cock and the Pearl”

It is within the nature of fables, and literature, to be ambiguous, but not necessarily impenetrably closed. Although Jean de La Fontaine‘s “The Cock and the Pearl” suggests that we do not always see an object’s intrinsic worth nor, for that matter, a person’s intrinsic worth, it may be interpreted differently. “The Cock and the Pearl” presents a riddle as does Walter Crane‘s shortened “Cock and Pearl,” a limerick, or five-line poem, with the rhyme scheme aabba.  Its moral is not altogether apparent: “If he ask bread will ye give him a stone?” However, the exemplum, or illustration, makes the limerick clearer.  This cock needs food more than he needs jewels.

As for La Fontaine’s full length but very short “Cock and the Pearl,” it has a second exemplum that further illustrates the first exemplum. This doubling is intentional. In “Le Bûcheron et Mercure” (“The Woodman and Mercury” [1.V.1]), La Fontaine writes that he sometimes provides a “double image,” or second exemplum, which is the case in “The Cock and the Pearl.” Having told about the cock who gives a pearl to a jeweller in exchange for a “crumb of bread,” La Fontaine also tells about a “dunce” who finds a rare manuscript, takes it to a bookstore, and leaves it there in exchange for a gold coin (un ducaton).  In “The Cock and the Pearl,” the fabulist himself, transforms the cock into a “dunce.” As a result, the fable is not altogether anthropomorphic.

The First Exemplum

In the first exemplum, or “ìmage,” the finder knows he has unearthed a precious jewel.  He would not otherwise take the pearl to a jeweller saying “I think it fine,” « Je la crois fine ». La Fontaine’s translator also writes that the cock scratched up “a pearl of purest ray” and he refers to the jeweller as a  beau premier Lapidaire, i.e. someone the cock does not know or someone who was not recommended to him. La Fontaine then resets his narrative using a mirror-image esthetics or “double image” (“The Woodman and Mercury” [V.1]).

The Second Exemplum

In the second image, a “dunce,” now a man, finds a “manuscript of merit,” takes it to a bookstore and leaves it there in exchange for a gold coin. The word “dunce” is derived from the name of John Duns Scotus[ii] (c. 1266 – 8 November 1308) and, by calling someone a “dunce,” un ignorant or ignoramus, La Fontaine himself provides his fable with an interpretation. The fable is about a dunce or un ignorant. Consequently, although the moral is not summed up in a sentence judiciously placed at the end or beginning of the fable, in “The Cock and the Pearl,” the protagonist of the moral, a cock or a man, is un ignorant or a dunce.

Yet, the “The Cock and the Pearl” invites other interpretations, but the use of the word “dunce” (un ignorant, or ignoramus) could say it all, or almost. Fables may be very unkind to humans who often deserve a lesson or two.

150
“The Cock and Pearl,” by Arthur Rackham (1912)
(Photo credit: Gutenberg [eBook #11339])
 

Jean de la Fontaine’s « Le Coq et la Perle »

Coq-et-la-Perle

The Cock and the Pearl
 
A cock scratched up, one day,
A pearl of purest ray,
Which to a jeweller he bore.
“ I think it fine,” he said,
“ But yet a crumb of bread
To me were worth a great deal more. ”
So did a dunce inherit
A manuscript of merit,
Which to a publisher he bore.
“ It’s good,” said he, “I’m told,
Yet any coin of gold
To me were worth a great deal more. ”
 
(La Fontaine [I.20])  
Photo credit: Site officiel
 
 
 

The Ysopet-Avionnet: a Grammar Textbook

Phædrus and Babrius: two traditions of fables

However, in the Middle Ages, “The Cock and the Jewel” was the first fable of a widely-used grammar book. (See “The Cock and The Jewel,” Wikipedia). In France, this grammar book was called the Ysopet-Avionnet,[i] which suggests a combination of the two traditions of Æsopic fables: the Latin tradition and the Greek. At one point, it was believed the word ‘Ysopet’ [a diminutive of Ésope] stood for the Latin tradition and that the word ‘Avionnet’ [also a diminutive] referred to Avianus’ popular collection of 42 fables written in Latin, but substantially rooted in the Greek tradition, Babrius’ fables.  According to the presentation page of the online Ysopet-Avionnet (please click on the Ysopet-Avionnet) I have used, “[t]he title Ysopet-Avionnet was originally given to the fables of Avianus alone.”

