Marie de France: Fables

Title

en_US Marie de France: Fables

Description

en_US Language note: Bilingual: French/English

en_US Harriet Spiegel

Creator

en_US Marie See all items with this value

Date

2016-01-25T15:23:42Z

en_US 1991-06

en_US 1987

Date Available

2016-01-25T15:23:42Z

Date Issued

en_US 1987

Abstract

en_US A careful and enjoyable bilingual verse presentation of the earliest (c. 1160-90) extant collection of fables in the vernacular of Western Europe. Rhymed couplets of iambic tetrameter generally work well for Spiegel. Her helpful introduction is higher on Marie than I am after a reading of the first half of the 103 fables. I find some compositions of story elements strange and some epimythia askew. Half of the 103 are Aesopic, especially #1-40 (from Romulus Nilantii); one-third are human. Marie says Aesop translated his Latin from a Greek original! Different: the mouse gets free in The Mouse and the Frog (39); the hares wish only to emigrate (85); the stag makes no comment on his legs (93); the dog has a chain and a collar, not a rubbed neck (97); and the shepherd lies about the wolf with his eyes, not his hands or tongue (109). The Sow and the Wolf (83), new to me, has a good moral and good morality. All of the animals' deities in Marie are feminine. There is some yellow highlighting in the introduction. There are nice, but small, black-and-white illuminations with most of the fables.

Identifier

en_US 0802066496 (pbk.)

en_US 1028 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/75815

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US University of Toronto Press

en_US Buffalo

Subject

en_US PQ1494.F3 E5 1987 See all items with this value

en_US Marie de France See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole