The Sick-Lion Tale as Source

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Reynard the fox

Tags

Aegrum fuit fama, ATU type 50, Beast fables, Ecbasis captivi, Internet Archive, Monasticism, Paul de Deacon, Perry Index 258, Roman de Renart, Ysengrimus

The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox

Perry Index 258
Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 50 (The Sick Lion)

Let me take you back to the darkest, yet not so dark, early middle ages, or, to be precise, the three or four centuries preceding the first millennium. This period of history is often referred to as the monastic age. Monks copied books by hand in various scriptoria, indentations in the walls of monasteries, or an actual room, a scriptorium, ensuring the survival of the many masterpieces of antiquity and the dissemination of more recent works.

Interestingly, as monks kept alive the literature of antiquity, including Hesiod (8th century BCE) and Horace (8 December 65 BCE – 27 November 8 BCE), beast fables became a source of entertainment for copyists who not only copied these poems and reworked them, but who also created beast fables of their own. Anthropomorphism (talking animals) was an effective way of speaking anonymously, a satirist’s delight. Among beast fables, two tellings of the Sick-Lion tale would lead to Nivardus of Ghent’s 12th-century Ysengrimus and to the Roman de Renart, written in Roman, the vernacular, by Pierre de Saint-Cloud and other authors.

st__benedict_delivering_his_rule_to_the_monks_of_his_order1

St. Benedict delivering his rule to the monks of his order, Monastery of St. Gilles, Nïmes, France, 1129 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paul the Deacon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paul the Deacon’s Ægrum fama fuit

The Sick-Lion tale, entitled The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox in Vernon Jones’s translation would be an inspiration to two authors. The first is Paul the Deacon, or Paulus Diaconus (720s – 13 April 799 CE), a Benedictine monk, a scribe, the renowned historian of the Lombards, and the author of the Ægrum fama fuit, Once upon a time, a fable identified by its first words.

Professor Jan M. Ziolkowski translated the first words of Paulus Diaconus’ Ægrum fama fuit as follows:

“Once upon a time there was a report that the lion had lain ill and that he had already reached almost his final days.”[1]

Yet the title of Paul the Deacon’s Ægrum fama fuit is also “Leo æger, vulpis et ursus” (The sick lion, the fox, and the bear), which could be the title 1st-century Roman fabulist Phædrus gave his Sick-Lion tale when he put into written form his collection of Æsopic fables. George Fyler Townsend translated his beast fable as “The Lion, the Fox and the Wolf,”[2] which would be consistent with his view that the “Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient.” (Preface [EBook #21]). It was Townsend’s opinion that beasts should be stock characters. George Fyler Townsend’s translation of Æsopic fables is the Gutenberg project publication [EBook #21].

Reynard Art and Picture Collection / The New York Public Library (Photo credit: the New Yorker) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/fox-news

The Ecbasis captivi

Also culminating in the Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart is the anonymous 11th-century Ecbasis captivi, a beast tale containing an inner tale. The outer fable is about the escape of a certain captive, a calf, and the inner fable is the Sick-Lion tale. The two narratives are linked because the calf escapes when the flayed wolf/bear shows himself, catching everyone’s attention. So, how did the Wolf / Bear lose his coat?

The Sick-Lion tale

Here is our tale. A sick lion, believing one could cure old age, called various doctors asking for a remedy. The Lion and the Wolf arrived promptly, but the Fox, suspecting that the Wolf / Bear was doing him in (lui faisait son affaire), went to Court concealed and quiet, “clos et cloi.” He heard the Wolf / Bear planning his demise. The Wolf / Bear told the Lion that the Fox wasn’t at Court: treason! At the Lion’s bedtime, the king demanded that the Fox / Bear be smoked out of his home (sa demeure) and brought to court.

When the Fox arrived at Court, he told the king that he feared someone was lying about him and scorning him. He explained that he had been on a pilgrimage: “mais j’étais en pèlerinage[,]” (but I was on a pilgrimage), and claimed he was dutifully praying for the Lion, as he had vowed. He also said that he had sought experts and told them to what extent the ailing Lion was suffering. The Lion lacked warmth, said the experts. That was the Lion’s problem! In order to cure the lion, one had to wrap him up in the skin of a Wolf/ Bear whose description fit the Wolf Ysengrin / Isengrin. Given the lion’s age, wrapping him up did help him. The Lion recovered and “courtiers sing songs comparing the Lion’s suffering to the passion of Jesus Christ, and the fox supplants the wolf as regent.” (See Ecbasis captivi, Wikipedia.) The flayed Wolf’s coat, or the Bear’s coat, would be the Lion’s dressing gown (sa robe de chambre).

My favourite version of the Sick-Lion tale is Paul the Deacon’s. The Fox arrives at the Lion’s Court carrying a bag filled with the many shoes he has worn out, searching for a cure.[3]

In La Fontaine’s “Le Lion, le Loup et le Renard” FR (The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox EN), the moral is that courtiers are forever harming one another when they should “think of giving.”

“Beware you courtiers, lest you gain,
By slander’s arts, less power than pain;
For in the world where we are living,
A pardon no one thinks of giving.”
(VIII.3)

Reynard’s Triumph. Scene from the famous medieval fable “Reynard the Fox” (10th canto). Hand-colored steel engraving after a drawing by Heinrich Leutemann (German painter, 1824 – 1905) from the book “Reineke Fuchs (Reynard the Fox)” by Julius Eduard Hartmann (after the medieval poem). Published by Albert Henry Payne, Leipzig and Dresden, 1st edition, c. 1855

Conclusion

The Ægrum fama fuit and the Ecbasis captivi are forerunners of Nivardus’ Ysengrimus and the more popular Roman de Renart, written in the vernacular, or Roman. The importance of the Sick-Lion tale stems, to a large extent, from the literary fortune of the Roman de Renart. The medieval bestiary differs from the Roman de Renart. It is allegorical and does not feature talking animals. Fables, however, were used in schools, and the main collection was the Ysopet-Avionnet. Marie de France wrote mostly Æsopic fables. So did Gualterus Anglicus (Walter of England, Gautier d’Angleterre).