Avianus

However, because the Ysopet-Avionnet contained and still contains 64 Æsopic fables, translated by “Romulus,” and 18, translated by Avian or Flavius Avianus, there had to be a Romulus or a person using the name Romulus as a pseudonym.  It would appear, however, that the fables contained in the Ysopet-Avionnet are rooted in both the Latin tradition, the fables of Phædrus (c. 15 BC – c. 50 AD), and the Greek tradition, the fables of Babrius (c. 2nd Century CE).

Avianus lived in the 5th century CE, the 400s.  His collection of 42 fables, translated into Latin, proved a success.  Famed English printer and translator William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422– ca. March 1492) printed Avianus’ 42 fables in the 15th century (1484) and then translated them into English naming his collection The Fables of Avian.  

image21
Le Coq et la Perle
 
Un jour un Coq détourna    
Une Perle, qu’il donna        
Au beau premier Lapidaire.
“ Je la crois fine, dit-il ;
Mais le moindre grain de mil
Serait bien mieux mon affaire.”
Un ignorant hérita
D’un manuscrit, qu’il porta
Chez son voisin le Libraire.
“Je crois, dit-il, qu’il est bon ;
Mais le moindre ducaton
Serait bien mieux mon affaire.”
 
(Photo credit: Gutenberg 
 [EBook #18732])
 

The Moral

“The Cock and the Jewel” is the first fable of the Ysopet-Avionnet where it is entitled “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” (“The Cock and the Emerald”), in old French, and “De Gallo et Iaspide,” in Latin. “The Cock and the Emerald” most certainly owes some of its prominence to its being the opening fable in a widely-used textbook. The Ysopet-Avionnet can be read online (please click on the title) but the jewel is an emerald rather than a pearl and the fable entitled “Du coc et de l’esmeraude,” “The Cock and the Emerald” (“De Gallo et Iaspide”). Therefore, the pearl is a function and so is the cock himself. In other words, the pearl’s role could be played by any precious jewel. As for the cock, La Fontaine transforms him into a human being before our very eyes.

“Du coc et de l’esmeraude:” The Moral

More importantly, however, “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” has a moral. Unlike more modern translations of Æsop’s fables, “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” does not present a riddle. It has in fact a long moral according to which the stone, the emerald, means wisdom and the cock, folly. The fool is foreover a fool and he cannot stay still.  Fools have no stability, or fermeté. The online edition I have used is dated 1919, and is based on three manuscripts of the 14th century (Brussels, Bibl. roy. 11193; Brit. mus. Add. 33781; Paris, Bibl. nat. fonds franç. 1594). It was edited by Kenneth McKenzie and A. Oldfather and published by the University of Illinois. However, the French is old French. (See Ysopet-Avionnet.)

Jean de La Fontaine

Which takes us back to La Fontaine. The moral of his “Cock and Pearl” is somewhat veiled, but thinly so. As noted above, the finder goes to the beau premier Lapidaire (jeweller) and is called un ignorant (ignoramus).  He is a “dunce,” in an English translation. Fables being anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise, the “dunce” fares poorly among humans. If such persons can settle for a “crumb of bread,” they are unlikely to choose a good leader or a good spouse. As well, it would also be difficult for a “dunce” to tell right from wrong. Dunces may, in fact, be so foolish as to believe they are harming others when they are harming themselves.  To La Fontaine’s “double image,” or two exempla, we could add a third or a fourth exemplum. But the moral of the fable would always be that fools are fools and will forever remain fools. Other fabulists have offered different interpretations, but it could well be that “The Cock and the Pearl” is about human folly and fools. Fools cannot see the intrinsic value of an object or human being.

Other fabulists include John Lydgate‘s (c.1410), Samuel Croxall (1722), John Ogilby (1665) Wenceslaus Hollar (17th century), Robert Henryson (The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian [Greece], c. 1480), William Caxton (1484), etc.

Marie de France

“The Cock and the Pearl” is also the first fable of Marie de France‘s (1160-1210) famous collection, where “The Cock and the Pearl” is entitled “Del cok e de la gemme” (“The Cock and the Gem”).  Normandy-born Marie de France lived in England.  She will be discussed in a later post.  However, in closing, I should point out that according to Wikipedia’s entry on “The Cock and the Jewel,” this fable can be compared to Zen Buddism‘s kōan, a story, dialogue, question, or statement, that may provoke “great doubt.”  (See kōan, Wikipedia.)  I must end this post as it is already far too long.  However, I will first provide the English translation, by Harriet Spiegel,[iii] of Marie de France’s moral for “Del cok e de la gemme.”  True to anthropomorphism, the moral begins with a “Many people are like this…”

