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Tag Archives: Marie de France

The Battle of Hastings’ Literary Aftermath

22 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Courtly Love, England, Middle Ages, War

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Aesop's Fables, Anglo-Norman, Bayeux tapestry, Chivalry, courtly love, Marie de France, The Battle of Hastings, Walter of England

lossy-page1-800px-Marie_de_France_1_tifMarie de France, from an illuminated manuscript now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France: BnF, Arsenal Library, Ms. 3142 fol. 256.

It would be difficult to understand some of the plays of William Shakespeare and other works of English or French literature without taking into account such significant events as the Conquest of England, by William, Duke of Normandy, at the Battle of Hastings (1066), and the Hundred Years’ War. In the 12th century, at least two authors, Marie de France and Walter of England wrote in Anglo-Norman, and French would be used at court, and perhaps elsewhere, until the conclusion of the Hundred Years’ War.

Let us go back to the literature that followed the Battle of Hastings, fought on 4 October 1066. On that day, William, Duke of Normandy, defeated England’s King Harold (Harold Godwinson), who was killed in battle. The throne of England had been promised to William, Duke of Normandy, hence the battle. Following the Battle of Hastings, many Normans settled in England, two of whom, discussed later in this post, are important writers who penned their work in Anglo-Norman, a transitional language.

William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold, King of England, and became William I, King of England. But England, as a territory, remained as it was. The Normans who settled in England would soon speak a form of English.

Yet Latin and French words had been introduced into English. The word ‘curfew’ is an anglicised form of couvre-feu and jeopardy, an anglicised form of jeu parti a term used in a game resembling chess. It probably meant ‘checkmate’ or ‘échec et mat,’ from the Arabic « al cheikh mat » (see D’où vient …).

800px-Bayeux_Tapestry_scene23_Harold_sacramentum_fecit_Willelmo_duci800px-Harold_dead_bayeux_tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anglo-Norman  Literature 

  • Marie de France
  • Walter of England

The best-known Anglo-Norman author is Marie de France, a 12th-century writer whose portrait, an illumination, is featured above. The second is Walter of England (Gualterus Anglicus). His French name would have been Gaut(h)ier d’Angleterre.

Marie de France, who lived in England but was born in France, is famous for her collection of lais: the lais of Guigemar, Chevrefoil (honeysuckle), Lanval, Yonec, Laustic, and other lais. Marie also wrote a book of Æsopic fables. Her fables were ‘Æsopic,’ but as we have seen in earlier posts, Æsop’s fables originate in the Sanskrit Panchatantra (3rd century BCE); its Arabic retelling, Kalīlah wa Dimnah, by Ibn al-Muqaffa (750 CE), and other sources.

The Lais of Marie de France

  • Arthurian Romances
  • Britanny
  • Courtly Love

The Lais of Marie de France are rooted in the Breton lai, and their themes are love (early courtly love), and chivalry. Breton lais reflect the literature of Ireland and countries where Gaelic is or was spoken. The origin of the word lai has not been ascertained, but whatever the meaning of lai, Marie’s works are examples of courtly love and chivalric literature. Marie de France could well be France’s first major author. 

Inhabiting Marie’s lais are Guinevere, Tristan et Yseult, Lancelot, the Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur. They are products of Arthurian Romances, called “la matière de Bretagne” in French.

The Troubadours

  • Chivalry
  • Courtly Love

Marie’s lais can be associated with the songs of the troubadours whose native land was Provence and whose subject matter, was chivalry and courtly love. Troubadours (langue d’oc) flourished until the Black Death (1346 – 1353), the plague. In northern France, they were called trouvères and spoke langue d’oil.

Guingamor, Guigemar
Guingamor, Guigemar
Lanval
Lanval

Project Gutenberg [EBook #46234]

Walter of England (Gualterus Anglicus)

Walter of England also lived in England in the 12th century, following the Battle of Hastings. He wrote Æsopic fables in Anglo-Norman. The history of fables is shrouded in mystery, so Walter has been considered the ‘anonymous Neveleti,’ the 17th-century fabulist whose collection of fables, the Mythologia Æsopica, in Latin, was used by French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine. However, the attribution to an anonymous ‘Neveleti’ has been ruled false. La Fontaine used Isaac Nicholas Nevelet’s Mythologia Æsopica.

The “Romulus”

Nevertheless, Walter of England would be the author of a collection of 62 fables in verse. The “62 fables is more accurately called the verse Romulus.” (See Walter of England [Gualterus Anglicus], Wikipedia).  However, this seems to be another false attribution. There was no Romulus. The medieval Æsop originated in Walter of England’s fables and elsewhere. Could it be that ‘Romulus’ meant Latin, from Rome?

John Lydgate and Robert Henryson

When English fabulist John Lydgate produced his Isopes Fabules, the first fable collection written in English, his source was long believed to be the verse Romulus, which it isn’t. As mentioned above, there was no Romulus. Lydgate’s source would probably be Walter of England’s collection of Æsop’s fables. In other words, John Lydgate’s English-language fables adapted Walter of England’s verse fables. Walter’s “The Cock and the Jewel” was used by Robert Henryson in his 15th-century Morall Fabillis, written in Scots. (See Walter of England [Gualterus Anglicus], Wikipedia).

Conclusion

In short, after the Battle of Hastings, Normandy or France was briefly remembered by Marie de France and Walter of England. In the 12th century, ‘Æsopic’ fables were told in Anglo-Norman, a transitional language but one that has survived in literature.

Gone are knights in shining armour and short fables. From literature written in the Anglo-Norman period, we will glimpse the literary legacy of the Hundred Years’ War, Geoffrey Chaucer. An amused public is reading the lengthy anthropomorphic Roman de Renart, while Chaucer translates at least part of the 22,000-line Roman de la Rose, an allegorical poem epitomising courtly love.

Sources and Resources

  • Four of Marie’s lais are a Project Gutenberg [EBook #46234] EN publication
  • Marie’s Medieval Romances and some lais are a Project Gutenberg [EBook #11417]
  • Works by Marie are also a LibriVox publication EN

With kindest regards to all of you. ♥

© Micheline Walker
22 January 2016
WordPress

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

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Fables

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arthur Rackham, Avianus, Harriet Spiegel, Jean de La Fontaine, Marie de France, moral, Perry Index 503, riddle, The Cock and the Jewel, The Cockerel and the Jewel, Walter Crane, Ysopet-Avionnet

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. ”
 
Wenceslaus Hollar, illustrator
 
 
 
 

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

  • The Fox and Crane, or Stork
  • “Le Chêne et le Roseau” (The Oak and the Reed): the Moral
  • La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane

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
 
 
1. Le Coq et la Perle

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/coqperl.htm

2. S. Vernon Jones, (tr) G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Rackham (ill)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-
[EBook #11339]
 
3. George Fyler Townsend, translator
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_4_0008
[EBook #21]
 
4. Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griset, illustrators
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18732/18732-h/18732-h.htm
[EBook #18732]
 
5. 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]
 
6. 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. ”
 
 
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
 
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 

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