In Beast fables, irony is our primary figure of speech. Talking animals do not talk despite their eloquence. Their inability to talk, except “en son langage” (La Fontaine), allows them to say what they haven’t said. In fact, the anthropomorphic Ecbasis captivi is all the more eloquent since the Beast poem is also a fable within a fable, as are Vishnu Sharma’s Sanskrit Panchatantra and Kalīlah wa Dimnah, its Arabic reworking by Persian scholar Ibn al-Muqaffa’.

In short, these Beast fables are all the more ironic because the animal world is a world upside down. The Fox is a regent the Wolf / Bear wants to vilify. La Fontaine’s epimythium refers to courtiers. These are courtiers who should inhabit the basse-cour, the barnyard, called lower court, where farmers keep hens and chickens. Anthropomorphism has clever twists.

Another reversal is the farcical “trompeur trompé,” the deceiver deceived. The Wolf attempts to elevate himself to the fox’ rank, that of regent, but circumstances, the Fox, damn him, Let us note, moreover, that the Ecbasis captivi is written in hexameters with Leonine internal rhyme. (See Ecbasis captivi, Wikipedia.) The author of the Ecbasis writes well, but the tale is about animals. That discrepancy is another source of irony, comic irony.

Therefore, although the Sick-Lion tale prefigures the Ysengrimus and the Roman de Renart, the weight of tradition is such that the medieval bestiary does not deprive the Lion, the Wolf and the Fox of their function, at least not altogether. The citizens of the medieval bestiary do not talk. They are allegorical. The Lion is king and the Fox, wily. Yet, the Roman the Renart, a masterpiece of medieval literature, has been described as a fabliau, which is, to a large extent, grotesque literature. Fabliaux are not literature for children and most misericords are repulsive. The progeny of the Sick-Lion tale, the Roman de Renart in particular, could be seen as the underside of the Roman de la Rose, “courtly” literature.

There is more to discuss, such as fox doctors and the Christian spirit of the Ecbasis captivi, but I will comment no further.

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Belling the Cat: more Bells (30 July 2015)
Mostly Misericords: the Medieval Bestiary (10 November 2014)
Donkey-Skin: a Tale Labelled “Unnatural Love” (23 May 2013)

Sources and Resources

Æsop’s Fables is an Internet Archive full text (trans V. S. Vernon Jones, page 174)
Æsop’s Fables is an Internet Archive full text (trans V. S. Vernon Jones, page 289)
Æsop’s Fables is Project Gutenberg [EBook #21]
Glossary of drama terms
A Review of Professor Ziolkowski’s Talking Animals
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pauldeacon/fabulae.shtml

____________________
[1] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750- 1150 (Philadelphia: the University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 295.

[2] V. S. Vernon Jones (trans), G. K. Chesterton (intro), Arthur Rackham (ill), Æsop’s Fables, Internet Archive, p. 289 (pp. 203-204) or Internet Archive, p. 174.

[3] Op. Cit. pp. 295-297.

Reineke Fuchs pictures by Wilhelm von Kaulbach

It’s no skin off my nose

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Fables

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bruin the Bear, classification, It's no skin off my nose, jurisprudence, Le Jugement de Renart, Reynard's Judgement, Roman de Renart

—Le roi Noble le lion convoque la cour des animaux Manuscrit copié dans le Nord de la France, fin du XIIIe siècle BnF, Manuscrits, Français 1580 fol. 1 (Photo credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Le Roman de Renart

The animals at Noble’s court

Noble the lion is king

Renart is the Fox

Ysengrin is the Wolf

Brun (Bruin) is the Bear

the rape of Dame Hersent, Ysengrin’s wife

Fière is the Lion’s wife

Aarne-Thomson classification system (ATU) type 2

Perry Index number 17

Perry Index number 24

The picture featured above shows the Lion king, Noble. In Branch I, of the Roman de Renart, Le Jugement de Renart[1], the various animals, barons, meet at Noble the Lion’s court that doubles up as a court of justice. Ysengrin tells about his wife Hersent who has been raped when she got stuck in a hole. (The Roman de Renart is not in chronological order.)

The Lion does not think he can charge Renart with rape as the charge might not “stick.” There is a “history” (“branche” II)between Dame Hersent and Renart, which is known. Nevertheless, when she gets caught in a wall and Renart takes advantage of Dame Hersent, it is rape. It is in Renart’s “nature” (character) to avail himself of every opportunity.

Although a charge of “rape” might not “stick,” the other animals gathered at the Lion’s court come forward to tell Noble that Renart has wronged them time and again. For instance, he has eaten many of their relatives. Hearing their complaints, the king, Noble the lion, decides he now has sufficient reasons to have Renart brought to court, the king’s court of law. Renart’s trial and the discussion that precedes his being brought to trial is masterful. Renart’s trial is a building block in the development of European jurisprudence and has been identified as such.[2]

Renart et Dame Hersent, br. II (Photo credit: BnF)

Le Jugement de Renart: Reynard’s Judgement

Bruin the bear is the first ambassador, the second is Tyber the cat, and the third, Grimbart the badger

Maupertuis: Renart’s fortress

Renart the trickster

Bruin’s “nature”

Bruin loses the “skin off [his] nose”

Bruin the bear is the first “ambassador” to travel, on horseback, to Maupertuis, Renart’s, fortress. As you may suspect, Renart is not about to follow Bruin to court. Our red fox is the trickster extraordinaire, so he tells Bruin to put his snout down into a slit in a log that is secured by wedges. According to Renart, that is where Lanfroi the forester keeps his honey.

As it is known “by universal popular consent,” bears love honey. Our modern Winnie-the-Pooh gets stuck in a house because he has eaten so much honey he cannot get out the way he came in. He is like Æsop’s swollen fox (“The Fox and the Weasel.” Perry Index 24). To get out, Winnie-the-Pooh must first lose weight. Similarly, Bruin cannot resist looking down the opening in the oak tree he is told contains honey. That is in his “nature.”