The Cock and the Gem

Many people are like this
When something does or suit their wish.
What for the cock and gem is true
We’ve seen with men and women too:
They neither good nor honour Prize;
The worst they seize; the best, despise. 
 
lossy-page1-714px-Marie_de_France_1_tif
Marie de France, illuminated manuscript
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
_________________________
[i] The Ysopet-Avionnet is available in English, from Amazon.France
[ii] “He was known as “Doctor Subtilis” because of the subtle distinctions and nuances of his thinking. Later philosophers in the sixteenth century were less complimentary about his work, and accused him of sophistry. This led to his name, “dunce” (which developed from the name “Dunse” given to his followers in the 1500s) to become synonymous for ‘somebody who is incapable of scholarship’.”  (See Duns Scotus, Wikipedia.)
[iii] Harriet Spiegel, editor and translator, Marie de France, Fables (Toronto: the University of Toronto Press, 2000 [1994]), pp. 31-32.
 

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

Ysopet-Avionnet http://archive.org/details/ysopetavionnetla00aeso
http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm
http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/503.htm
Perry Index
 
http://www.musee-jean-de-la-fontaine.fr/jean-de-la-fontaine-fable-fr-79.html (French)
http://www.musee-jean-de-la-fontaine.fr/jean-de-la-fontaine-fable-uk-79.html
 
1. V. S. Vernon Jones, (tr) G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Rackham (ill)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-h.htm#THE_COCK_AND_THE_JEWEL
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-h.htm
[EBook #11339]
 
2. George Fyler Townsend, translator
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_4_0008
[EBook #21]
 
3. Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griset, illustrators
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18732/18732-h/18732-h.htm
[EBook #18732]
 
4. The Æsop for Children, Milo Winter, illustrator
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm#Page_39
[EBook #19994]
 
5. The Baby’s Own Æsop, Walter Crane, illustrator
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25433/25433-h/25433-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25433/25433-h/25433-h.htm#Page_10
[EBook #25433]
 
Le Coq et la Perle
 
Un jour un Coq détourna   
Une Perle, qu’il donna       
Au beau premier Lapidaire.
“ Je la crois fine, dit-il ;
Mais le moindre grain de mil
Serait bien mieux mon affaire. ”
Un ignorant hérita
D’un manuscrit, qu’il porta
Chez son voisin le Libraire.
“ Je crois, dit-il, qu’il est bon ;
Mais le moindre ducaton
Serait bien mieux mon affaire. ”
[EBook #18732] 
 
image21
(Photo credit Gutenberg [EBook #18732])
 

Le Chant des oiseaux – Clément Janequin  (c. 1485 – 1558)

 
 449px-Wenceslas_Hollar_-_The_cock_and_the_jewel
© Micheline Walker
10 October 2013
WordPress
 
“The Cock and Jewel”
by Wenceslaus Hollar
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 

Posts on the United States

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in United States

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Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

On President Barack Obama

No one is perfect.  But President Obama has been keeping his nation afloat and growing.  Given the burden he inherited, he has in fact done very well.  Were it not for President Obama and members of his administration, it would be extremely difficult for the international community to trust the US.  At the moment, the credibility of the US within the world community is based almost entirely on the intellectual and moral principles of its President.

This is cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face and it is petty, in the utmost.

A lot of people are like the cock of the fable told below, by Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695).  They cannot tell quality.

◊◊◊

“The Cock and the Pearl” (I.20)

A cock scratched up, one day,
A pearl of purest ray,
Which to a jeweller he bore.
“I think it fine,” he said,
“But yet a crumb of bread
To me were worth a great deal more.”
So did a dunce inherit
A manuscript of merit,
Which to a publisher he bore.
“It’s good,” said he, “I’m told,
Yet any coin of gold
To me were worth a great deal more.”
 
Jean de La Fontaine (I.20)
Le Coq et la Perle (I.20)
 

Post on the United States

Here are two lists of posts and two posts.  The second list is not complete.

