Animal Fables Research Articles

Everyone Leaves a Trace: Exploring Transcriptions of Medieval Manuscripts with Computational Methods

Abstract The topic of this paper is a thirteenth-century manuscript from the French National Library (Paris, BnF français 24428) containing three popular texts: an encyclopedic work, a bestiary and a collection of animal fables. We have automatically transcribed the manuscript using a custom handwritten text recognition (HTR) model for old French. Rather than a content-based analysis of the manuscript’s transcription, we adapt quantitative methods normally used for authorship attribution and clustering to the analysis of scribal contribution in the manuscript. Furthermore, we explore the traces that are left when texts are copied, transcribed and/or edited, and the importance of that trace for computational textual analysis with orthographically unstable historical languages. We argue that the method of transcription is fundamental for being able to think about complex modes of authorship which are so important for understanding medieval textual transmission. The paper is inspired by trends in digital scholarship in the mid-2020s, such as public transcribe-a-thons in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector, the opening up of digitized archival collections with methods such as HTR, and computational textual analysis of the transcriptions.

A Post-Darwinian Fable: Canine Narration in The Call of the Wild

The paper reads Jack London’s The Call of the Wild as a post-Darwinian fable that challenges the anthropomorphism and sentimentality in the notoriously charged genre of the animal fable. London’s post-Darwinian representation of canine narration in an evolutionary continuum seeks to deconstruct the inherent hierarchy embedded in the fable. Through a reconciliation of the animal fable’s internal and external conflict, London aims to draw an ethical critique of amoral aspects of social Darwinism that underlies the American industry culture at the turn of the century. The remapping of humanity/animality, progression/regression, and the society/the wild within a bispecies environment for coevolution embodies London’s endeavor to rescue the reputation of the genre of fable from a conventional naturalist mode. London’s proclaimed vigor and science in the critique of animal fable further aspire to redeem the feminized professionalism of writing.

Creatures Who Advocate: An Ecocritical Reading of Jubilate Agno

Abstract: "For I pray God for the ostriches of Salisbury Plain, the beavers of the Medway and silver fish of Thames" ( Jubilate Agno , B153): species extinction in Christopher Smart's unique poem is the focal point of this essay. That the poem's ecstatic scope offers a leveling care for the nonhuman has been acknowledged, but here I argue that it speaks out of abjection: the poet is the supplicant, asking all Earth's creatures to advocate for him before God. Additionally, focusing particularly on the figure of the beaver, I highlight the medieval animal fable as a valid mode of understanding better our animal kin today.

On Middle Persian Interference in Early Arabic Prose

Abstract This paper discusses agreement patterns in Kalīla wa-Dimna, a collection of animal fables translated from Middle Persian to Arabic in the 8th century CE by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and considered one of the masterpieces of early Arabic prose. It advances the hypothesis that the text bears traces of interference from the L1 of its translator, Middle Persian. Kalīla wa-Dimna features agreement patterns unattested in any other described variety of Arabic. The paper provides an introduction to the complex textual history of Kalīla wa-Dimna, followed by a detailed analysis of the agreement patterns emerging from the text. A survey of agreement in both Arabic (in its written and spoken varieties) and Middle Persian then highlights the main differences between the two systems, followed by a discussion of the possible interference that resulted in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s reinterpretation of the Arabic system as based on animacy.

Grim humor in the tale of the wolf’s death

Abstract Contrary to other episodes of the Ysengrimus, the final episode in the seventh book of the Flemish animal epic is not based upon a known animal fable. The narrative core seems to be the story of the death of the prophet Muhammad as told by Embrico of Mainz. In this article I argue that the poet of the Ysengrimus may also have used elements from Ovid’s tale of Pentheus and the maenads in the third book of the Metamorphoses, just as the wolf’s eschatological prophesy might be an intertextual play on the storm scene in the first book of the Aeneid. Following this, I elaborate some clues that lend support to the idea, previously presented in the literature, that the portrayal of the sow Salaura refers to Hildegard of Bingen and her visions, publicly acknowledged by Pope Eugenius III during the Synod in Trier in 1147–1148, just before the completion of Ysengrimus.