By now, Renart is at a distance to protect himself from Lanfroi, but Bruin puts his nose inside the opening in the tree at which point the wedges are removed and he gets caught, or “coincé” (coin = wedge and corner). He sees Lanfroi and “vilains,” villagers, rushing to attack him. Therefore, knowing that he will lose his life if he does not flee, Bruin sacrifices the skin “off [his] nose,” gets on his horse, and travels back to court. When he arrives at court, he is bleeding profusely and faints. “Renart t’a mort” (Renart killed you,” says the king (br. I, v. 724).

: Le siège de Maupertuis (br. Ia) (The Siege of Maupertuis) (Photo credit: BnF)

1311471-Roman_de_Renart__Renart_assiégé_dans_sa_forteresse

Renart assiégé dans sa forteresse (Reynard besieged in his fortress) (Photo credit: BnF)

The Comic Text, or the Steamroller

Bruin seems to be suffering. However, according to Dr. Jill Mann,[3] the translator (into English) of the Ysengrimus, written in 1149 -1150, the birthplace of both Reinardus (Renart) and Ysengrimus (Ysengrin the wolf), the various animals of the Ysengrimus do not suffer.

The Ysengrimus, a 6,574-line fabliau written in Latin elegiac verses, is the Roman de Renart‘s (1274 – 1275) predecessor. Dr. Mann compares the fox and other animals to cartoons where a cat is flattened by a steamroller, but fluffs up again (Jill Mann, p. 11).

“The recrudescent power of the wolf’s skin [bear’s skin] is reminiscent of the world of the cartoon, where the cat who is squashed flat by a steam-roller, is restored to three dimensions in the next frame.” (Mann, p. 11)

In other words, Reynard the Fox is a forgiving comic text, which allows for devilish pranks that do not harm animals and human beings. They may scream, for appearances, but they return to their normal selves.

The Roman de Renart is translated

Authorship of Ysengrimus has been challenged, but the Ysengrimus exists and it was rewritten in various European languages, the languages of the Netherlands and German, in particular. At any rate, it is of crucial importance that famed translator and printer William Caxton (c. 1415 – c. March 1492) wrote an English version of Reynard the Fox. (See William Caxton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.) (This translation is available online: The History of Reynard the Fox.)

From “goupil” to “renarT” and “Renard”

Reynard the Fox had to be popular in England as otherwise the expression “it’s no skin off my nose” could not be traced back, albeit hypothetically, to the Reynard cycle. In France, the Roman de Renart was so popular that goupil, the French word for fox, was replaced by Renart, but La Fontaine uses the modern spelling: renard. Now, if the fox lost his name goupil to become Renart, the Roman de Renart may also have influenced the English language.

Given the popularity and wide dissemination of Reynard the Fox, crediting a linguistic element to Reynard the Fox makes sense. In fact, crediting a linguistic element to a popular fable often makes sense. These stories were in circulation. Persons who could not read were told about Reynard, just as they were told Jacobus de Voragine‘s Golden Legend.

The Roman de Renart as a satire

According to Wikipedia,

“Ysengrimus is usually held to be an allegory for the corrupt monks of the Roman Catholic Church. His [Ysengrimus’] greed is what typically causes him to be led astray. He is made to make statements such as “commit whatever sins you please; you will be absolved if you can pay.”[4]

One could buy indulgences and do penance in purgatory:

“purgatory, the condition, process, or place of purification or temporary punishment in which, according to medieval Christian and Roman Catholic belief, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for heaven.”[5]

Obviously, the Roman de Renart was not written for children, but there are children’s adaptations of its many tales. In such versions, Renart does not rape Dame Hersent and when the wolf loses his tail to escape “vilains” who will kill him, he feels no pain. The Roman de Renart includes the tail-fisher motif (ATU 2; Perry Index 17 and (“The Fox with the Swollen Belly”) (Perry Index number 24). (See RELATED ARTICLES)

—ooo—

Conclusion

ATU 2: The Tail-Fisher (Aarne-Thompson-Üther classification system)

Perry Index 17 (“The Fox without a Tail”)

Perry Index 24 (“The Fox with the Swollen Belly”)

In A. A. Milne‘s[6] Winnie-the-Pooh, Eeyore loses a tail, which may remind one of the Tail-Fisher (ATU 2), but the tail is not severed or caught in the ice. The tail is lost but will be found. As for Bruin the bear’s nose, it will grow back.

Such is not the case with the Æsopic fox or La Fontaine “Renard ayant la queue coupée.” Besides, Bruin’s nose is caught just as Ysengrin’s tail is caught in the ice which forces him to lose it in order to survive.

There are differences between ATU 2 and our Æsopic fables as well as similarities. But what is fascinating is that Bruin’s sad encounter with Renart and Lanfroi the forester may have helped shape the English language: “It’s no skin off my nose.”

Let this be our conclusion.

Wishing all of you a good week.

Winnie-the-Pooh

RELATED ARTICLES

The Cat’s only Trick (10 May 2013)
How Eeyore loses a Tail, Painlessly and Perhaps Beautifully (5 May 2013)
More on the Tail-Fisher (1 May 2013)
Another Motif: The Tail-Fisher (29 April 2013)
A Motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole (16 April 2013)
The Velveteen Rabbit & Animism (30 April 2012)
Another Motif: Playing Dead (20 April 2012)
The Topsy-Turvy World of Beast Literature (31 October 2011)
Reynard the Fox: the Judgement (25 October 2011)
Reynard the Fox: the Itinerant (23 October 2011)

Sources and Resources

Le Roman de Renart (BnF) (full text in FR)
Caxton’s A History of Reynard the Fox can be read online
The Tail-Fisher is ATU type 2
(“The Fox without a Tail”) Perry Index 17
(“The Fox with the Swollen Belly”) Perry Index 24

____________________

[1] Jean Dufournet & Andrée Méline (traduction) et Jean Dufournet (introduction), Le Roman de Renart (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1985), pp 72-79.

[2] Jean Subrenat, “Rape and Adultery: Reflected Facets of Feudal Justice in the Roman de Renart,” 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, 2000), pp. 16-35.

[3] Jill Mann “The Satiric Vision of the Ysengrimus,” in Kenneth Varty, ed. op. cit, pp. 1-15.

[4] Ysengrimus, Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia.