List One

 
 

List Two

 
 

imagesCAI0D4K5

(Photo credit:  Google Images) 
 

◊◊◊

Giuseppe Tartini (8 April 1692 – 26 February 1770)
”Devil’s Trill Sonata”
Itzhak Perlman, violin 
 
 
 
 140775904 
© Micheline Walker
October 2, 2013 
WordPress
 

“Le Chêne et le Roseau” (The Oak and the Reed): the Moral

28 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by in Æsop, Fables, French Literature, Jean de La Fontaine

≈ 49 Comments

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the_oak_and_the_reed_by_achille_michallon  
 Achille Michallon (1796-1822; aged 26) 
(For Michallon, the “Oak and the Reed” could be used to describe the fate of Napoleon I.)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
The Oak and the Reed (I.22) (text EN)←
Le Chêne et le Roseau (I.22) (texte FR)
Jean de La Fontaine (Wikipedia)
The Oak and the Reeds (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oak_and_the_Reed
http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm (texts, etc.)←
 
Aesop’s Fables 
Perry Index (#70)
 
 
“That proud, old, sky-encircled head,
Whose feet entwined the empire of the dead!”
 
mdoliveux_The%20Reed%20and%20the%20Oak%20Tree
The Reed and the Oak Tree
Maëlle Doliveux
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 

“I bend, and do not break”

In an earlier post on the “The Oak and the Reed,” I commented on this line, the moral of the “The Oak and Reed:”  ‘Je plie, et ne romps pas.’  (‘I bend, and do not break.’)  This line illustrates La Fontaine’s uncanny ability to tell what he is not telling (dire-sans-dire).  In fact, it was long believed that this fable expounded the importance of humility and little else:  

“Written in the autocratic time of Louis XIV of France, this was so successfully achieved that it appeared to teach the value of humility at the same time as suggesting that rulers may not be as powerful as they think themselves.” (“The Oak and the Reed” [I.22], Wikipedia)

La Fontaine as a Protégé of Nicolas Fouquet

La Fontaine had been a protégé of Nicolas Fouquet/Foucquet (January 27, 1615 – March 23, 1680), the Superintendant of Finances, from 1653 until 1661, the year Louis XIV became King of France.  After 17 August 1661, the day Louis XIV attended a fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fouquet’s magnificent castle, Louis XIV accused Fouquet of embezzlement.  Fouquet was convicted and condemned to banishment, a sentence Louis XIV himself, then aged 22, commuted to life imprisonment, at Pignerol (now Pinerolo, Italy), a sadder fate than banishment.  La Fontaine had written his “Élégie  aux Nymphes de Vaux,” in the vain hope of obtaining a degree of clemency towards his former patron, Nicolas Fouquet.  He also wrote “Le Songe de Vaux.”

oak-and-reed
The Oak and the Reed
(Photo credit: oldbookillustrations.com)
 

The Moral of “The Oak and the Reed”

As a university teacher, I often taught La Fontaine’s “Chêne et Roseau” and would ask my students to provide a moral for La Fontaine’s fable.  What did “Je plie, et ne romps pas” (I bend, and do not break) mean?

  • At first, they saw a fable about “the value of humility.”
  • They also said that it was about the mighty.  They could break.
  • Third, they commented on the underlying structure of fables and farcical comic texts, the formulaic “deceiver deceived” (“le trompeur trompé”).  People who allow themselves to boast, even moderately, are punished.

However, they did not see that “The Oak and the Reed” was about human behaviour and, in particular, about the importance of flexibility.  He who bends does not break.   The meaning of La Fontaine’s fables does not jump off the page.

“Je plie, et ne romps pas.”  (I bend, and do not break)

Earlier in the history of this fable, this moral, “I bend but do not break,” was expressed more explicitly.  According to Wikipedia, such was the moral of Avianus‘ (400 CE) telling of this fable, and the moral of earlier Greek retellings.  It is the moral expressed in Geoffrey Chaucer‘s (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) Troilus and Criseyde, (II.1387-9) [EBook #257].

 A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall.

In footnote 28 of Gutenberg’s version of La Fontaine’s Fables, classified as [EBook #7241], American translator Elizur Wright and J. W. M. Gibbs, editor, state that “[t]he groundwork of this fable is in Æsop, and also in the Fables of Avianus.”  Flavius Avianus lived in the 5th century CE (the 400s) and translated 42 Æsopic fables. Famous translator and printer William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422 – ca. March 1492), translated “The Fables of Avian” into “Englyshe.”[i]

Two Traditions:  Phædrus and Babrius

Phædrus (Latin) and Babrius (Greek)  

Yet, it should be pointed out that, although Flavius Avianus‘ translation was in Latin verse, his main source had been Babrius who translated Æsop’s Fables into Greek. It could be, therefore, that Babrius’ moral was more explicit.  European sources of Æsopic fables were either the Latin translation by Phædrus‘ (c. 15 BCE – c. 50 CE) or Babrius‘ Æsop’s Fables. In fact, Avianus became a source to fable writers as did Névelet, whose Latin translation of Æsopic fables La Fontaine used, the Mythologia Æsopica Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti, Frankfurt, 1610.  (See lafontaine.net.) 