A Sense of No Ending: Kalīla and Dimna between Fluidity and Completeness

This article examines the question of endings in the Book of Kalīla and Dimna as one of the most prominent works of Arabic literature. Being a complex framing narrative, Kalīla and Dimna contains several dimensions of open-endedness which are fostered by the remarkable fluidity in the book’s transmission. I will argue that both the open-endedness and the fluidity hinge upon an ideal of completeness in both historical and thematic terms which can be observed in the two main parts of the book. In the first part, consisting of prefaces, different authors—such as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, the translator into Arabic, and the otherwise unknown ʿAlī b. al-Shāh al-Fārisī—continue a story of transmitting the book and adding prefaces, hinting at the book’s undefined nature, its continuous relevance and its expansive potential. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s ethics of reading, a cautioning against quick conclusions and a plea for attaining a complete understanding, is, I argue, applied in the second part, the chapters mostly containing animal fables. Here, I will present two examples, “The Ringdove” and “The Monkey and the Turtle.” While the latter of the two narratives practises mise en abyme, shedding new light on the main intrigue in order to complete the moral message of the chapter, “The Ringdove” advances the interconnectedness between individuals and narratives, thereby presenting a sense of no ending.

Az egerek népétől a geometriai progresszióig

Th–e paper analyses Franz Kafka’s Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk and Miklós Mészöly’s A Report On Five Mice, examining the modulations of the traditional genre of the animal fable in both works, and its relation to the narratological structure and the narrative language of the texts, seeking an answer to the question of how non-human existence can be expressed in human language.

Richard Lovelace's Selected Animal Fables and the Transformation of the Emblem Tradition

It is difficult, if not impossible to give a comprehensive, cogent definition of the ‘emblem’ to accommodate its diversity as a genre, a definition that covers all the works produced under the name emblem during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is, therefore, neither necessary nor possible here to discuss definitions for such a large and eclectic field like the emblem tradition. Soon after its emergence, the emblem became an accepted form and exercised a vast influence over literature, art, and decoration of the period. Many writers were fascinated by it, including English poet Richard Lovelace (1616-1657), who used strategies of emblem books in his representation of creatures by integrating pictures and texts in a genre. This paper is an attempt to read Lovelace's poems The Grasshopper, A Fly Caught in a Cobweb, The Ant, The Snayl ‘The Snail’, and The Falcon in the light of the emblem tradition, showing how Lovelace uses the tradition. Focusing on his animal fables, the paper illustrates the different ways in which Lovelace employs or transforms the strategies of emblem books. Various references will be made to the poems to explain how the poet capitalises on the emblem heritage, while at the same time adapting it by rewriting the original story behind the emblem to channel his staunch political views in favour of the Royalists. The paper contends that, without referring to the emblem legacy accessible to Lovelace, certain aspects of his poetry would remain ambiguous.

Who’s Afraid of Genderfluid Turtles?

The Old Indian fable collection Panchatantra was first introduced to the Greco-Roman world in the eleventh century via Middle Persian and Arabic translations, under the Greek title Stephanites and Ichnelates. The first Greek version continued to be translated into various other languages over the centuries, from the thirteenth-century Old Slavonic Stefanid and Ihnilat, translated into modern Serbian as Stefanit and Ihnilat (1999). The extended second medieval Greek version had a myriad of translations as well, the most recent being the English 2022 edition of Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean. Several translators over centuries navigated the ‘untranslatability’ of characters’ gender in this text, on the intersection of grammatical, social and ‘natural’ categories.
 Our inquiry raises questions of social and grammatical gender, across times and spaces, examining how human gender constructs are materialized in animal characters and narrated in diversely gendered languages.
 Querying the linguistic differences of gender, we compare stories of selected characters from three different fables in Greek, English, Old Slavonic, and Serbian versions, while also looking at the Arabic source text Kalila and Dimnah. In the case of the lion’s mother, translations avoid using a word for female lion while emphasizing her role as queen-dowager and mother at the cost of her animality. The story of the owls introduces different grammatical genders for the birds outside of the court, while the individual owl-ministers and their king have to be male. The most curious case is that of two turtles whose gender roles are firmly assigned in Arabic but become so fluid in Greek and Old Slavonic that the animals change gender mid-sentence. While the stories highlight historically contingent gender performativity, the fact that the modern translators impose stable gender and heterosexuality upon their characters, opens up the space for debate on (mis)interpretatinons of animal sexuality and the queering and worldmaking potential of translation.

Narrative in Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ

Abstract This article examines the narratives that appear in the encyclopedic Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). Written in the tenth century, this multi-layered Neoplatonic work contains over 40 narratives—parables, allegories, fables, animal tales, and dialogues. These narratives serve multiple purposes, including the elucidation and illustration of ethical, philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific concepts. Together they encapsulate the philosophy of the secret society that produced them. With the exception of the famous animal fable, The Case of the Animals vs. Man in the Court of the King of the Jinn, these narratives have received little scholarly attention. Those narratives that have been studied have been considered in isolation rather than with the other narratives of the corpus. This article identifies the narratives in each epistle that utilizes them, shows their distribution, examines their types, and provides examples of the shorter narratives.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ inMahābhārata12.136 and narratives about spiritual liberation (mokṣa) in Ancient Indian literature