[5] “purgatory”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 04 oct.. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/483923/purgatory>.

[6] “A. A. Milne”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 05 oct.. 2014 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/383024/AA-Milne>.

5 October 2014

WordPress

“The Crow and the Fox:” its Dissemination

27 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Bestiaries, Fables

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, Beast Epics, engin, fables, farce, Harriet Spiegel, Jill Mann, Nivard de Gand, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Roman de Renart, Ysengrimus

Le Roman de Renart. Noble le Lion, (Bibliothèque nationale de France BnF [br. Va])

Beast Literature

BEAST EPICS AND FABLES

Generally speaking, European beast literature consists of two genres: fables and beast epics, or mock-epics. Fables are short, but epics are very long. Le Roman de Renart is a beast epic, but it contains the story of a Crow, Tiécelin or Tiercelin, who is led to sing (chanter) by a cunning Sir Fox, and loses his living. Jean Batany calls the various fables “parcellaires” and the entire beast epic, or fabliau, “unitaire.”[i] In short, beast epics are frame-stories (outer stories) that join shorter stories (inner stories).

One of our WordPress colleagues added the expression “to eat crow” to my “crowing.” As it turns out, Mr Boehner, Sir Fox, may well be “eating crow,” and the expression “to eat crow,” may be rooted in “The Fox and the Crow.” So, it is possible that “The Fox and Crow” shaped the English language to a greater extent than I suspected and that it may have done so because of the wide dissemination of beast literature in both fables, popular collections of fables, and various epic poems we will name Reynard the Fox stories, an umbrella term. So we have another curtain to raise.

Minton decorated tile

Dissemination Through Fables

AT 57 Raven with Cheese

Perry Index: 124

Where fables are concerned, there exist several sources.[ii] However, we could begin with Marie de France[iii] who was born in Normandy but then lived in England. She is French literature’s first, chronologically, important woman writer. Her collection of fables contains a “Fox and Crow” narrative, entitled “Del corbel e del gupil,” that may predate the Ysopet-Avionnet, but not necessarily.[iv] The Ysopet-Avionnet dates back to the period during which the goupil became a renard, which may explain why her Fox is named gupil. Marie lived in the 12th century and retold 103 ‘Æsopic’ fables, her “Fox and Crow” being the 13th.

In the Ysopet-Avionnet, our fable is entitled “Du Renart et du Corbel” and is fable number 15. Foxes used to be called goupils, but as of 1250 approximately, the success of the Roman de Renart led to the “goupil” being renamed “renart.” In other words, the part became the whole, so to speak, as in a synecdoche, a figure of speech, hence its “Fox and Crow” being entitled “Du Renart et du Corbel.”

The Ysopet-Avionnet, a widely-used medieval grammar book, contains a “Fox and Crow,” the above-mentioned “Du Renart et du Corbel,” a translation of the Latin “De Vulpe [fox] et Corvo,” fable number 15 in the Ysopet-Avionnet (p. 73).[v] Avianus (Avionnet) lived in the 4th century CE, and he wrote in Latin. However, “Du Renart et du Corbel” is not one of the 18 fables Flavius Avianus contributed to the Ysopet-Avionnet. It is one of the 64 fables attributed to a Romulus.

(Please click on the small images to enlarge them.)

Renart et Tiécelin, (BnF), ms 12587

Renart et Tiécelin, (BnF), ms 14969 fol. 25*

*Guillaume le Clerc, Bestiaire divin. Manuscript copied in Great Britain, in the last quarter of the 13th century. BnF Ms 14969 fol. 25.

Dissemination through Beast Epics (a Sample)

1150: The Ysengrimus (Ghent)
1170-1250: The Roman de Renart (France)
Reynard the Fox (England)
Dutch Reinaert stories
German Reineke stories
1846: Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs
The Tales of Uncle Remus (Georgia, US), etc.

The Ysengrimus (c. 1150)

Reynard (Reinardus) was born in the Ysengrimus and attributed to Nivardus of Ghent. Nivardus is a latinized version of Nivard. The Ysengrimus is a very long poem: 6,574 lines of elegiac couplets. It was translated into English by Jill Mann and is still available (see Jill Mann). The pioneer, however, was John Voigt who translated the Ysengrimus into German. Ysengrimus was the Wolf and Reinardus, the Fox. In French, Ysengrimus is Ysengrin and in English, he is Isengrim. Renart is Reynard.

The Roman de Renart (1170-1250)

The French Roman de Renart was written between 1170 and 1250. Pierre de Saint-Cloud was its first author, but it has other authors: Richard de Lison, the Prêtre de la Croix en Brie, and others. Beginning with the Ysengrimus, beast epics were written not only as mock-epics, but also as satires of a greedy Church.

Le Roman de Renart contains 27 narratives and 2,700 octosyllabic verses (eight syllables). These are joined into clusters called “branches.” The central theme is the fierce competition between the Fox, who uses ruse or “engin” (ingenuity), and the Wolf, who uses brutal force and is forever hungry. It eats ham mainly, but has been caught eating lamb. Other animals featured in the Roman de Renart are Bruin the Bear, Tibert the Cat, Tiercelin or Tiécelin the Crow, Hersent the She-Fox (Isengrim’s wife), Chantecler the Cock, etc. For a reading, in French, of the Roman de Renart’s “Fox and Crow” episode, one may visit the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It may be that the site is in English as well as French, but I have yet to discover a translation.[v]

England, the Netherlands and Germany

The Roman de Renart then migrated to other lands, the Netherlands in particular. But it also moved to Germany. It was hugely successful in both the Netherlands and German-language states. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the author of Reineke Fuchs (1793). But the Brothers Grimm also wrote Reynard stories.

Reynard in Georgia, the United States

In North-America, Reynard inhabits Joel Chandler Harris‘ (9 December 1848 – 3 July 1908) Tales of Uncle Remus. However, in The Tales of Uncle Remus, our trickster, the Fox, is replaced by the Rabbit. The traditional North-American trickster is the Coyote.