According to Wikipedia’s entry on “The Oak and the Reed,” flexibility was the teaching of the Rabbinic Talmud and the moral of earlier versions of “The Oak and the Reed,” all of which are rooted in “Near Eastern dispute poems.” The Talmud‘s “Be pliable like a reed, not rigid like a cedar” is attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar. The same moral is expressed in a Chinese proverb “A tree that is unbending is easily broken,” and the saying goes back to the Tao Te Ching. (See The Oak and the Reed, Wikipedia.) 

 i033

(Photo credit: Gutenberg (EBook #25357]
Percy J. Billinghurst)
 

“L’Honnête Homme”

Moreover, this moral, “[h]e who bends does not break,” could be associated with a French seventeenth-century ideal, that of l’honnête homme.  “L’honnête homme” or the concept of “honnêteté” was first described in Baldassare Castiglione‘s Il Cortegiano (1528), The Book of the Courtier, but Castiglione’s courtier underwent changes in Paris salons and in the works of the Chevalier de Méré, Nicolas Faret and Guez de Balzac.

In France, l’honnête homme is the perfect gentleman and courtier and he is, furthermore, as he seems. There is very little, if any, sprezzatura, a form of studied carelessness, about  “l’honnête homme.” “Honnêteté,” in its literal sense, that of “honesty,” militates against the idea of a mere façade.  I should think there were exceptions, but, in theory, l’honnête homme was well-educated (but not pedantic), had fine manners, dressed well, spoke well, never boasted and avoided all extremes, favouring modération.[ii]

Salomon_quercus
Bernard Salomon‘s woodcut of “The olive tree and the reed” from a French collection of Æsop’s Fables in rhyme (Lyon 1547)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

The Oak, the Cedar and the Olive tree

Trees have been rigid for a very long time, but they have not been oak trees consistently.  The Talmud features a cedar and fabulists Gilles Corrozet (1547), Gabriele Faerno (1564) Giovanni Maria Verdizotti used an olive tree.  As for Swabian translator Heinrich Steinhöwel, he also used an olive tree.  His 1480 translation of Æsopic fables is rooted in Avianus, Babrius (Greek) and Romulus (a 5th-century Latin-language fabulist).  Romulus may be a legendary figure, which may also be the case with respect to Æsop himself.

Conclusion

I must close, but the above illustrates the depth of “The Oak and the Reed,” its age, not to mention its universality.  It is not only about the doomed pride of the mighty, but also about the flexibility humans require to function in society, under Louis XIV especially.  As for the ambiguity of its moral, it illustrates La Fontaine’s mute eloquence and may point to the Latin source of this fable.  However talkative animals, trees and willows can be in literature, they do not speak.  La Fontaine himself gave everyone the impression he was absent-minded and he was often referred to as a “bonhomme.”  After Vaux-le-Vicomte, the fall of Nicolas Fouquet, he let animals, trees, willows and, at times,  humans retell a fable that had been told for centuries and, perhaps, millennia.

RELATED ARTICLES

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[i] [EBook #7241], Elizur Wright (translator), J. W. M. Gibbs (editor)

  • 28. The groundwork of this fable is in Æsop, and also in the Fables of Avianus.  Flavius Avianus lived in the 5th century.  His Æsopic Fables were written in Latin verse.  Caxton printed “The Fables of Avian, translated into Englyshe” at the end of his edition of Æsop.
  • 29. This fable and “The Animals Sick of the Plague” [I.7] are generally deemed La Fontaine’s two best fables. “The Oak and the Reed” is held to be the perfection of classical fable, while “The Animals Sick of the Plague” is esteemed for its fine poetic feeling conjoined with its excellent moral teaching. [EBook #7241]

[ii] If you can read French, you may wish to visit Larousse’s site: honnête homme.

Sources

Recent studies

Patrick Dandrey, (2nd edition) La Fabrique des Fables (FR) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992).
Marc Fumaroli, Le Poète et le Roi. Jean de La Fontaine en son siècle (FR) (Paris: Le Fallois, 1997).
Jürgen Grimm (various articles) 

Texts

MythFolklore.Æsopica 
etc. 

