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

“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

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

≈ Comments Off on Reynard the Fox: the Trickster

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.

Carlos Fuentes on Ramsay Wood’s Kalila and Dimna, and Micheline’s little house

20 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Uncategorized

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Carlos Fuentes, fantasy, fatigue, Italo Calvino, Ramsay Wood, Reynard the fox, the Crusades, Ysengrimus

“It is at the source of Spanish literature: no picaresque novels even no Quixote, without these wise and vigorous, sly and funny tales. They are contemporary: they are eternal… Today, when we need, more than ever, to understand the Muslim world, Ramsay Wood’s fresh recreation of the tales becomes indispensable reading for the West. Indispensable, more than for political, for human, artistic, glad reasons. Wood’s superb stories should be set alongside Italo Calvinos’s recent retelling of the folk tales of Italy. No higher praise is necessary.”

The above is what Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928) has to say about Ramsay Wood’s translation of the The Tales of Kalila and Dimna, the Arabic translation, by Ibn al-Muqaffa, of Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra, written in Sanskrit. Indeed, “no higher praise is necessary.”

In order to understand the Muslim world, it is also useful to gather information on the Crusades. It is during the Crusades that the West first entered the Muslim world. There was criticism of the Crusades expressed in a very long Latin-language beast-epic entitled Ysengrimus, written by Nivardus of Ghent in 1148-1149, or a little later. Nivard de Gand’s Ysengrimus is the birthplace of Reynard the Fox, arguably the most famous character in beast literature. Reynard is the protagonist in countless fables.

This is a very short blog. Not that I have run out of words, but that I am tired. I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. In 1976, I caught a viral infection from which I never fully recovered. However, do not feel sorry for me. There are so many books to read and so much beautiful music to listen to. Moreover, there are clipboards or portable desks.

In 2002, I sold a house I loved. So, during the last few weeks, I have attempted to draw a little house that would suit me. It was a challenge. The house had to be small: 12,000 sq. feet. How does one fit so many books and a piano in a small space? Besides, I have always enjoyed having a guest room.

I am happy to report that I have finally drawn the floor plan of my little house and did so using a clipboard as desk. I may not move out of this apartment, but I have decided to keep my drawing. Fantasy can be a very cozy refuge.