AN ANTI-SEMITIC REYNARD

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

Robert van Genechten (25 October 1895 – 13 December 1945) produced an anti-Semitic version of Reynard the Fox, entitled Van den vos Reynaerde. He was a collaborator. At the end of World War II, Genechten was condemned to death, but committed suicide in his cell to avoid the humiliation of a public and ritualistic execution.

Conclusion

There are so many Reynard stories and, consequently, so many “Fox and Crow” fables that it could argued successfully that expressions featuring linguistic elements such as “to eat crow,” “crowing,” “faire chanter” and, by extension, “chantage” (blackmail) originate in “The Fox and the Crow” and Le Corbeau et le Renart. “The Fox and the Crow,” however, is a transcultural text. Related narratives can be found in Ibn al-Muqaffa‘s Kalilah waDimna and, earlier, in the Sanskrit Panchatantra.

Meanwhile in Washington: The Deceiver Deceived

Farcesbles vs Fa

However, allow me to return briefly to a Washington reading of “The Fox and Crow.” In fables, the birthplace of proverbs, among other forms, the crow ends up eating humble pie, or “eating crow.” In farces, however, the deceiver is deceived, le trompeur trompé. In fables, one can be fooled; Sir Crow opens his mouth and loses the cheese. But Mr Boehner, as Sir Fox, did not succeed in making Sir Crow, President Obama, “crow.” It could be said, therefore, that the shutdown of the American government was not only senseless and far too costly, but that it was… a farce!

_________________________

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

[ii] For a more complete list, see Æsopica: http://www.mythfolklore.net/aesopica/

[iii] Harriet Spiegel, editor and translator, The Fables of Marie de France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000 [1994]).

[iv] They may have been written at approximately the same time.

[v] The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) has a lovely site on the Roman de Renart. “Roman” does not mean novel, it points to the language, “le roman,” in which the text was written. Click on:

[vi] Reynard the Fox and the Jew Animal http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.7/articles/barten1.7.html

Kalilah wa Dimna
The Fox and the Crow

Sources

Renart et Tiécelin le corbeau, Texte établi et traduit par Jean Dufournet et Andrée Méline, GF-Flammarion, 1985. Tome 1, p. 251-261.
Le Roman de Renart, Larousse
Ladislas Starewicz produced a “Fox and Crow” animation.
Tiécelin et le Renart (branche II)

27 October 2013

WordPress

Another Type: The Tail-Fisher

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Fables, Literature

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Aesop's Fables, Fable, Jean de La Fontaine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Le Renard ayant la queue coupée, Norwegian tale, Perry Index 17, Roman de Renart, Samivel, Type AT 2 the Tail-Fisher, Ysengrin loses his tail

Ysengrin sur la glace (Ysengrin on the Ice), by Samivel

How the bear lost his tail. The tail-fisher

Aarne-Thompson: AT 2

Gutenberg [eBook # 25433], p. 36

Perry Index 17. The Fox without a Tail

Why the Bear Is Stumpy-Tailed. The tail-fisher (Norwegian, AT 2)[i]
Roman de Renart. The tail-fisher (AT 2)
Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (La Fontaine Vol. 1. Book V.5, 1668)
Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue (Æsop)
The Fox without a Tail (Æsop: Perry Index 17)
Reineke Fuchs EN (Goethe, 1794)[ii]

The tail-fisher

This motif is associated with Norwegian folktales (Aarne-Thompson 2) and also appears in Reynard the Fox (Aarne-Thompson 2). Le Roman de Renart FR. There are fables and folktales in which the fox, the bear, or the rabbit loses its tail, but these are not trickster stories.

The Norwegian Tale

The Norwegian tale resembles branche III of the Roman de Renart in that our Norwegian bear is fooled into fishing with his tail through a hole in the ice by a fox. He is then attacked and loses his tail running away from probable predators. The tail gets stuck in the hole through which the beat is tail-fishing.

The missing tail Type

The Roman de Renart

In the related Roman de Renart FR, the wolf Ysengrin plays the same role as the bear. Ysengrin is fooled by the fox into fish with his tail. This episode takes place in branche III of the Roman de Renart.

In Le Roman de Renart, the fishing-tail story unfolds as follows:

Smelling grilled eels, Ysengrin knocks at Renart’s door. Renart tells him that he is entertaining monks. “Would that I were a monk,” says Ysengrin! Renart obliges by throwing boiling water at Ysengrin to shave off some of his fur and, thereby, make him look like a monk (la tonsure). (See Samivel’s illustration at the bottom of this post.) He then leads Ysengrin to a hole in the ice of a frozen pond and tells him he will certainly catch fish. Renart leaves a bucket behind attaching it to the wolf’s tail and tells his foe not to move while he is fishing. The wolf’s tail gets stuck in the hole. When morning comes, hunters pounce on the fox whose tail is mistakenly cut off. Ysengrin runs away without asking that his tail be returned to him.

Renart ties a Bucket to Ysengrin’s Tail (Branche III) Bibliothèque nationale de France

Photo credit: Le Roman de Renart

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr.12584

Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine’s Fox who has lost his tail, Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (Vol. 1. Book V.5), is based on a Æsopic fable entitled The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail (Perry Index 17). In La Fontaine’s fable, the fox is not the trickster fox of the Roman de Renart. In this fable, a fox who has lost his tail invites fellow foxes to have their tale removed. However, they ask the fox to turn around so they can see his behind. When le renard turns around, the other foxes start booing him. The proposed trend stops at the sight of the fox’s rear end.

Le Renard ayant la queue coupée

Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue

Photo Credit: Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (La Fontaine)

Photo Credit: Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue (Æsop)

The same fate awaits Æsop’s fox

The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail

A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail.
Thereafter, feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule
to which he was exposed, he schemed to convince all the other
Foxes that being tailless was much more attractive, thus making
up for his own deprivation. He assembled a good many Foxes and
publicly advised them to cut off their tails, saying that they
would not only look much better without them, but that they would
get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great
inconvenience. One of them interrupting him said, “If you had
not yourself lost your tail, my friend, you would not thus
counsel us.”