Abstract‘The dialogue between a cat and a mouse’ (Mārjāramūṣakasaṃvāda) is an animal fable used in theMahābhāratato provide instruction in statecraft (nīti). This article argues that theMahābhārataversion of this tale must be based on an earlier soteriological allegory about a brahmin who provides spiritual liberation to a king in exchange for protection. TheMārjāramūṣakasaṃvādaabounds in terms and phrases that, in addition to their everyday meanings, have a technical or typical usage in the ascetic traditions of Ancient India. Moreover, the conversation between the cat and the mouse resembles that between a teacher and a disciple, rather than a discussion of a possible alliance between two kings. The hunter of theMārjāramūṣakasaṃvādacan be identified with the Buddhist Māra. To support the plausibility of this soteriological reading, the article includes a discussion of Buddhistjātakas with a similar plot.

A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in Honor of Greg Clingham

A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in Honor of Greg Clingham

Squeezing Juice from the 'Fruits of the Caliphs:' Tastes, Contexts, and Textual Transplantation at a Late Medieval Egyptian Court

This article concerns themes of translation, movement, and context in its examination of the intentions behind the composition of Ahmad ibn ʿArabshah's (1389–1450) mid-fifteenth-century opus of animal fables and anecdotal advice literature, the Fakihat al-khulafaʾ wa mufakahat al-zurafaʾ (Fruits of the Caliphs and Witty Banter of the Stylish Folk). With some alterations, including the introduction of a substantial amount of historical material in its ultimate and penultimate chapters, Ibn ʿArabshah's Fruits of the Caliphs is primarily an expanded reworking of an earlier work, the thirteenth-century Marzban-nama (Book of Marzban) attributed to Saʿd al-Din al-Warawini. Like the Book of Marzban, the Fruits of the Caliphs is largely a collection of moralistic animal fables and anecdotes of wisdom, bound together within several smaller stories which comprise a larger framework story. The ten chapters of the Fruits of the Caliphs share much in common with the Book of Marzban although Ibn ʿArabshah completed significant re-writing of the original tales with historical asides, changed names, and observations unique to his own mid-fifteenth-century interpretation of the book. Because the work is primarily an Arabic translation of an earlier Persianate mirror, it proves challenging to analyze as an "original" work. Nevertheless, Ibn ʿArabshah attempted to modernize the book and in its Arabic form, update it for what we may assume must be a late medieval Cairene courtly audience. In addition to engaging with the curious title of the work and its latent meanings, this article contextualizes and explains the author's creation of the work in relation to his later career trajectory and rising reputation in the fifteenth-century Syro-Egyptian cultural milieu.

Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature

Issue 9 of Interfaces brings together papers given at the Centre for Medieval Literature's symposium on 'Moving Forms: The Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature,' held in Athens in 2019. At the heart of the symposium was the exploration of the ways in which the movement of people and books across space and time were driving forces of medieval European literary and intellectual culture. Building on the practices of both comparative literature and entangled history, the symposium aimed to open up connections between literary cultures often considered to be separate. The articles published here cross the geographies and chronologies of medieval literature as they consider a range of forms, from romance to legal writing and from history-writing to animal fables, in examining texts from Georgia, Egypt, Bohemia, Scandinavia and Western Europe (with extensions across the Atlantic into the Americas). While each paper has something for the specialist, we hope that they collectively encourage reading across the full issue, inviting readers to enter into the expanded, comparative and connected, approach to medieval literatures that the symposium explored.
 Cover image: Pierpaolo Curti, Bridge, 2014, tecnica mista su tela, 120 x 80 cm – Collezione privata – www.pierpaolocurti.com

Introduction to 'Interfaces' 9

The Editors introduce Interfaces 9: Transformations and Translocations of Medieval Literature. The articles published here cross the geographies and chronologies of medieval literature as they consider a range of forms, from romance to legal writing and from history-writing to animal fables, in examining texts from Georgia, Egypt, Bohemia, Scandinavia and Western Europe (with extensions across the Atlantic into the Americas). The Editors also draw attention to a piece about Interfaces in a recently launched journal, where the direct link between a wider, more connected vision of medieval European literature and open access publishing – which places no financial barriers to who publishes and who reads – is addressed.

Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire

Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire

Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times ed. by Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, and: Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire by Kaori Nagai (review)

Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times ed. by Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, and: Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire by Kaori Nagai (review)

Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times ed. by Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, and: Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire by Kaori Nagai (review)

Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times ed. by Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, and: Imperial Beast Fables: Animals, Cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire by Kaori Nagai (review)