Translations (Gutenberg)

La Fontaine’s Fables

1. A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine, Percy J. Billinghurst
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25357/25357-h/25357-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25357/25357-h/25357-h.htm#Page_60
[EBook #25357]
2. The Fables of La Fontaine, Elizur Wright, J. W. M. Gibbs, 1882 [1841]
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8ffab10h.htm 
[EBook #7241]
3. The Fables of La Fontaine,  Walter Thornbury, Gustave Doré
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/50316/50316-h/50316-h.htm
[EBook #50316]
4. Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks, From the French of La Fontaine
John Rae & W.T. (William Trowbridge) Larned
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24108/24108-h/24108-h.htm  
 

Æsop’s Fables

1. V. S. Vernon Jones, (tr) G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Rackham (ill)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-h.htm#030-2
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-h.htm#THE_OAK_AND_THE_REEDS
[EBook #11339]
2. George Fyler Townsend, translator
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_4_0210
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_4_0128 (The Oak and the Reeds) 
[EBook #21]
3. Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griset, illustrators 
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18732/18732-h/18732-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18732/18732-h/18732-h.htm (The Oak and the Reeds)
[EBook #18732]
4. Milo Winter (illustrator)
The Æsop for Children
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm
[EBook #19994]  
5. The Baldwin Project: The Tree and the Reeds
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=baldwin&book=fables&story=tree
 
 
mdoliveux_The%20Reed%20and%20the%20Oak%20Tree 
The Reed and the Oak Tree
Maëlle Doliveux
 

Aesop-title

© Micheline Walker
28 September 2013
WordPress

La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Art, Fables

≈ 39 Comments

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The Baby’s Own Æsop, illustrated by Walter Crane  (London, New York: Routledge, 1887)
Photo credit: http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/crane/
 
Crane_toybook
Crane’s interest in Japanese art is evident in this 1874 cover of a 
toy book, printed by Edmund Evans. 
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

Illustrator: Walter Crane

I have endeavoured to collect all my posts on Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695), most of which are also discussions of Æsop‘s Fables.  We have now discussed many fables by La Fontaine and Æsop. My list may therefore be incomplete.

The ‘Golden Age’ of British book illustration

The illustrations shown in this post are by Walter Crane (1845–1915) who illustrated Æsop‘s Fables adapted for children. Crane lived during the ‘Golden Age’ of British book illustration. His contemporaries were Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Sir John Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland), and other celebrated illustrators.

Japonism of Toy Books

Crane was influenced by Japonisme: ukiyo-e prints. In England, Japonism was called the Anglo-Japanese Style. The Alphabet of Old Friends, shown above, one of Crane’s toy books, is an example of Japonism both from the point of view of subject matter (e.g. the heron or crane, the oranges) and style: flat colours, etc.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Healthy and Artistic Dress Union

However, Crane is usually associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (middle of 19th century onward) and the Arts and Crafts Movement (1860 and 1910), movements that incorporated the decorative arts and design.  William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896), a leading member of both movements, designed wallpaper and tiles.  Interestingly, Walter Crane designed not only wallpaper, etc., but clothes for women, looser-fitting clothes.  He was in fact a Vice President of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union.  This, I would not have suspected.

At first sight, Walter Crane’s moral for the “Fox and the Grapes” seems rather negative, if one focusses on the word disappointment: “The grapes of disappointment are always sour.”  However, this moral may serve to lessen cognitive dissonance, if the grapes are deemed sour.  Since Æsop‘s Fables are for anyone to retell, morals may differ from author to author.

La Fontaine’s illustrators

Walter Crane was a fine artist. He is the creator of “Neptune’s Horses,” an artwork that is somewhat reminiscent of Hokusai‘s Great Wave off Kanagawa. “Neptune’s Horses” is featured at the very bottom of this post. However, although Crane illustrated Æsop‘s Fables, and, by extension, some of La Fontaine’s Æsopic fables, the most famous illustrators of La Fontaine’s Fables are Jean-Baptiste Oudry, François Chauveau, Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, Gustave Doré, and others, some of whom I have already mentioned and some I will mention in future posts.

The Video

YouTube has a lovely video featuring Walter Crane’s art. However, it does not show his illustrations of fables. It does not fully belong to this post. The music is Franz Schubert‘s (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) Ständchen, D. 957.

FABLES by Jean de La Fontaine 
(I like the fable entitled “The Man and the Snake” [X.1])
 

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Franz Schubert: Ständchen, D. 957

  
Crane© Micheline Walker
24 September 2013 
WordPress
 
Neptune’s Horses, 1892
Photo credit: Google Images
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)