Temporary Conclusion

There are many severed-tail stories based on Aarne-Thompson Type 2, The tail-fisher is a favorite type. Moreover, there are short tail stories. One of my former students told me there is a “why the rabbit’s tail is short” in Glooscap, Abenaki mythology. But I have yet to find this particular version of “why the rabbit’s tail is short,” but it could be that my student’s testimonial suffices. She has Amerindian ancestry. A former and very well-educated Nova Scotia neighbor often used the following expression: “There is always something to keep the rabbit’s tail short.”

I will pause here and discuss Winnie-the-Pooh in another post.

_____________________________

[i] Aarne-Thompson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system

[ii] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2013 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/237027/Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe>.

List:

Folklore

How the Bear Lost his Tail (North American Lore)

The Legend of How the Bear lost its Tail (Native American)

A Related Tale (Myths of the Cherokees, by James Money)

Why the Possum’s Tale is Bare

Children’s Literature

In which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh (A. A. Milne, as of 1924)

Les Malheurs d’Ysengrin, Goupil (Samivel) (AT 2)

Rufus, the Fox (Margery Williams, 1937) (AT 2)

Reineke Fuchs pictures by Wilhelm von Kaulbach:

The most delectable history of Reynard the Fox; (1895)
by Joseph Jacobs and W. Frank Calderon

Tonsure d’Ysengrin, by Samivel

Reynard pours boiling water on Ysengrin, by Samivel

29 April 2013

WordPress

Another Motif: Playing Dead

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Literature

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Franklin Edgerton, Jill Mann, Laura Gibbs, Middle Ages, Panchatantra, playing-dead motif, Reynard, Roman de Renart

Renart and Tiécelin the Crow (BnF, Roman de Renart)

*Photo credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Le Roman de Renart

In branch III of the Roman de Renart, the goupil — foxes used to be called goupils — Renart is hungry and goes in search of food. When he gets to the road, he sees a cart loaded with fish and quickly lies across the road making believe he has died. The merchant stops his cart and investigates. He looks at Renart’s magnificent fur and as a merchant he wonders if there isn’t money to be made from the sale of the fur. He throws Renart at the back of the cart, which is precisely what Renart wanted him to do. Our trickster fox therefore feasts on the herrings (les harengs). Having satisfied his hunger, Renart wraps himself into a coat made of eels and jumps off the cart. As he runs away, he shouts “bless you” to the merchant, “there I am with plenty of eels to eat, you can keep the rest!”

Renart et les anguilles (eels) is one of the best known of Renart’s tricks, except that this time he doesn’t take advantage of the wolf Ysengrin (French spelling), the chief character in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus (c. 1149). Besides, the fox is not speaking Latin but Roman (le roman).

Renart et les anguilles (the eels) (BnF, Roman de Renart)

The Theft of Fish

Renart et les anguilles (br. III) is classified as motif 1 in the Aarne Thompson (AT) motif index,[i] where it is listed as The theft of fish. The getting-stuck-in-a-hole is motif 50 in the Aarne-Thompson Classification and is called Curing a sick lion. The bear and the honey is motif 49 except that the Roman de Renart’s Brun (Bruin) the bear gets stuck (coincé) in a log and not in a hole.[ii]

the Fox Who Played Dead: Æsop, Abstemius and Renart the Fox

Dr Laura Gibbs[iii] tells us about a fable entitled The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead by Æsop, but based on Abstemius (149). A fox played dead so he could catch birds. The fox “rolled in the mud and stretched out in a field.” However, a dog comes by and mangles the fox, which puts an end to the otherwise deadly ruse.

In the Roman de Renart, the fox entices Tiécelin, the corbeau (the crow), to sing and thus lose the cheese he has stolen. However, before taking the cheese, the fox makes believe he is wounded and when he tries to eat Tiécelin, all he succeeds in grabbing are a few feathers. Both stories are identical except for the presence of a dog in Æsop and Abstemius.

Comments

So, in Æsop the make-believe is stopped by a dog, but the in the Roman de Renart, the make-believe is not carried out to the point of playing dead. However, Tiécelin has a name which suggests that he is a human in disguise, the chief device of animals in literature. In both fables, the fox says he fully deserves to have lost the bird, and the cheese. In Laura Gibbs’ version of The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead, the fox says “This is just what I deserve: while I was trying to catch the birds using my tricks, someone else has caught me.” The same is true of Renart. One has the impression that the fox knows how clever he is and that he can therefore afford to lose.

In the Medieval Bestiary, we read that

“the fox is a crafty and deceitful animal that never runs in a straight line, but only in circles. When it wants to catch birds to eat, the fox rolls in red mud so that it appears to be covered in blood. It then lies apparently lifeless; birds, deceived by the appearance of blood and thinking the fox to be dead, land on it and are immediately devoured.The most famous fox of the Middle Ages was Reynard, the trickster hero of the Romance of Reynard the Fox.”

In fact,

[t]he fox represents the devil, who pretends to be dead to those who retain their worldly ways, and only reveals himself when he has them in his jaws. To those with perfect faith, the devil is truly dead.

Playing dead (faire le mort) is a common ruse illustrated here using two examples from the Roman de Renart and a closely related example from Æsop. If we were to trace back Renart’s ruses, they would take us to the Pañcatantra. The structure of the Roman de Renart is a frame story, stories within a story, which is also the case with the Sanskrit Pañcatantraand its Arabic rendition, Ibn al Muqaffa’s Kalīlah wa-Dimnah.

However, the Roman de Renart is a fabliau. The Pañcatantra and Kalīlah wa-Dimnah do not possess the scurrilous and at times scatological aspect of French fabliaux.[iv] Moreover, if ancient beast epics and fables are used in the education of the prince, it would seem our ancient prince did not live in the albeit comical but ruthless world, the various European countries Reynard the Fox inhabits. We accept his cruel misdeeds because his tricks do not seem to hurt.One is reminded of the comic strips steamroller flattening a cat who always fluffs up again. I am using a comparison taken from Jill Mann[v] in Kenneth Varty,[vi] ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000).

Conclusion

The comic text is a “self-redeeming” (the term is mine) by virtue of a powerful convention, the “all’s well that ends well.” But beast epics and fables are also a nītiśāstra. In other words, they are, by vocation and convention, cushioned advice for the “wise” conduct of a prince’s life. According to Franklin Edgerton (1924), “[t]he so-called ‘morals’ of the stories have no bearing on morality; they are unmoral, and often immoral. They glorify shrewdness and practical wisdom, in the affairs of life, and especially of politics, of government.”[vii] As I indicated in an earlier post, Edgerton may be a little severe regarding the morality of the Panchatantra, but, were we to apply his comments to Reynard the Fox, they would not be altogether inappropriate. Renart is a scoundrel.

In closing, I will also point out that the playing-dead motif is particularly important in that playing dead is a real-life option. This particular motif is very much about the “wise” conduct of a prince. For instance, laying low while the country regrouped probably came to the mind of American leaders on 9/11.

Fortunately, when all is said and done, a fox is a fox is a fox.

Reynard the Fox, the Itinerant (michelinewalker.com)
“To Inform or Delight” (michelinewalker.com)
A Motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole (michelinewalker.com)

_________________________

[i] Aarne-Thompson Motif-Index

http://scandinavian.wisc.edu/mellor/taleballad/pdf_files/motif_types.pdf

[ii] Also see: Aarne-Thompson Classification System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system#Animal_tales

and Flokloristics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkloristics

[iii] Laura Gibbs is the author of Aesop’s Fables, Aesop’s Fables in Latin, Mille Fabulae et Una, Latin Via Proverbs, Vulgate Verses, and Roman Sudoku.

[iv] With respect to fabliaux, you may wish to look at the Geoffrey Chaucer site.

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/fabliaux/

Also see: Jill Mann, Feminizing Chaucer, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2002.

[v] Jill Mann, The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus, in Varty, p. 1. Jill Mann has translated into English Nivardus of Ghent’s entire Ysengrimus.

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

[vii] (George Allen and Unwin, London 1965 [1924]) p. 13. Edgerton’s edition and translation of the Panchatantra is an “Edition for the General Reader.” (Quoted in Wikipedia’s Panchatantra entry.)

Reineke Fuchs

19 April 2013

WordPress

Motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Antti Aarne, Dom Juan, George Fyler Townsend, Gutenberg Project, La Fontaine, Roman de Renart, Stith Thompson, Vladimir Propp, Wikipedia

La Belette entrée dans un grenier by Calvet-Rogniat c. 1950 (Photo credit: Wikipedia )

Classification

Type & Motif

In 1910, Antti Aarne (1875-1925) published a catalogue of motifs in folktales (fairy tales and related stories, including fables) entitled Verzeichnis der Märchentypen. His catalogue was enlarged by Stith Thompson (1885–1976) in 1928 and again in 1961. It has since been the Aarne–Thompson tale type index, a multi-volume catalogue.[1]

Narreme

The manner in which folktales were classified by Aarne-Thompson has been questioned. In his Morphology of the Folktale, published in Russia in 1928, Bulgaria-born Vladimir Propp classifies stories according to their narrative. Narremes or narratemes are the “simplest irreducible narrative elements” in a tale. “After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions.” For instance, the 7th of these 31 functions is: the “Victim deceived.” Vladimir Propp’s (29 April 1895 – 22 August 1970) catalogue remained a Soviet mystery until it was translated in 1958. (See Valdimir Propp [31 functions], Wikipedia)

Archetype

Archetypes are also used to classify folktales and other works of literature. The pater familias of comedy is an archetype as is the pharmakos, the person who is blamed for opposing the scheduled marriage, whether or not he is innocent or guilty. He is a scapegoat. Northrop Frye‘s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) brought archetypes to the foreground.

The stock characters of the commedia dell’arte are archetypes. Wikipedia has a long list of stock characters. (See Stock Characters, Wikipedia.) They include damsels in distress, femmes fatales, nerds, mad scientists, noble savages, professors and possibly the rest of humanity: a cast of thousands.

The above classifications are not mutually exclusive. However, recurrence is a sine qua non of classification.

The Weasel in the Granary by Percy J. Billinghurst

Today I will write about what I would call a motif. Getting-stuck-in-a-hole is the motif I have chosen. Usually, it is found in narratives where a silly but famished animal finds its way to an abundant supply of food, overeats and is therefore too swollen to get out using the opening through which it entered the cache. In most, but not all cases, this motif could also be called the swollen belly. If such is the case, the moral of the stories is that one should consider the possible consequences of his or her actions, which is the “Look before you leap” of the Fox and Goat. However, it is possible to get caught in a hole for reasons other than overeating.

We will therefore look at five stories: two, where a fox (2) gets caught in a hole, one where a weasel (1) is trapped in a granary and one, where the victim is a bear (1), and one where the wolf’s wife (1), Hersent, gets stuck in an opening. This last story is part of most Reynard the Fox narratives and, particularly in the Roman de Renart‘s. Renart, the trickster, was born Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent’s Latin Ysengrimus (1149). The poem runs to 6,574 lines of elegiac couplets. It migrated and became, in France, the Roman de Renart (beginning in the end of the 12th century and flourishing in the 13th century (c. 1170 – 1250). It was written in octosyllabic verse in the vernacular (langue romane), by various authors (Pierre de Saint-Cloud and others).

Getting Stuck in a Hole: Greece

Greece: A Fox and a Fox

In a Greek version of the getting stuck in a hole motif, a famished Fox enters a hole in a tree where shepherds have left food and eats so much that he cannot get out. Another fox comes by and tells the trapped fox that he must return to his former famished self in order to get out. This version of our motif was not known to other European countries until the revival of Greek learning in the Renaissance.

George Fyler Townsend and the Gutenberg project: A Fox and Fox

The Greek version is the one used in George Fyler Townsend‘s retelling of the swollen belly and it is also the version used by the Gutenberg Project.

“A very hungry fox, seeing some bread and meat left by shepherds in the hollow of an oak, crept into the hole and made a hearty meal. When he finished, he was so full that he was not able to get out, and began to groan and lament his fate. Another Fox passing by heard his cries, and coming up, inquired the cause of his complaining. On learning what had happened, he said to him, “Ah, you will have to remain there, my friend, until you become such as you were when you crept in, and then you will easily get out.”

Getting stuck in a hole: Rome & Æsop

In Rome: A Fox and a Weasel

In one of Horace‘s (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC) poetical epistles to Maecenas (I.7, lines 29-35), Horace features a fox who eats too much as is told by a weasel that he must lose weight to get out of “a narrow chink into a bin a corn:”

“Once it chanced that a pinched little fox had crept through a narrow chink into a bin of corn and, when well fed, was trying with stuffed stomach to get out again, but in vain. To him quoth a weasel hard by: “If you wish to escape from there, you must go back lean through the narrow gap which you entered when lean.”

Æsop features a fox facing the same predicament. Æsop’s fable is entitled The Fox and Weasel and is catalogued as number 24 in the Perry Index where it is classified as The Fox with the Swollen Belly.

Getting Stuck in a hole: La Fontaine

In La Fontaine: A Weasel and a Rat

However, although motifs remain the cast can change. By the time La Fontaine wrote his The Weazel in the Granary, the fox had fully matured into his foxy self, which means that he would not get stuck inside a tree, or a bin, or a granary, of all places! Alternately, the fox would get stuck accidentally, not foolishly, and would have fooled someone into freeing him leaving his good Samaritan in the predicament he, the fox, was in. In short, the fox is now a weasel and the animal who tells her (la belette) that “[w]ith an emptier belly; You enter’d lean, and lean must sally” is a rat.

Un Rat, qui la voyait en peine,

Lui dit : “Vous aviez lors la panse (belly) un peu moins pleine (emptier).

Vous êtes maigre (lean) entrée, il faut maigre sortir (sally).”

Click on La Belette entrée dans un grenier (III.17) (French)
Click on The Weazel in the Granary (III.17) (English translation)

Getting stuck in a Hole: Winnie-the-Pooh

In A. A. Milne‘s (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) Winnie-the-Pooh, the animal who gets stuck in a hole is Pooh bear himself. Once again, the motif remains but the cast changes.

Under its entry The Fox and the Weasel, Wikipedia tells us that:

“In England the story was adapted by A. A. Milne as the second chapter in his Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ‘in which Pooh goes visiting and gets into a tight place’. In this case, the bear overindulges in honey and condensed milk while visiting Rabbit and becomes stuck when trying to exit the burrow. It takes a week of starvation before he can be extricated.”

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

*Illuminated manuscripts (miniscules, probably Gothic?)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Le Roman de Renart

As for Reynard or let us see, first, how clever he can be. The following fable is entitled The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox and all Reynard stories are rooted in this one Æsopic fable which is probably rooted in much earlier tales.

In Æsop’s The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox (Perry Index 258?), the Fox overhears the wolf (Isengrim) tell the sick Lion, King Noble, that the Fox has been remiss in not presenting himself at the sick Lion’s bedside. There are several versions of this story. In my favourite version, the Fox goes and gets a large supply of shoes, returns to the Lion’s den, shows him all the footwear he has worn out in search of a cure for the Lion’s illness and that he has found one. The lion must be wrapped in the skin of wolf, the same age as Isengrim. The Wolf therefore loses his skin, the Fox is avenged, against all expectations the Lion is cured, and we have a new motif: the flayed animal, from the villainous wolf in sheep’s clothing to Donkeyskin, Charles Perrault‘s Peau d’âne (Aarne-Thompson type 510B).

“A LION, growing old, lay sick in his cave. All the beasts came to visit their king, except the Fox. The Wolf therefore, thinking that he had a capital opportunity, accused the Fox to the Lion of not paying any respect to him who had the rule over them all and of not coming to visit him. At that very moment the Fox came in and heard these last words of the Wolf. The Lion roaring out in a rage against him, the Fox sought an opportunity to defend himself and said, “And who of all those who have come to you have benefited you so much as I, who have traveled from place to place in every direction, and have sought and learnt from the physicians the means of healing you?’ The Lion commanded him immediately to tell him the cure, when he replied, “You must flay a wolf alive and wrap his skin yet warm around you.” The Wolf was at once taken and flayed; whereon the Fox, turning to him, said with a smile, “You should have moved your master not to ill, but to good, will.”

So let us end this post by telling how the Wolf’s wife, Hersent, gets stuck in a wall of her house and, for the second time, there is a brief romance, Renart takes advantage of her. Needless to say there are children’s versions of the Roman de Renart, but the Roman de Renart was not written for children and Renart is the archetypal scoundrel-we-like. I should mention that the Bibliothèque nationale de France has a fine site on Renart (see BnF). The rape of Hersent takes place in Branch 2 (of 27) of the Roman de Renart. In modern French, roman means novel, but roman as in the Roman de Renart means “in the vernacular” (en langue romane). Foxes used to be called goupils, but Renart’s popularity was such that the goupil became a renard (‘d’ in modern French).

Renart will, of course, be brought to justice, but he will make believe he has become a devout animal who wants to go to the Crusades and will be freed.

(Please click on the small images to enlarge them.)

Roman de Renart, BnF, Paris; Ms fr.12584, folio 18v-19

Photo credit: BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France, including image at bottom of post)

_________________________

[1] ATU 49 (Aarne-Thompson-Uther) The Bear and the Honey

This is a 14th-century French virelai written by Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377).

16 April 2013

WordPress

Reynard the Fox, the Itinerant

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, Roman de Renart

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

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

Reineke Fuchs

Photo credit: Wikipedia and Google Images (all)

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

Le Roman de Renart : c. 1170 – 1250

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

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

van den vos Reynaerde

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

Reynard in England: Caxton 1481

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

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

Renart in German-language Countries

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

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

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

The Tales of Uncle Remus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reineke Fuchs

23 October 2011

WordPress

Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature

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Tags

anthropomorphism, Beast Epics, Goethe, goupil becomes renard, Kalila wa Dimna, Machiavelli, Nivardus of Ghent, Panchatantra, Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Roman de Renart, The Prince, Ysengrimus

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

Sources: the Sick Lion tale

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

In Western European literature, we find him first in the

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

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

Anthropomorphism, or a fox is a fox is a fox

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

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

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

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

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

The Sick Lion tale

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

—ooo—

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

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

—ooo—

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